Fireduck

0000.00.00
In the begining...there was a large llama. It stank. Badly. To this day, no one has figured out what can be done with it.

Then there was fire. It burned things.

There there was a duck. It flew and floated and such, like a duck.

Then, at the pinical of creation and exasperation over the llama, there was the FireDuck.

Behold the FireDuck. Complete with brown derby and white cane.

If ya wanna be added to the mailing list for page update notice and more importantly general disscussion, send me an e-mail.

1999.06.03

I am borrowing page format format from digital. I kinda like the web thing.
It amuzes me. Anyways, I think I spend to much time bitching about stuff. It's all in my head anyways. Happienss, saddness, and everything else...it is all in the head. I can control it. Kinda odd. I can sit there and change the way I feel about the day. Kinda sp ookes me out that it is that easy.

They'll never take me alive.
I'll never give up.
I'll never give in.

No matter how many times I end up on the ground bleeding...
I will always get up.
Every time I nearly die...nearly give in...
but I a much to stuborn of a prick.
I will not accept defeat.

It's amazing how often I say that to myself.

We are not great people....we will not do thigns that they will write in history books or even tell on the evening news...but we will do what we do and we will do with all the heart and all the blood and all the style that we have. It might be enough.
Enough for what?
who the fuck knows...
Maybe enough to keep the everyone from kill each other
maybe enough to keep the sprit of something greater than ourselved alive.
maybe just enough to see the sun tomorrow and still care.
I just hope I never die untill I am dead.

They'll never take me alive.

1999.06.05

Eh. Kinda tried and my ass itches. Oh well. Will maybe be able to sleep soon, and not get up tomorrow to work at WdN. I'm not really sure how I feel about that. Seems like a good idea but might not be. Who knows. Just to tired of their shit, and ha ve too mch of my own shit to worry about.

Kinda tired....generaly shitty feeling but also kinda good. Good old endorphins. Random people keep talking to me on icq. They usally go away pretty quickly.

1999.06.10

I'm hungry. To lazy to do anything about it. Oh well. People should really stop calling when I am asleep. I'm sure that I am completely incoherint and say very odd and posbily incriminating things.

Oi, finals. Good thing I don't give a shit. Just a pain in the ass.

1999.06.26

Good old mind altering chemicals releases by something or other after a reasonably expenditure of enery through movement. I biked out....ended up at the town center to find peeps. That was not my original objective, but I suspected I would end up there. No chicks and nothing going on that dark falling like an old man chasing pigeons with a cane on downers so I left and came back. Showered. Ate. Bored again, but I kinda feel good now.

Oh yea...I will sumarize what I was bitching about last night....how much time will I spend moving money from one persons pocket to anouther? Most of you stiffs have jobs, which means you goto work for the man and at some regular interval you receive a check or cash under the table or wahtever from said man. I run a bussiness, which in this case means I irregularly collect small checks, cash, odd money orders, small little stars and such. After collecting all this, I smile at the number of digits and then turn it into a small number of large checks that are paid to the man. Oh well. you never get rich working for someone else, but doing your own thing aint all that if you are just trying to put food in your gut and maybe buy pretty shinny things for the earth angel on your arm.

Speaking of which, I need/want one of them. I generaly find enough that meet my criteria...some integrity, integence, humor and a smile....I would like to say looks don't matter, but I hate lieing. Looks don't matter alot to me, but a kind smile framed on a decent face can be forgivin of many things. Anyways, whatever criteria they have, apparently I don't meet. The ammount I get my hopes up dosen't help to much either. I usally die once a month or so. but I usally get back up.
often the different between being alive and being of the living dead is determination. Usally when I die, I skulk for a while, but then make the pain-in-the-ass-grumpy-old-bastard decision of getting back up. Maybe eventually I will be successfull....would be nice for a change...but would take chalange out of things a bit.

Wonder if anyone actually reads this. Probably a good insight if anyone is intersted in my particular madness I have going over here. Talk Hard. Tact can burn in the streets. I would know nothing is someone didn't everyonce in a while prove me wrong when I get cocky and to point it out when I am being a jerk. I usally try not to be a jerk, but often I am to tired or in my own world to care much.
What the hell is this I am listining too? I hate live music. It is kinda cool if you are there, I see not fucking point in listening to recordings of live music. It generally sucks and has a mass of losers who were cool enough to be there yelling stupid shit. If you want to listen to the music, the cd version is much cleaner. Maybe I am a perfectionist phyco. Maybe it is good. Keeps shit from getting out of control. I am a perfectionist about something, but there are also somethings that I just let goto hell because I don't care and have more important things to do. You gotta chose your battles. It is amazing the conversations that can be begun and ended by telling someone the truth. I heard something said by some CIA guy who worked with diplomats. He said the best way of confusing embasadors was telling them the truth. They always assume you are lieing about something. Nothing suprises people like the truth...naked, direct and with big teeth. My thanks to everyone who tells me the truth.

1999.06.29

You can win any battle, but you can't win every battle.

I get the feeling that I will figure out what I am looking for about 10 sec after I find it. Maybe then everything will make sense. Well, most things make sense now, but maybe it will seem like it has a point after I find whatever I am looking for. Maybe all it is the search....I kinda hope not. Too many days and nights alone in my own thoughts. Sometimes alone even when others are around. I hear their words but the words make no impact, mean nothing to me. Sometimes they are everything, sometimes it is just the whining of insects that just fusterats me if I try to listen. I just like the rain. It is soothing. I wish it was raining now. I was just listening to riders on the storm by the doors. It has rain. Reminds me of it. I htink I really need to go walking in rain, better yet durring thunderstorm. Maybe I can get one of the other odd souls who likes that sort of thing to join me. Then maybe I wont be so damn alone. I should really stop bitching. It is addictive. I'm not done till I'm dead, or I beleive I am. I refuse to accept defeat. That one has kept me going a few times. I think I need to go west. and get out of this hole. Not that this is a bad place, it's just that if you go somewhere else and are thrown into things you weren't ready for you have to actually think and grow. Not just sit here and be comfortable and stagenate. tech should be good for soemthing new. I adapt faster than most people I think. From having people who exepected alot of me and moving alot. You learn to be observant and keep your mouth shut when you don't know whats going on, and how to take a little initiave and be a role model for others when you do know whats up.

1999.07.03

Long day. Hot. Gathering. Wedding. Fire. Expermientation. Sometimes you don't want to know what other people do. Often it is intersting and valids seomthing you do, but sometimes you just don't need to know. Sleep and time add wisdom to any event or decision.

1999.07.17

Who the hell puts musturd on a burger with barbeque sauce? Damn it that pissed me off. I don't like musterd....especially not with barbeque sauce.

1999.07.23

I hate money. Don't want to work, just want to bang on the drums all day. Actaully I don't play or own any drums and I dont really mind working because I do what I like, but I think I heard that somewhere and it fits my mood. I just wanna do my thing and not have to worrry about if my checks will bounce or if I will have enough money to go out to eat with friends....oh well, such is life. Heard something today. Wisdom of dune. Change awakes something in ourselves that makes us stronger...and if we never have to change, that sleeper will never awaken and we will be less than we were. What I do today, may make me more able to deal with tomorrow, of if today is too soft, less able to deal. I am being a slack bastard this summer, so I don't know. Probably a little softer in some ways, but a little stronger in others. In the end, I suspect that when chalanged I will chose my battles, and the ones I chose I will win, but I will not win them all. If I have something to prove that day, perhaps I will win most of them, or do it very well, but who knows...someone, anyone....when I am a rich old prick...remind me what it is like to be a plebian sub-urbanite trying to pay bills. I think good old whinny churchill said "Anyone can handle adversity, but to truely test a man, give him power." I must keep that in mind...it applies on all scales...It applies if you are rich with millions of dollars and can do wahtever, or if you are just a lowly sys-admin with control over user's stuff. Power corupts, but vigalance can counter it. That and some friends to smack you areound and say whatup when you go a stray. A friend to me is someone who speaks the truth. Even if you don't want to hear it...no, especially if you don't want to hear it...I can only see through my own eyes, and the look always in just one direction, like a predator....so I need people with eyes and brains to point out what I can't see because it is too close. That is a friend...someone who will save you from yourself. Anyone who does not give you the truth does so for a reason....usally to manipulate you in some way. When I feel that I am being controled...I have a very strong urge to rebel against that control and strike out at what tries to control me. If you wish to move me, give me the truth and if I should, I will move myself.

1999.08.05

I'm really tired, but will try to write more than that. Remember that what you see now is always clouded by what you think of the past and what you predict for the future. Even if we say we have no idea what will happen, or what something will be like, we still have some form of concept of what it will be like.....these preconceptions can be helpfull, but I suspect that they more often blind us to opertunity and limit our ability to adapt. When going into something you know nothing about, the first thing you must do is know nothing about it. Drop all unfounded preconceptions and be aware of how little you know. That way you will walk in, seeing what is there, rather than looking for what you think should be there....again a little peice of knowledge that I got from the sands of arrakis. Books.....books make me older than I am....it is kinda crazy the things that I have read about and how it becomes part of me...alot of things I have learned that I use...generally not direct skills, but more of ways of looking at things and little tricks and new ideas....I have been a sqire in caste creed, I have learned from the theives of krondor. I was a hourse vet and blacksmith...I have faught in nam, in kesh, to protect sol, out of rage, out of love, for no reason...explored upper atmosphere of jupiter...had a floresint bike...rebuilt a mill after the kings army burned it...lead the accoma and atradies to victory...and this is not nearly complete....waht does it all give me? Nothing but what I take...a few tricks...a little wisdom...dosen't make me strong, just helps me see the path...I still have to walk it myself.

1999.08.10

I learned something about myself. I always kinda suspected it, but now I have made the transfer from that idea or image that you have never thought in solid words to something real. I am an artist. I do not buy paints and put them on canvas...I do not take classes to tell me how to create...I just create. I take things, pens, items, anything that it around and apply them to somethin to create a look of what I see. Art is to speak to that part of you that don't understand words. It is to speak from that wordless inner being to the inner part of others. Mayhbe that is too much into it. It is expesion. It cannot be taught, except by learning from life. There are many things like that. Words are a manor of expression...but words are often not up to the task of expression what we feel. By feel, I don't talk about emotion, I am taking about thinking without words. Like you do when you have that addrenilen rush of emergency. The time between input and reaction is so low, that even words in thoughts would be formed to slow. You just act. Sometime people say that is is acting without thinking, I think they are wrong. It is acting without dulling thoughts with words. Without examining them against todays society...it is thinking faster than you can remember. If we ever are to truly communicate, we must do so on that unrestained level...that primal concept. So much is lost putting an idea into words. Ever had an idea that you don't know how to explain? (Like the problem I thionk I am having now?) You know it, you understand it. You know it has no flaw, but you can't find the words to expesss it with the clarity you feel. That is waht I am talking about. what if you could express that idea to someone in an instant, and they would undertand it as you do. Image the posiblities....human kind would perhaps turn from an assosiation of independant modules to a collective intelegence that spans the world....for computer dorks, it is like having a network of systems connected via 2400 baud modems trying to share new source code and programs and suddenly switching it to 100mb ethernet....Levels of understanding would vastly incease. I ramble.

1999.08.10.5

I think that I really like how this page is going. I think I will make a mailing list. This list will notify people when the page is updated and also be for general disccusion. Drop me an e-mail if you want to be on the list. Never sell out...when you do, you exchange something of value to you for something of value to someone else. Just thought of something that is kinda comforting. Above all physical things that I posses, the thing I cherish most is my writting. It is the way I can link the present with the past and see how I have moved. For example I reread this page. Remined myself of some stuff I was thinking about just a month or two ago. Was intersesting. Amplify that over years and the effect can be profound. Anyways, I value my writting. Maybe that is just conceit that if consider them important, maybe it is love of the past, but taht is not the pointof my statement. I am saying that I consider this page valuable. The thing that comforts me is that I have taken no special effort to see that it is preserved. I am trusting the backup solution that is in use for every other peice of user data on this server. My page is no more important than any of their files. They are protected the same. It strikes me as good that I consider my data no more important than other users, and that I trust my work even for this. It is that whole doing a job well thing. As I said before, I choose my battles, and I like to think that the ones I choose I do well. Maybe not the best I can do, but fairly well done.
My fingers feel funny. Probaly because they are covered with ink. That is what I was doing some art with. Drew something exploding with ink on a computer case here, and labeled it shit happens. I kinda like it. Don't know if I will in the morning, but I suspect that either way I will be too lazy to do anything about it, so it will be preserved. That is kinda funny. I read something in a book today: nothiung in the universe is forever. People change, rocks are worn away, rivers move, planets die, everything changes...and I think that what I do might last. Foolishness. Reminds me of something Mr ruffin was taking about (yes, I was listening, while most of the rest of the class was thinking about how boring it was). He said that historians learn about people from back-in-the-day from letters...corespondance and such. He proposed the question of, how will people in a hundered or 500 years learn about what people did today? In this age of phone and e-mail and throwing everything away? There are newspapers and burucratic records, but they don't say who a person really is. Will what I do today be felt tomorrow? What will the net effect of my existance be? Probably more conceit...I want to be important, I want my words to be read and understood. I want to make someone who I have never even meet think about something in a new way....Oh well, maybe I will, maybe not. I'm not sure I really care. You can't make something think. The idea is contradicotory. If you want to think, you probably have a preconceived notion of what they should think about or how they should think. Thinking, truly thinking impies (at least to me) creative analysis of infomation. That creativity inherent in human thought will mostly likely yeild results contrary to what you think they should think. You can only lay out what you see and learned, and suggest to someone to draw their own conclusions or not. Actualy, there are ways to get people to think, but they are mostly illegal. If you stab someone in the eye, and dump their bleeding body in the desert somewhere, you can bet good money that person will be doing some intense thinking. Like, what the fuck did jerk-off stab me for? Why in the middle of the desert? How long till I bleed to death? Will I have two eyes ever again? Will I get out of this? How will I get out of this? That last one is probably the most prominant one...if you want to make someone think, turn their world upside down. Change makes us stronger, but sometimes also more savage.

1999.08.20

I have arrived....hit me last night as I was chilling in this bed. my bed. I realized that I will be here for quite some time.....it is odd...not going to my home in Reston...where I have lived for the past 7 years or so...now I occupy diffrent space with diffrent rules...will I learn them the easy way or the hard way? How will this change me? What will I have to change? If you look only at your own feet, then you think you are walking alone because you cannot see those next to you. Reminds me of something..I can be really stange in the way I treat people....like if someone approches me after not talking to me a for a decent ammount or time, or someone I didn't know that well anyways, and they act a little diffrent than before, I will treat them as a new person and try to assume nothing about their old self and what I thought I knew. I wonder why I do that. Maybe it is one of those things, I treat others like I want to be treated. If I make a change in myself, I don't want everyone to hassle me about it. It is kinda funny how decent people do for others what they want done to them. Knowing this is a decent communication skill....like if someone gives you a massage without asking, they probably want one themselves. People are people and do people things....normal enough to be comforting but odd enough to be intersting...

1999.08.27

I love going to bed tired.....I wrote a prime number genorator in C++ today...pretty decent considering that I didn't know any C++ this morning...also did a few other things today....I just like that feeling of being truly tired and also having ackomplished something...eh...the bed beckons...ugg calc at 10am tomorrow....that is before anyone should be up....I am young, I need my sleep.....oh well....

1999.08.31

I'm still alive. This weekend tried to deal with that, but not that efficivly. I wasn't really up for getting really wasted because everyone I have talked to says it is no fun plus I didn't know or trust the hosts of the party on saturday. I was feeling kinda down earlier in the day, but felt better after signing up for soccer and alot better when some old friends showed up. I chilled with them for a while, it was nice to talk to some of the old reston crew....It is nice to hang around people you respect and trust even if you don't agree with them on all things. One thing I really like about those guys is they know that being diffrent does not make someone wrong...they are always reasonable to talk to. Most of them were kinda into the drug scene...as far as I know, nothing hard, but still...I don't really like it, it's not my thing and I think it is a waste, but I respect the guys and realize that they are free to do their thing with being judged by me. I think I have gotten my grove down here...I am used to the idea of walking around the campus to do stuff...I know what food is good where (somewhat)...I know how to take a bussed a few places....I can get to most buildings without a map. Don't carry map with me anymore. If I am going somewhere I have never been, I either just generally wander or glance at map before I leave my dorm....I was looking for my english book today...none of the three bookstores have it...I don't really care though. I get the impression that my english prof. is the sort with the mindset that decent effort with no results desirves the same credit as the same effort with correct results, so I don't think he will mind that I didn't get the reading done. I don't know if he will be able to match the standards set by Mr ward (a very tough bar to pass), but he seems decent. Every once in a while I find it odd that I am here, but it's all good. Oh yea, that reminds me...I thought of a way to optomize my prime number generator. It might be faster, and will use 3 times the ram. Ha. Anyways, if not faster, it will at least be more accurate. Right now, a very slight floating point data loss could make some results inacurate, but my new method would be completely accurate.

I need to find some chicks. By chicks I of course mean eligable females that meet my fairly strict personality requirements and my fairly open physical apperance. There don't seem to be many in my CS classes (go figure). There are certainly some CS females, but they are so few that they are so few that the competition will be more than I want to deal with. Actually, come to think of it, my personality requirements arn't that strict either. Basicly i just want a good woman who will treat me well and appricate my attempts at wit and romance.

1999.09.01

I'll iterate you in the head until your dead and purged like last week's inodes because I am the runaway algorithm.
This CS stuff is obviosly getting to me. Oh well. Soon I'll be wrapping in pseudocode...the mad tripping coder with a vengance...
Go ahead call me a CS dork, I like what I do and you know where the money is.

1999.09.02

Something I wrote for english. I thought it should go here also:

In "The Wanderer", an Anglo-Saxon poem of unknown origin, I found what I consider and very beautifully and profound statement.

"A wise man must fathom how frightening it will be
When all the riches of the world stand waste."

These two lines make me think about what we do here. What will there be left after we are gone? What will be remembered? Will it matter? This statement reminds us that maybe in 100 years no one will remember our names and maybe in 1000 years no one will remember our language or our works. It puts me in a mindset of doing what I can now and today in case it does make a different and my actions are not forgotten. It is easy to forget those who came before us and consider ourselves better than the past, but we must also think, what will future generations think of us. The past is past and should be learned from, but those we must justify ourselves to are our children.

1999.09.08

chicks.....they do crazy stuff...makes no bloody sence to me...christ...when was prom? 4 months ago? I still can't get jessica out of my head...what the hell did she do...I think it is mainly that I never at any point knew what she really thought....it was always so far away from the surface...she would always talk about what she was doing (random activites, exciricual stuff, school) but nothing about what she really wanted....like she was hiding by absorbing herself in stuff to do....at my age, I am in no position to judge the validity of that tack, or if it is better than the insane running into walls that I do...but it dosen't seem right to me....I always beleive that we can't do anything other that be as we feel and do what we think it right....anything else seems fake to me...what is the point of being alive if you are afraid to live?...maybe you will get your nose bloodied...maybe you will end up face down in the dirt, but you will be alive...and no one can deny that...it is just real that way....maybe I misread jessica and that is not what she was doing...I don;t know. I have no fucking idea. I don't know who she was or what she stood for...all I know is that I could feel a sense of power and control from her....it seemed that she kinda knew what she was doing..except for a few seconds when I steped up...I wish her luck in whatever she chooses to do...I wonder if she knows who I am.

1999.09.09

I wander...don't know where I'm going...just know that what I seek is not within these walls...go out...I move around...I see people...but they can't see me, and I can't touch their worlds....I can't bridge the gap to being their kind of real...I search...maybe for something I will never find...maybe for someone like me...anouther lost soul...anouther alone in the night...night of the soul, night of the mind, or night of the sky...they are all the same...it is all dark...I don't see anyone else alone...everyone I see has their own worlds...their own reality...their own light...as I quite for tonight and widthdrawl from the grass...there is one slightly comforting/disturbing thought...I hope the reason I can find no one like me is because there is none...maybe everyone else has some light to hold....
Maybe one day, I'll join their world...or maybe transend it...or maybe just die...but it hasn't killed me yet...I am too much of a stuborn bastard.

1999.09.10

Power addict...I am a power addict...I love power...phycologicly I seem to think that I can weild it better than everyone else so, naturally it should be mine. I never really think of it that way, but when I look back at how I feel after certain things and at certain times, it is the only thing that explains how I feel. I think I should avoid that kind of thinking....which means I must think about it, I must emerse myself in that idea for a while, and understand everything good and everything bad about it...only then can I move past it...taking whatever peices I like with me and discarding the rest...the best way to avoid something is not to run away, but to face it and know where it lies. I must decide what features set who I am. I decide who I am and who I am not. I will not be power hungry, but I will be a good leader if someone chooses to follow me. I have decided that. The tricky part is seeing what changes I need to make in myself to make that happen...from the large concepts of thought to the small detail of a single action.
I think just about any problem can be solved if you can succicently get your mind around it and keep that idea in your head....I don't know where I heard the phrase "get your mind around it", but I like it. I think it really well describes what I am talking about. For example, I know this wall in my room, but I don;t have my mind around it. To really understand it, I have to know how thick it is, how far it goes down that I can't see, is it load bearing? Is there anyhting (pipes, wires, elves) inside it? What other rooms touch it? Is it exterior? These are all things I have to know to get my mind around the concept of that wall. I have to know what it effects and what effects it. And also very importantly, how it effects me. Before, durring and after I do something to it.
Reminds me of a theory I was disscussing with wb a while ago....you only fail once you don't know what to do next. Suppose you have a plan call A. And plan A will either succeed or fail. Suppose you have anouther plan B that you will execute if plan A succeedes, and a plan C to execute if A fails. And for B and C you also have plans for their success of failure. Then, no matter what happens to plan A, you have anouther plan for what to do next. You only really fail when you don't know what to do next...when you can't see the path from your current position to the goal in mind....this theory is based on the somewhat faulty concept that you can guage everything that will happen as a finite number of anticpatable outcomes and have plans for each of those outcomes. Shit happens, so probably the most import is how well you can improvise. Really good improvisation is also called "stick it to the man". That is pronouned as quickly as possible with some hand motions to go with it. Suppose you are walking down the street and a dwarf saws off your leg. Picking up your leg and beating the dwarf with it, is excelent improvisation and therefor a good way to stick-it-to-the-man. If you are good at sticking it to the man, and getting away with it, you can beat an advisary from an inferior position. Why buy supplies when you can steal them from you enimies? Why steal supplies when you can trick their infistructor to delivering them to you? Why train troops when you can sneak them into the enemies training programs, thus wasting their resources and gaining trailed troops as well as spies. Stickittotheman!

1999.10.02

Today I met a friend of mine...she isn't quite who I though she was. She is a little bit more, a little more complex than that. And I apprectiate her more for it. Some people are against getting drunk...I am for it because sometimes with friends it helps you drop that barrier that we all have around us...protecting what we think is real in out heads because we think that others want to replace it with what they think is real...and with good friend, you learn that they don't want to remove what you think, they just want you to be happy and will do anything they can for you. I think people should say what they feel more...too many people walk around taking shit and feeling shit that they shouldn't have to face along because they are afraid of inconvinenceing their friends and afraid of being heard....I think that most of the time, we all just want to help each other, we just don't know how. This goes out to my friend...who knows who I am talking about. I will help you be happy in any way I can...if you just let me know how.

1999.10.12

My birthday is in a few days. It is kinda funny the useless milestones we celibrate. I will be a year older...I would like to think a year wizer also, but it is hard to tell. Money is again making me bitter. Oh well. I'll either learn or I'll die. At least that is the idea behind capitolizm. Kinda shitty if you get shafted by life somehow and no one cares because you don't have money, but it has a certain darwinistic appeal that I like...I like it not because of all the people is shafts and not because it puts the rich few standing on the backs of the working man, but because it provides some striff, some threat of losing, some chalange, someway of failing or winning...maybe it will make us stronger as a society...probably not because the rich often didn't make their own money and are therefor weak and the ones who don't do well still breed. It sounds kinda harsh, but in order for a society to become stronger, the strong have to be nurished while the weak die. My theory (and a vastly un-informed theory it is) is that most of our generic predispositions and phycological makeup was developed durring the time when humans were still vieing for survival itself...back then the ideal way to behaive was to help all other humans get along, that made us the strongest because it increased our numbers and allowed us to populate the world. Now that there are so many of us, maybe it is time for a culling of the heard...maybe...that dosen't seem right though...it seems logicly correct, but there has to be anouther answer..anouther way to make the next step, without resorting to coldhearted measures that we all feel are wrong...I think that if something is not done, then society will degrade till anything goes...till anything is acceptable...I don't know how to logicly defend that idea right now, but it seems correct. I don't know. I think the best thing that can happen to earth right now would be a direct outside threat to enter the picture forcing us all to work togather to overcome this threat. The day that a talking bug lands in new york is the day that the chineese man on the other side of the world seems like your bother a lot more than he did the day before....even vastly diffrent cultures on earth will almost definatly be very similar compared to what some other intelegence might have....one thing I like to consider is having no assumptions...try to think of extra-terrestrial intelegence...forget everything you know...startrek is all bullshit in that respect...alians will not look like us, they wont talk like us, they wont think like us, they wont group in communities the same way we do....we have no idea what to expect. Who knows what they could be like, if they developed complete independantly of earth and in a completely diffrent environment...maybe somewhere, the surface biomass of an entire planet became sentient and consous as one entity...maybe they will look at earth with our communications networks and air travel and assume that must be what hapened to us. There is one madman that I want to talk to...issac asmov...I know that is spelled wrong, but oh well. He is/was a madman. Me go sleep now.

1999.11.03

My life seems to go around in little stupid circles. I am bored and depressed. I am that way alot these days. Nothing to look forward too, nothing worth fighting for...not reason to care. I just stay alive based on that it will probably get better and I don't have a real lot to lose. I remember feeling this way before. I can't remember what I do about. Probably hide in books or computers and felt generally bitter and contemptful of the world. Sounds like a plan, but I don't have any good books and computers got boring, so I can't hide from reality...it is always there. I used to have an arrangment in that respect...I didn't bother reality and it didn't bother me. Looks like that is over. I could escape in alcohol, but that is probably pit that will be very hard to dig out of once I fall in. So far I only drink about once a week. I don't know if I have the will power to stop it from becoming more often. I could beat it easily...I could endure just about anyhting if I thought there was a point...some to fight for...back in the day I would convinve my self that I was in love with some nice girl and I would be ok for a while....lost in hope...and even after the hope was killed, I would still remember what I am looking for..right now I can't. I don't let myself feel that way anymore...too often I would get hurt and drive away people who would be my friends....so I have nothing to dream about...I know what I want dosen't exist and if she did exist, she wouldn't want me. That is a sad thing to know. It would be nice to think that a guy who cares as much as I do..a guy who is willing to take the time to listen and care would have a chance...but I don't think so. Females always go for the comfidant jerk. I am not a jerk...I don't know how to play those games with peoples minds....I am not confidant...too many times of being rejected has broken that...sure I am condifant with my work...with technical things...but not with the opposite sex. Plus I don't look that good. I like to think that I am not un attractive, but I know that I am not attractive either. As I examin my situation I feel a stuborness...something hard and strong inside me that says that I will not fail and will succee on my own terms...but I know that confidance will fade in an hour. True I will not give up...I still will hold a thread of the idea of not always being alone...but I don't beleive it...I readd the looks in peopls eyes too well...I know what they never say and it makes me depressed.

I will not accept defeat...I will not...break me 100 times and 100 times I will get back up.

1999.11.08

Y2K is comming! Repent your sins so you can create new ones. I don't know about you, but just on principal I think that I have to do something crazy on new years this year. For the very least to have a good story to tell the grandkids. It will end something like this: "And that was why the police had to arrest me from the top of the lincon memorial". What are we if not a collection of memories? Oi, I'm not even going to touch that. Yes I am, but I am too fragmented at the moment to do so. I am broken. Some peeps broke me. I have to fix myself...actually it was mostly me breaking myself. I don't know why...last night I ripped appart everything I know...everything I thought I was...everything that makes me know who I am...I sat there for a long time with nothing left...no idea what I was doing....finally I fell asleep. I don't know why I did that. Maybe it was because a part of my mind knew that I grow new, I needed to burn the old growth...to forget what I was taught, to start from a base level again...maybe it was some phycological issue that I haven't managed to deal with yet. I don't know. I know that today I generally felt decent...kinda like I learned something about who I am and where I want to go. I also know that my shoulder hurts like hell. Pain reminds me that it is there. Sitting here typing probably dosen't help.

1999.11.18

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I hate knowing what is going to happe. I would like to think that I know what is going to happen around me because I am such a smooth character and can deduce things based on carefull analysis of input...but I know that is not the only thing. I can do that to some extent...it tells me alot of that will happen with great accuracy but there is more than that. I think nothing supprises me because I have trained myself to not take risks. If you don't do anyhting, nothing intersting will happen. That and I have also trained myself to expect very little from life, therefor I am not disapointed when that is what I get...the end effect is that I lead an existace where I am ok just doing little stupid human shit most of the time, but whenever I think about it I get pissed off an depressed because I don't know where I am going or why I should care anyways. Mostly because I am afraid to care..afraid to take risks...I used to take risks...but whenever I did, I would get hurt...I play things safe now...I only enter a battle that I know I can win...I never take the wild gamble. I used to. I used to be a madman. Sometiems I still am, but not too often. Been hurt too many times...whenever I take a risk and reach out, whatever I extend gets chopped off. The real question is, do I fail because I never expected to succed or because I don't have what it takes? I know I don't have what it takes to beleive I can succed. Too many social failures has taken that confidance away from me, which paves the road for only fairure...how to break out of this loop...how to be strong engough to take a risk and daring enough to not be afraid of being hurt again....I could do it right now...I could walk up to a girl, look her in the eyes and talk to her about anything...but that is this moment..that will fad...maybe I will even keep thise feeling till tomorrow...even if I do...it will all come crashing down the first negative remark I get..the first little thing that brings back to mind the fear of failure...it is a bitch of an uphill battle...I can do it...I know I can...I was not raised to be weak...but I don't know how I can...If this makes sense to anyone, drop me a line and let me know that I am not completely insane. Thanks. They'll never take me alive. By that I mean I will never give up...I will never give in...i will never do exactly as I am told...I will not be the man the Tv says I should be...I will breath air on my own terms...I will win in my way...maybe I will bleed 90% of my blood on the ice before that happens, but I will do it my way.

Right now my page is about 7500 words. After it is long enough, I want to get it published, as is. Typos and all. It would be great. Maybe I should say fuck the printed book shit...stupid publishers and editors and all that commerical crap, but there is something about holding a book in your hand. The power of portable words. Enough words to make you think....a book is something you can respect. A web page is just something that might be amuzing or thought provoking for a few minutes.

People! Talk! I want to hear people respond to my madness...I want to hear someone completely rip my shit apart..to tear it down where it has flaws...because that will at least mean to you thinking about it....if we don't think might as well be dead...right now we are a civilization of fools destroying out home and each other, separating by class and culture and religion, over populating and leting the world and the TV be the teacher of out children....I think the cure to these plagues to society cannot be brought about by one man or one people, but by wide spread thinking. think about what you do, think about what a door is, why is it there, what does it do, who does it serve, think the same about a peice of paper, a car, everything. Everything is there to serve something...we have to think about what, we can't just let it go..

If you trust me, and I tell you a peice of info, what do you think about it? Most people would then belevie that fact based on trusting me...but that is wrong! That is faulty logic. If I tell you something as if it were fact and you trust me not to lie to you, all you know is that *I* beleive it is fact. Maybe you know something I don't, maybe you see it diffrently. And that is just with someone you trust, what about the man on Tv telling you what is news or selling you a car? Quesiton that. Question everything. If something doesn't want to be questioned, question it all the more. Rip society appart with questions....we have to find where it is broken by pulling every loose thread to find the weak parts. Then we know what to fix.

1999.12.06

All I need is a good woman and a new outlook. Unfortunatly both are hard to find and harder to keep.

1999.12.31

The end is near. Who cares...stupid abitraty date system. It is based on a calanader that was fucked with by random romans and theoreticly based on the birth of some mesiah. Anyways...I don't think I will start my rant on that just yet. Oh no, my date format for this web page is not Y2k ready!!! We will all burn at the hands of an angry and confused fireduck who isn't sure if my last entry was 2000 or 1900. Ugg. It is all about design specs. I am tired. Fuck. Not really...can't sleep. Which is of course why I am not sleeping. Dman this desk sucks...if y10k dosn't kill me, this desk will. It is so ergonomicly fucked that having underpants gnomes throw rocks at my back would proabbly be better for me than typing here. Oh well. What the hell am I ranting about? I don't even know. Probasbly because I am avoiding what is really in my head, because it bugs me. Well,not really bugs me, but scares me a little. I am not afraid of failure...shit happens and I can live with that, but I am worried aboyut failing something that could have worked if I did shit correctly...which is kinda hard to do when learning shit at the same time. It is kinda like being thrown into a heavy construction building and told to build road with it and to get it right the first time...the theories involved are not complicated but to execute them well without experience is hard as shit. Oh well...I have done it before in a work environment...I can do crazy shit with computers and random equipment...I genreally can handle pretty rough learning curves if I have a grasp of the whole picture, but females are a bit diffrent. Oh well, I will endure whatever comes tomorrow because that is what I am good at. Oi. Maybeshit will even work out well...or maybe I will get some assisance from the arosicrate....hahah. Oi. Something else calls. Damn politics...one of these days I am going to get pissed and bitter enough that I don't care enough and just start fucking with people...I beleive that if I didn't care about the people around me, I could do all sorts of crazy shit. But I do so I wont. Life goes that way. Friends can turn, but with an old enemy you always know where you stand.. Good old Feist. Most of his books seem to be simple adventure stories that do well to keep me occupied and away from reality, but he often includes some good wisdom.

2000.01.30

I think a sign of an open or intelgent mind is a pile of books, all with bindings broke. I just put my books out in my dorm's suite room. Using a small coffee table there as a one level shelf. The books being bounded by the floor on the bottom and the bottom of the table top. There are a good number of books there. I brought some from hom in case I had time to read them, which I didn't and the rest are my text books. Both take up about equal space. And that isn't even half of the books in my entire collection. Most of my books are on a shelf at home and all the books I own are only a fraction of all the books i have read. I attribute reading alot when I was younger to alot of who I am and how I think. Of course people like my mom and my brother played a big part, but I think books were the factor that made me my own person...distint from anyone else around me. I was just thinking about puting my name in my books. I did in some of them, I was considering doing the rest, but then I thought, 1) I am lazy. 2) if someone takes, reads and gets something from one of the books I have, I don;t care if I never see it again...books are to be read, not sit on shelfs. Oh well...I can't talk too much...I have about 5 books that are on that shelf that I haven'r even read yet...not enough time. Or at least I spend way too much time bumming around. eh. It happens.

2000.02.05

Reality bends. Reality is not fixed. Well, as often with this sort of fun some definitions have to established. Lets assume that the common set of reality that is apparent and true will refered to as xReality or xR. My perception of that universe will be refered to as iReality or iR. iReality bends. I felt it moving a while ago as I was reading this book. (The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin) It made me think and therefor my iReality was modifed. I now look at things in a slightly diffrent way. Suppose my iReality is graph of a line. And suppose xReality is a diffrent line. Sometimes things move the iR to be more like the x, but sometimes not. It is often very hard to tell becasue all a person can see is the i. Never the x. The only way to see x is if i=x and there is no way to prove that is the case. My general theory is that a persons iReality is usally fairly similar to xReality (at least if you stood far away they would take a similar shape). Up close there are problem alot of little imperfections. Imperfections between what we feel is real and what is actualy real. Some people on some issues might be really off. I am certain this is the case with many people, myself included. The only time when it really matters when the iR and xR are difrent is when experience makes it matter. This happens to me fairly often...I have my little outlook on life, and something hard forces me to change that outlook suddenly. That is usally a painful or at least upsetting process. Kinda like walking and not noticing a single step down. You probably will remain standing, but when you expected a hard surface to step on and found empty air, you were a little startled and offbalance untill you adapted. So basicly xReality will occasionaly beat your iReality more into place. But I think if it does it hard, you over correct and it fucks up. For example, suppose you have a dent in some peice of metal. Suppose you wish to flatten it by hitting it with a rubber mallet. Suppose you hit it just a little to hard. The dent might become revesred. Rather than being above the surface of the plane you are trying to get it match, it is not below. You have over corrected. I think hard hits of reality are very similar to this. There is also the non-violent reforming of iR that occers....like when I was reading that book and thinking about things. These changes are usally small, but can be big and are usally not painful. So these are ways that iR can be changed. Then the question must be asked, should we all have a goal of iR=xR? I would say no. Having iR not equal to xR allows us to accept things that are not true so that we can get things done. I don't think I could manage with a full understanding of reality. It would be disturbing. Suppose we consider xR a set of nearly infinite data points. that is too much information...we need a way of simplifying some of that and representing it as something we can work with. humm..how to explain this. Suppose we have a huge set of data points...like (1,4.98) (2,7.1) (3,8.89) (4,11.01)...etc(keeps on going) These points are xR. They are hard facts and accurate. And mostly useless to us because they are hard to visualize. If we don't mind a little inaccuracy we can represent those points in a way we can deal with them. They happen to all be near y=2x+3. Therefor for the sake of having a simple realtionship to remember rather than a large set of data points, we can greatly reduce the data we have to process without great accuracy loss. Leaving the math scene...anouther example of this would be like rather than saying Bob dosen't shower, bob smells. Mary does shower, mary dosen't smell. Frank lives in a dumpster, frank smells...etc. We can simplfy that to a statement like bad hygene causes bad smells. This statement is much more usefull because it can be applied to other people without actually smelling them. But any statement like this is going to have some inacuracies. I'm sure somewhere there is a person who dosen't shower and somehow manages to not smell of vice versa. We have to analize what sort of data loss is acceptable for increased data simplification. Basicly what I am saying is, iR should not be the same as xR, but your iR should be such that you can get done whatever you want to do, and close enough to xR that reality wont smack you back into place too hard.
I'm done. Night.

2000.02.10

Is it bad when all NIN songs start making sense to you?
I seem to have three states of existance. Hope, Pain or Denial. I live in the third most of time.

2000.02.17

People are crazy. Well, the cool ones anyways. I am having this conversation with this hip cat about people...we have determined that the really cool people are very rare...you just don't find many people like them. I give props to all the unique people..too all the frods who really know where their towel is and don't let the man tell them how to wear it. Or listen to the man and still do it with some style and individuality...anyone non unique will henceforth be refered to as tools. I'm sure using the term tools in that way is not new. No big deal cause I don't care. I don't really dislike tooks, they are useful in many things, but I dont like being around them all the time...I am afraid that I might become one of them.
People are also crazy because they change...one thing I like to do is give people taht I haven't seen in a while a benifit of the doubt...if they crossed me before..later I will forget that and let them start over with me...if you keep bringing up the past, it just makes someones uphill battle to move beyond the pasr even harder. I will always be a little weary of a person who was hurt me before, but I won't bring it up for no reason.
Ugg. I hate credit card people...they always call me....away with your evil debt traps! I have enough issues controling my spending behaviour as it is!!! Ra!

2000.02.19

I have this little ritual when I get back into my dorm/home/hovel from somewhere. I call it verifying that no one wants to talk to me. I check my e-mail and icq messages...and in most cases the processes goes smoothly because no one wants to talk to me. Go figgure. Yes, I am a bitter old man. Soon I will spend all day sitting in a rocking chair baiting cats with old fish so I can try to catch their tails under the skies of my chair.

2000.03.02

Rar. This guy in my philosiphy recitation said something that almost made me laught out loud. We were discussing where we get knowledge from...someone suggested instints....he responded that we are more advanced than animales and have out grown instincts....I thought that was the funniest stupidist thing I have ever heard. We are animals....when pressed we kill to survive...to hell with justice and logic...we feel what we want inside us and go for it...we try to keep it in check...we try to domesicate ourself...but everyday you see in the news someone who couldn't control it...someone who killed someone...someone who did something crazy because of some shit preventing him/her from getting what he/she wanted. Anyways, my point is that most of us males have a strong urge for combat and competition...I have it...often I have felt like a fighter without something to fight...there is nothing I see as important enough..nothing threatens me enough to make fight and kill. Sometimes I think society is fucked because we deny what we are...deny that we are animals...deny that the way we know to solve problems is to kill things...I think I can see what darwin is saying...if I kill someone because they had something I wanted...then since I won I am better then them and I have done the world a favor by replacing the weak with the strong...right now, any asshole can survive and propogate...in order for something get strong and get better there needs to be a harsh environment...the weak need to be eliminated to make more room for the strong....but there are enough resources for everybody...so we try not to kill each other...i am personaly not going to start killing people...but just wait till we ahve too many people and not enough resources...which is the direction we are heading...then we shall see how our society fairs....I think shit will start going more animal very quickly. We shall see what happens...I don't know...all I know is that you take a man...and you threaten the food that his familily needs and very quickly where once there stood a "civilized" memeber of society you will instead have an animal who would have no problems doing whatever is needed to get that food. Anyways, what the fuck am I ranting about? I am just saying we are not at tame as we like to think and that might be a key thing to consider in the future.
I think I have found the fight I need to fight...inside my head...I have alot of shit I need to work on...I am my own worst enemy...the diffrence between being miserable and happy is a simple decicion...but sometimes that decision is hard to make...to chose to be happy to have to think you are worth it...if you have no self worth it can be really hard...but now I know where to look for my enemy...I have found my fight...I will win...I will make myself whoever I want to be....not by example....JZ I hold no ill will towards to you...nothing can change what occered in the past...but I just have to decide to move past it. I will survive and I will not be like you. And the rest of you who don't think I can do what I set out to do, fuck you all. I don't give a shit. I don't have much to stand on often...I often feel alone as shit like no one gives a shit, but durring those times I still have a little strength...and I know that strength has to come from inside myself...and nothing can take that away..because I have tried...I have tried ripping myself down..ripping down everything I beleive in...when something hurts I hold it close to myself to see if it will kill me, but it never does...there is always something left that I can't kill....I am a damn hard to kill bastard...I wonder who could take the abuse I put myself though...I would venture to guess not many...I am not saying I am better than anyone else...after all I am fucked in the head pretty badly...but I am just saying I have a little decent matterial to work with here. Never count a human dead unless you've seen the body and even then you can make a mistake. That is from Dune by Frank Herbert. He is a sociological mad man.

2000.03.08

"Here's a new one for you: the gom jabbar. It kills only animals."
"You dare suggest that the duke's son is an Animal?"
"Let us say I suggest you may be human."
--Frank Herbert "Dune"

On that note here is the web page of one of the few real people I know: Laura. Hosted on that miserable rock geocities, but gold found in a sewer is still gold...so geocities has its merits. Laura writes much much better poems than I ever did. I love reading her work...maybe my outlook of the world matches hers...but I can really feel all her work...it speaks to something in me that I don't always speak of. Anyways, Laura and any other fellow lost souls out there, we are not alone. Something that we need to remember, but as I well know, seeing it that way can often be damn hard. Bedtime for Bonzo...or was that Bedtime for Democracy? W Bush may not be satan, but he anouther Raygun and we certainly don't need that. I hope McCain gets the republican nomination..because we all know woodenman Gore can't win and McCain probably won't be as bad as Bush.

2000.03.18

I learned that I am still alive and still human today. Good to know. Sometimes I am not sure. For once something I planned turned out just about as I wanted it to. Certainly could have been better, but also certainly couldn't have been worse. Ra.

2000.03.20

The wind told me something today...
As I steped outside in the cold dark...
It told me that there is something out there worth fighting for...
Fuck I can't write these days....uggg.

A little bit ago I reinstalled my OS here...and then found that my backup didn't include this page...so I all I had was a month old copy....I was like fuck...that means I have lost some entries....I hate data loss....I just can't stand it...I scrambled around trying to find a more recent copy of the page in browser caches...no luck...looked everywhere I could think of....nothing...but I am not one to give up...if this unforgiving bitch of a computer wanted to play mean, I can as well play mean. I said, bitch I know that data is on that drive somewhere...I don't give a shit if it has no links...I don't need no links...or inodes...or any other filesystem fullshit...just give me dd, strings and grep and I'll find the bitch....so I set my minions to work...combing about 6 billion bytes of random lost data for a few keywords....eventualy I found it...but still didn't have the location...I just new it was there....so I narrowed down the location enough to pull what was left out and use pico....then I dug around for a while....among random source code, other web pages, random other shit, was my web page...in peices scattered around...I pulled them all togather redid a little formation and then got all the shits back. Anyways...a little lession..if you fuck up...you can often bail yourself out if you have the right shit and know how to use it...and even when there seems no hope...don't give up.
Well, time for bed. Stupid calc test tomorrow morning.

Ok..it is about 14 hours later...I just made fireduck.com redundant...now no single nuclear attack can elminiate fireduck.com. hehehe.

2000.03.22

I have a new theory...a person can have everything...good friends...good job...money...everything....but if that person dosen't have the right frame of mind...that person will never be happy/content....but even with next to nothing...living in a hole in the wall...eating dead flies and beans...witht he right mindset that is enough...but the question is...how to establish the correct mindset? Maybe one way of doing it is putting yourself through a bunch of shit so that later you can always look bad and see how much better off you are now...I don't know...

2000.03.30

Grrr...there is the girl that I really like...she is so damn cool....just about everything about her I like...I like the way she is opinionated about things...not just the normal sheep people...and she expresses her opinions with strength and conviction but without being pushy or overbearing...she is the sort of person I can just talk to...and when I talk to her I think she understands...she sees the world like I see it...she is a great person...but I never see her...I was with her for about 2 hours in the last 9 months or so...and I don't know if she cares about me...but even worse than that, I don't know if she is who I think she is...maybe I am just lonely and seeing what I want to see...part of me says I should talk to her and quickly find out...but my logic says otherwise...that if anything is going to develop, it will not be from laying everything on the ground and seeing where we stand...it will be from long conversations in the dark...from laughing togather at stupid stuff...
for her and the things I see in her that I love, I would have no problem being patient and seeing what happens, but I never see her...I probably wont see her till summer and even then we probably wont hang out much...I am afraid that anything we might have togather will never happen...because circumstance just wont work out that way...ugg. I know that if i say anything...if I push to hard to see her, all I will end up with is someone else not talking to me and possibly a long analitical rejection. I'd like to think that if I told her what I was thinking and how I feel that she would understand...but I know thats not true...its not that no one understands me...its that no one wants to deal with me. If I met a female version of myself, I would probably run away. I would just say that there were too many issues...too much need and walk away. How can I blame anyone else for doing the same? Maybe some day someone will prove me wrong. I wont hold my breath.

2000.04.04

To understand my world, I must examine all things for myself. This includes looking into the abysse and considering going down it.

If you throw to people into a deep pit...and one has a plan to escape while the other does not...the one will a plan will only see the freedom of the sky above. The one without a plan will see the imprisonment of the ground below. Maybe there is something to be learned from this? Maybe there is some way to have a plan and not have a plan at once in order to see the whole picture? To see success and failure togather...if you could do that, you would never be at a loss.

2000.04.05

Every once in a while, I make the mistake of considering it posible that someone might be interested in me. I am usually quickly corrected on this matter.

2000.04.20

If you can't destroy something..and can't get away from it, might as well live with it. Last night I tore myself up...phycologicly...I do that every once in a while...I dont know why...I think I am trying to escape from myself...to destroy myself...but something happened that makes me thinks...last night after I finally got to sleep, I slept for almost 10 hours. And after I woke up...I felt good...everything I tore appart was rebuilt...something resisted being destroyed and would not give in to the hate and fear...damn it...words fail me...or I fail them...something is blocking me from expressing what I want to...something wont let me make it clear...how odd.

2000.06.15

Why is the internet trying to destroy me? Ugg...I lost a few updates and had to revert to an older copy of the page...of all the files on this system..this file is the most protected and seemingly the most likely to be destroyed. Ugg. Oh well..no big deal.

The Power to speak is the power to lie. Good old Atari Teenage Riot. They seem to yell alot...but they also seem to say things..."they are always trying to bring you back to what they define as reality"...I feel caught in a certain reality now...everything seemed clearer a few weeks ago...like I was more free...now I feel a little traped by the future...like I am on a path...a path taken by most...and if I logicly analyse it, it seems to be the best path for me...but somehow I have this nagging feeling that the path is not the right one...that I should break away from its normality and do something my logic questions...maybe that is some inner knowledge of what is best..or maybe it is just some paranoia of being regular and being mediocer at it. There is a diffrence between walking the path and knowing the path. It is hard to see...suppose we consider life as this path medaphore...you can look ahead of you and behind you...in each case things near to you are fairly clear and becomes more obsecure with distance. I think this works fairly well..it is hard to recall the path or extraoplate the future with objective accuracy....but maybe objectivity is overrated. It is very similar to an inertial reference frame for all those physics people out there...it is usefull for simple problems...how will a rocket thrust move an object? How will a person react to a chalange? But for full understanding..maybe they should be thrown out...for questions like does mater bend space or does time bend in space? What is out purpose here? These questions cannot be answered with such simple math...diffrent levels. Thus perhaps objectivity is a shackle for the big questions...but then we should be used as reference? How should problems be broken down? Should they be broken down? As a computer programer and person of occasional logic..I have learned that complicated problems can be solved by breaking them down into small peices...single interactions...small data sets...simple systems...then the problem can be done accuratly without mcuh effort...but perhaps some questions need a diffrent method...maybe they need to be processed from all angles at once..all vectors move simultaniously...the entire system as one...I think the human mind by default works in this way...but analitical science teaches us to break it down and understand it...maybe intuitive leaps are just solutions to complex problems without breaking them down...by using biological math rather than logical math. If I take my problem and break it down to peices...weight them against one anouther and tabulate a resultant...I get one answer...follow the well taken path that I am already one...but if I crunch the system as a whole...if let my mind roam free and see the next 20 years of my life as a single event...without breaking it down..without picking it apart..I get uncertainty...perhaps it does not matter so much if I stay in school. I know that if I decide to succeed and decide to be happy...in either event I will do so...and the opposite is also true...it is a question not of where I will walk (school or work) but a question of how I will carry myself there (determined or slack). Position does not matter...only velocity and acceleration...with constant upward velocity any negative position can be overcome. Its all about the calculus baby.

I used to think I loved the night because it was dark and secritive...now I know I love the night because it is not so rigid as the day...in the day there is a time for breakfast..a time for work...a time cleaning...durring the night...all of it...is open and undetermined. Maybe this night I will sleep..for tomorrow if it is to be productive will be long and tedious...but at least I am doing something...maybe just moving random currency around...but it is something to do and I can take pride in my work.

2000.06.24

I wish I could always be like I am right now...right now I feel things...I know how I think about things...things make sense because I know where I am with them...cause I feel it...I feel my place.. I feel what should do...there is no doubt...there is only the world and me dancing with it....this of course means that I drank alot of vodka....to be this free...to free myself from my self imposed exile from the world....to be free to actually beleive something...to not just have a minor opinion...to now have any feelings...in the world I sually pretent to be in...I anticipate everything...nothing can hurt me because I have anticipated everything that can go wrong so I expect it and have built walls for it...I hide...I hide be being prepared...I hide behind a pathetic frigthened survivialish fascad....I wish I could be who I am now...I wish I was strong enough to admit feeling so strong about something that I cry....but I'm not that strong...I just hide...I pretend to be wise so that no one will question me because secretly I can't handle being questioned...I pretend that my mandate is truth and honesty but all I really do is live a drawnout lie....the musics over..its time to goto bed. Tomorrow I will wake up inside a prison and not even know I'm in it. Night.

2000.07.02

I am here to demonstrate that a person can survive this shit....shit needs to change or i will die...so I will change shit....next time some girl does something that makes me feel like shit...I will throw her ass out of my apartment/life. I dont have the energy to deal with this shit anymore...I just can't...even if I have to be an irrational asshole to protect myself...that is what I have to do. Because it is no longer a matter of me being happy or not...it is a matter of me surviving or not.

Can't mess with the survival instinct...humans (myself is the current example) seem to have an intersting tendancy...we will endure a discomfort for a long time without doing anything if we dont see a way out...but once it actually threatins our survival..then we act...we are resistant to change, but we will eventualy adapt to survive.
I have come to a point...if I keep thinking like I have been and keep letting people effect my like I have been...it is only a matter of time before I kill myself...so I wont let people effect me like that...this means i am going to have to burn some people...I am going to have to push some people away so hard they wont come back...because I can't handle them...but I have to act this way...if you are not helping me...if you dont improve my life overall, then fuck off - I dont need you.
This concept of feeling anger and not directing it at myself is new to me...we shall see how it goes.

A few hours later
I know that to make it...I can't just be trying to survive...just making it will never cut it for me...I have to be fighting for something...something to beleive in...I can't beleive in god, I just dont...I can't beleive in my country...it does too many fucked up things...I can't beleive in people...they have let me down too often...I guess all that is left is myself...I think I know who I am...I think I know what is important to me. I value truth and the search of truth...I value my friends...I value freedom of throught and action...I value searching for answers through relentless inqusition. Maybe that is enough...but what is my goal? Can I put myself on a map and say that I am at point A and I want to be at point B...then I could simply plot a course and walk it...is it that simple? I somehow doubt it will ever be that easy. So where do I want to go? Beleive is not enough..there must also be hope of something to come..something to work for...I need a reason to beat these dragons in my mind...I need a purpose to tear them away and rise to my potential...maybe I shouldn't focus so much on the big picture. True you need to be able to step back and decide the overall plan, but right now I dont need to...I know that with any plan the first step from here is to beat my dragons...after I do that I can decide where i want to go...so for now maybe I can operate on the simple belief that there will eventualy be something worth fighting for..so in the mean time I should just do what I must to do prepare myself to reach my potential. Small steps. Everything has something to teach if you are paying attention.

2000.07.06

Nights are the worst.
I am just alone here.
Alone with my hopes.
Alone with my fears.
No human contact.
I slip deeper and deeper.
Every second takes longer than the last.
There is no voice to bring me back.
No one to remind me how to live.
No compassion or understanding.
Just alone within myself.
Alone and frightened.
Scared shitless that this might be all that there is.
Maybe this is just some preverse form of freedom.
All I can do is keep breathing.
The damage is already done.
Tomorrow morning will find me still breathing.
But that does not mean I am alive.

I think maybe I should take a walk...but I dont know where to go. How far do you have to walk to escape yourself?
Iam fucking blind...I am slowly figuring out about myself what is incredibly obvious if I wasn't so blind. I have major security problems. I spend all days look for evidence that people I care about don't like me...and then when I find it, I let it rip me apart. This is obviously a defense mechanism...but what the fuck caused it? What am I trying to defend from? Maybe I'll figure it out one day. Untill then I will just torture myself. I would like to avoid the fate of alienating all my friends and drinking myself into an early grave, but I don't know how.

2000.07.11

It is true...that which does not destroy you only makes your stronger...but beware that which makes you stronger by making you harder...for to be free you must be flexible.

2000.08.16

Truth is not nearly as hard to find as it is to accept.
We often know much more than we admit, because we refuse to accept what we see.
In most cases, given enough trvial data I can determine a persons disposition and intent. This is a mentat ability that I have been working on for years. My main weakness is that I have great difficulty analysing people who have an emotional impact on me. It is not that emotion destroys my logic, but it bends it slightly and always leaves me with doubt of my own solutions. The best way to destroy a mentat is to introduce doubt to the system. The outcome of this handicap is that I can't use this ability on anyhting that really matters to me.

Am I just wasting my time? Will I ever be able to get her to see as I do? Will I ever understand her view? Is she really what I think she is? If I was observiing someone else facing these sort of questions, I coudl generally answer them. But for myself, I do not know. Maybe I do know the truth but refuse to accept it. I coudl accept that solution, but maybe that is me being paranoid and pesimisitic. Maybe I am being too hopefull. Maybe I want something too much. Maybe I don't beleive in myself enough. So in the end I am left with confusion and uncertainty.

There is one thing I know for certain though. There is such incredible simple beauty in her that it nearly drove me insane. It is not a conventional beauty as society defines it...but there is something about her that is simply striking if you are paying enough attention to see it. It is like looking at a large oak tree from the right distance. When you can see both the tree and the individual leaves and how they flow into one and many at the same time. That is the same beauty she has. It is times like now that I wish I could write better. My words are quite inadiquite to describe her profile in the sun. There is something about her that makes her special and I can't describe it. I wonder if anyone has ever told her that. I know if I told her now she wouldn't beleive me. I hope that I can make her beleive it and see it in herself.

Thats probably enough ranting out of me. I probably wont see her again for months.

2000.08.18

if I ever seem normal, know that it is just a front for being all fucked up like everyone else on this planet...but I fight it..i try to find a solution...maybe that is worth something...maybe I am just diluding myself.

2000.08.29

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

If this planet hasn't managed to kill me yet, it probably wont be able to. At least that I can take comfort in. Being a stuborn bastard is the only way to be. But I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Maybe someday I will find someone who understands what that look in my eyes means. Maybe it dosen't matter. Maybe the only meaning we can ever find is based in delusions. Maybe they are all we can ever have. It is in asking these questions that I consider myself special. I'm out.

2000.09.16

Wow...I actually feel alive. I didn't think it would happen, but it did. It is amazing what can happen when you encounter someone who you mesh well with. It is crazy how one person who says and does the right things can completely change your outlook on life. Angel from OuterSpace. Yeah. As long as I can hold her in my mind, nothing in this world can bother me.

2000.10.10

I am faced with a choice. It is the question of what I want to do in life. It is no longer etherial and far away. It is here and now. It will change what I do in the next days and weeks as well as the next months and years. The question is continue here at Virginia Tech or do other work. Staying here would be cool because I like the things I learn in some of my classes. But that is some of my classes, and even those are much to slow for me to stand.

To be or not to be, that is the question. Weither it is nobler to endure the slings and arrows of outdated renissance education system
Or to take arms against a sea of complaciance: to live, to be free. I think I would rather be a poor carpenter than a corprate slave. So freedom it is. We shall see if it will kill me.

2000.11.09

I am feeling squirly again. Who wants to fight? This 3 day election/erection is getting old. Bush is a monkey...Gore is a robot. Eh, whatever. Probably wont matter to me much anyways. Unamerican.com rules. Go there. I love the way this guy thinks. I beleive that if you arn't confused you arn't thinking. Sure, you can answer questions, do math problems, write, whatever while not being confused...but if you do that, you are never really thinking...you are just regergitating things you already beleive. Once when you are faced with a situation that defies your concept of reality (confusion) do you really think. You realign/change your concept of reality to incorporate whatever new data you have aquired. Or you deny that it ever happened and don't think at all. My advise to anyone, and especialy myself is to not look at today like you did yesterday. Dont think of it as a present that is minute in duration compared to the length of the past and future, but look at today as world created today that will be gone tomorrow. Look at the present as some that you will have to live in and with. Oppertunities today may be gone tomorrow. But what you did today will always be with you. Do something. On saturday I built a set of shelves. I felt more alive than I have in a long time. It wasn't like I saved a life or parted the red sea....I just built something. I did something. I engaged in an activity and created something I can look at with some sense of ackomplishment. Try to do that everyday. Every night, ask yourself...what have I done today. If you can't give a good answer...it is no good. You dont have to build something..you dont need to do anything big...just something. Like "I read a book and it made me think" or "I worked out a problem that has been bothering me" or "I spent time with my woman"....just do something. Otherwise: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE? DONT YOU REALIZE YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. Your days are numbered. Who knows what that number is..but every day you spend sitting on your ass watching TV is one less day to be alive. Make some noice...break shit...build shit...make other people give you money...sell crack...figure out a way to light water on fire....but good god DO SOMETHING. Dont just sit there masterbating, procrastinating and complaining about stupid shit. I have spent so many days like that, it is sick. I am tired of it...they wont take me alive. By that I now mean I will fight. I will fight apathy. I will fight the school system...I will fight capitalism...I will fight sleep. I will not go quietly into the night. I dont mean that I am going to burn down the school or the country...but I will participate more...I will be sitting in the front of the class questioning your preconceptions...I will no longer just quietly complain from the confines of my dorm/cell.

Maybe in the end it will be decided that I was a poor player, wasting my hour on the stage, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, but at least I will make some noise. I may not be listened to, but I will be heard.

If the room is quiet, you should speak.
If the room is noisy, no one is listening.

For now, my first fight is CS. Fuck you barnette. You may be the devil, but sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how its done.

2000.12.24

I am currently airborne. Around 10km over some peice of whitebread america. I sit here taking up three seats with all my stuff. I am glad my longer flight is sparcely populated.

I relize somehting that is obvious, but bears stating. Life is now. Don't wait for some distant future to start living...you should be living now. Don't say to yourself, next year I will have a better car and a better place to live, then I will have fun. Or in a few years I will graduate and move around and travel and really live. Life is now, the ever moving and ever current now. Not some distant or near future. Just as you cannot live in yesterday, you can't live in tomorrow either. Live today. Sure, it might be wise to plan for the future, but life is now. If you arn't living now, what the hell are you doing?

I read the first 20 pages of Carl Sagan's Cosmos...based on what I have read, it looks good. Adds a little perspective to living on this spinny marble. Who's game of jacks are we a part of? Was there a game that is abandonded long ago? We will probably never know...but it probably dosen't matter, but when what does?

I think I might almost be able to put into words an idea that has been floating in my head for a while. Everything and nothing matter simultanously. If you do the math you discover that any action you can perform or thought you can create, just moves around some molecules and shit around. Net result: 0. All the same shit happens. The earth still eventualy grows cold around a dead or dying sun. Nothing happens. Nothing matters. By the same token, everything is equaly important...everything leads to that end result...every peice of a complicated ballet of people, worlds, flies, whatever...it is all a peice of the big puzzle...what is a puzzle without a single small peice? Incomplete. So everything matters and does not matter at once. That sort of dualism or doublethink is how I think of the world.

I do not beleive in the existance of good or evil, right or wrong, they are just things made up by society to further some goals. Most of those goals have to do with having the most poeple survive at once. Thou shall not kill. (assumption 1: More people is better). Thou shall not steal. (stealing from anouther could lead to the victim not being able to survive, ex: if you steal their food or money. Leads back to assumption 1). Follow the laws of the land. (assumption 2: more people will survive in an orderly society). If you can save someones life you should (assumption 1). The point I am trying to make here is that all the rules we accept as universal could just be the product of a society trying to survive. Those rules might be outdated for our current context. I'm not saying that they are, I am just inviting some thought into that matter. What do you assume? Think about it. Maybe our goal as a society should be to promote quality of life rather than quantity. That gets into an entirely hairy issue of how to define quality. Quantity is rather easy to define in contrast. Maybe we should strive for more intelegent society. Who knows? I think we should think about it, and I think everyone is afraid to.

What would be said of a person who said: "not all life is sacred, it is ok to kill short people". That person could have all the evidince and research in the world behind them, but no one would listen. Some of these "moral" rules are so ingrained in us, and those who questioned them so villified that no one even thinks on that track.

I am not afraid to speak...partialy because I don't think anyone is listening, partialy because I beleive in saying what you think. Also because I beleive in what I am saying. I beleive in questioning everything.

Only once we question these things and others will we advance and ensure our survival as a species. Much like a stuborn child, we do not learn quickly or easily. Think we will learn what we need to know the hard way. It will probably be a halocost or famine or flood or fire that will make us question what we think we know.

2001.03.17

I year ago a man named Tom called me out. To call someone out is like saying to them: you man be a man or you may be nothing. If you are a man you will answer me. He called me out. He called upon me to lead. I say it was a year ago because times less than a few years and more than a month blur togather. He called me out, he asked me to lead. Today and tomorrow and every day after I ansewer. It took some time and a return to the scene of the event for me to repsond...but now I do. I respect Tom....becaus he is a man who has his idea of what is right..of his beleifs...but he dosen't force them on anyone...he feels strongly enought that he dosen't have to convince others that he is right...because he knows what he things..and dosen't have to validate it with anyone. So Tom called me out..and I must respond. So I do. I will stand for what I beleive. I will do what I can. And what I can do is alot more than what I have done. I know what I beleive and what I stand for. I stand for the survival of humans...i belive in the power in independant thought...I will fight for it. The people who are willing to tell you what is right and what is wrong are everywhere. They are always willing to tell you how they think. Those how admit that they are children of the universe and dont understand are those who are worth listening to. There is too much to understand...there is no ryme or reason..reality just is...truth, justice, right, wrong...these are all arbitrary concepts taught to you by whoever has an agenda to fill. There is no one truth. There is no one justice. It is what you make of it. I dont know what is right...I don't know what to belive...but I know I haven't heard the answer yet. Lead when you must...act when the you feel you have to...but never assume you know what is going on. No one does..I don't. This place almost got me...it almost convinced me that it is right....but now...only now do I remember what I really know. I know I am smart. I know I can beat any system laid in front of me...I know that I do not need this place to succede...I know I can do whatever I want..and the system cannot control me. Reality is abirtary....and you know it.

2001.05.23

There is a huge diffrence between doing something decently and doing your best. I do a hell of a lot of things just well enough to get by..and sometimes it dosen't work. There is a great deal of shit I don't care enough about to give it everything I have. Most of it I just consider bullshit and not worth my attention...if I gave 100% to the things I do, I could do fucking anything. I mean anything...whatever I wanted. But I don't. Most things I just dont care enough about. It is amazing when you find something you care enough about to pour yourself into. You do it...maybe for hour...and after you are done, you know that it is all you have...and there isn't any more...sometimes you can't even fucking move after that...you are just sitting there...saying yeah...I couldn't have done that any better. That is a great feeling...and I dont feel it often. I wonder what I could do about that. Sometimes I feel it with writing...sometimes with programming...but it can't be forced...that last few precent of energy come completely from creativity and will power...you can't force it or fake it...any attempt to do so usually turns out crap...either you know what I am talking about or you don't...I am not a good enough writer to explain it right now. I don't know what I am doing...I am confortable for the time being..but that will change soon probably. I dont know. That is constant. Only the things I don't know about shift...I always don't know.

Is there intelgent life on other planets? Why do I feel such a strong need to know? A need to find proof...maybe it is like finding a brother...finding an example for how we as human can possibly survive...to see that it is doable...to see that we are not alone. I think that perhaps we look out because we are afraid to look in. Afraid to look at our selves and the things we do. Everyday I do noble things...I do good things...I help people....but also everyday I do pety things...I shirk responsibility...I place blame...I avoid work...what does this make me? I can't call myself good or bad for this. i am some sorted mix like most of us.
I discovered something not long ago...morals are truely tested when the gains would be great and the transgretion would be small...I was faced with such a choice...and I think I made the right choice...the choice that puts me in a worse situation for now...but I had to do it. I had to do what I felt was right. I am an athiest. A common concept is that atheiest are immoral because they do no beleive. I can't speak for others, but I know in my case that not to be true. I am a very moral person...I have my moral rules which I follow very strictly... the one thing I beleive in the most is the truth. Do whatever you must do, but be true to yourself and speak the truth to others. I can't explain why I think that is so important...I dont know...I don't beleive in some universal constant of justice and morality...I do not beleive in some deity who will punish or reward me based on my actions...and often I don't even think my beleif in truth will benifit me more than hurt me....but yet I know it is important and nessesary. Truth is the doctorin of every great man. I do not think I am a great man, nor do I think I will be. But I do think I have the potential to be. If I am placed in a situation that requires great actions of me, I might wear those shoes. Many people are called great for just following their conscience and doing what any good person would do. I wonder does that swing the other way...if I have the potential for great acts...do I also have the potential for henoius acts...could I be so motivated by greed or spite to do something terrible. I would like to think that I would not. But I do not know. I think any intelegent being must consider these posibilties. Potential is very important...we must never forget our potential. Ask yourself this, why are children so important in almost every society on this planet? Killing a person is common place in the news....killing a child is a horror. I think this is because the potential of a child is unknown.

SAdly, it has been a long time since I have really thought on this level...my brain rebels against it...I think if I go too long without thinking, I will forget how...and I consider that a fate worse than death. If you are not following your own plan, you are probably part of someone elses.

2001.07.26.05.12.30

I am doing some cool shit to make updates easier for my lazy ass. That will probably make the page updated more.

2001.07.26.05.18.25

This shit should be working now. Now I will do more updates. Should be cool. Ra. I should probably goto sleep soon. I should also figure out what I want to do. I really don't know. Is there anything beautiful and true that is worth fighting for in this existence? If anyone knows, please let me know. I'm out for now.

2001.07.26.05.33.35

One thing people like to talk about in guaging the intelegence of a life form is self-awareness and understanding cause effect relationships. What if these concepts were considered on a society level? What if we consider humans on earth, not a billions of instances of individual life forms, but as cells of a larger 50,000 year old life form? Is this creature self aware? Is there a nervios system? Can it understand itself and does it possess time awareness? What would be needed for this creature to reach its potential? Could the internet be the beginings of such a nervous system? I think in order for it be effective, the cell interface needs to be better. What if you could connect to the net and feel the emotions and hear the ideas of a small group of other people? Certainly there would be some network overhead in your own mind, sorting the data, processing it, filtering it, but might that make this group of connected people smarter, more able to deal, with a broader world view? What if instead of a small group, it was a large group? What if it was the entire planet? Then maybe this earth spanning beast might be truely aware...maybe then humans transend into something more....who knows. It would be intersting.

2001.08.05.06.19.46

Thats right, I'm walking through your fucking parking lot in the middle of the night and you love it. People piss me off. Oh well...jerk offs.

2001.08.17.01.06.22

Why are we still using qwerty keyboards?
Why do we still use checks and credit cards (insecure as hell)?
Why do people beleive that a little blinkly light in their house will protect them?
Why do people make z's in their sleep?

2001.09.17.03.01.39

Well, we are fucked. Some jack asses blew up some buildings in NYC. Now congress is in unified destroy civil liberties and bomb other countries to the ground mode...and the populace is behind them completely. Patriotism was resurrected from the ashes of the world trade center.

I hear news agencies jabbering all day about "how could this happen?", "where was out intelegence community?", "How can the FAA let these people on planes?", "Where did they get trained pilots?".
I have several comments about this. First, this shit is easy. If I had a few determined phycos willing to die, I could have done it. It isn't hard. That is the cost of the type of society we live in. You are free to walk down the street. Free to fly across the country. Free to get whatever martial or flight training you can afford. Free to buy box cutters. Free to sit around and plan shit. Free to hate. Free go through an airport without all your shit turned inside out by security.
Sure, we could make it so this shit could never happen ever again. It is easy. But it cannot be done as we are. We would have to have papers to cross state lines. There would be no more warents for search, warents for wire tapping, no more privacy. No more freedom. That our society is unable to completely stop murder is the cost of our society.

What are the lives of 5000 americans worth these days? Enough to kill terrorists? Sure. Enough to flex our military mussles to try to bring them to justice? Certainly. Enough to bomb innocent non-consumer starving civilians? We shall see. Enough to trample the sovern authority of anouther country to enforce our high and mighty revenge? Probably.

And all the american people want is a clearly defined scapegoat and a quick and decisive victory over that scapegoat. Nothing less will quell the blood-thirst. I fear a tiger has been awoken. The world should be frightened with this country is united. We have it all over here, natural resources, industry, military power, arogance, and now finally we have just bloody revenge on our minds. You can't run from this monster.

2001.09.27.12.51.33

What am I doing with my life these days? I spend 3-4 hours a day watching TV. I have a TiVo so it is at least decent TV...but still. I could do all sorts of crazy shit in that ammount of time. I really need to find something intersting and worth while to get into.

2001.11.21.12.04.04

My thanksgiving poem:

I think I will eat a pumpkin pie
I hope I don't get a cock in the eye
or agressively fondled by some drunken guy

2001.11.25.03.43.26

It is so strange to be leaving here. I haven't considered this place my home since I got the apartment in blacksburg. Yet it is strange to think that when I leave here tomorrow, I will most likely never set foot in this house again. I have called this townhouse on Alsop court my home for longer than I have any place else before it. Also those were the most memerable and intersting years. The formative ones so to speak. I first masterbated in this room. I read countles books of all sorts in this room. I talked and plotted with my good friends Andy and Ryan in this room. I built empty soda can mountins here. When life or girls were giving me trouble, I cried in this room. I ran a bussiness from here. I learned computers here. Every girlfriend I have ever had has been in this room. In the trues sense, I have lived here. All journeys were defined by leaving from and returning to this place.

By my estimation, I arrived here in Dec '92. That means I was here all through middle and high school. All those fucking memories. Soon I will be gone...and while this place will still be here, I wont be able to return. It will perhaps be the site of someone elses memories.

2001.11.25.03.47.49

Where is my Robin? She should be here next to me. She is so far away it makes me very sad. Oh well...maybe one day she will come back to me and not be so far away.

2002.02.25.15.37.48

If you are not confused, you are not thinking.

2002.03.02.17.04.40

I think I need to go walking. I haven't done that enough in recent months. I have walked to or from places, but that isn't the same. Just walking with no clearly defined start or finish is fundamentaly diffrent. Just going. No where in particular. When you go out alone, eventaully you turn around and come back. But you don't come back to the same place that you left. You're a little taller. You see a little clearer. Your heart and your mind are a little stronger. Everything is a little diffrent.

Driving isn't the same at all. When you are isolated in some car, you don't understand the distance. You don't feel the earth beneath your feet.

2002.03.30.22.04.55

If a person is a citizen of a county, and therefor enjoys the services and protections of that country, is that person then obligated to serve that country if called apon to do so? (In a military or any other capacity). If you consider the person a guest, and the country the host...it is rude to decline to assist your host if that host needs your assistance with anything. Conversely the person probably never asked to be born in that country, and probably never asked for that countries protection. An entity cannot expect payment to be received for a service rendered before an agreement has been regarding that service and what compensation is to be expected. I have made no such agreement to my country, therefor the country cannot reasonably demand some repayment form me for a service I never asked for. However, if called I would serve willingly as to be an appreciative guest. I have no respect for establish social rules of conduct regarding the placement of doilies or cups on a dinner table, but I have great respect for the social rules of conduct regarding honor, obligation and decency. That is me, I have my rules. I prefer to associate with people with similar rules, and as a secondary at least with people that I understaind their rules. To be able to anticipate someones actions is the same as to trust them.

2002.03.30.22.24.47

Fuck. I have been reading my own web page. That is really what it is here for. I don't give a shit if anyone reads it. It is there for me to learn about myself over time. Anyways, me 15 months ago would kick the ass of me now. I used to be fully of noise and energy. Maybe noise that no one heard, and energy that went no where, but I knew more about life than I think I do now. Now I am regressed and sedated. I pour my energy into my job and my little life... Reading my old writtings, I am proud of who I was. I hope I never forget that. I hope I still have that energy. I never want to not be young and rebelious. That would be like death I think. Except without the easy lack of stimuli or responce...but a morbid living death of repitition and lost meaning. I will not be that way. What I choose is my right.

2002.04.09.16.08.38

There is no god to help us. We must, therefor, help each other.

2002.04.09.16.18.15

It is a huge insult to the universe to not do something interesting.

2002.04.12.19.59.35

My objective for this week is to be called relentless.

2002.04.17.23.06.43

Ahh, good music. Reminds me that life ain't so bad, and I shouldn't be bitching about the shit I am always bitching about. eh, fuck it. The question is how do I make today less of a complete waste as yesterday. I consider any day spent working all fucking day and having no energy left for anything worthwhile wasted. It puts dollars in my bank account..which allows me to pay for the shit I like to have..and more importantly pay for the shit I have already bought...but it is just subsistance living. Is the goal of my life to work so that I can remain alive? Fuck that. I would prefer a job that paid less and took less of my time.

2002.04.17.23.13.18

The thing I hate the most is that soon I must goto bed so I can be well rested for about 16 hours of shit I would rather not be doing. I have nothing to look forward to. Highly depressing. Sentance fragment in your damn eye. I wish I had a job where I could look forward to completely mind bendingly complex problems that would require creative and improvised solutions. I want a job that leaves me a quivering mass of flesh on the floor at the end of the day. I want it to push me to my limits of ingenuity and skill. I hate working for companies with any money...they don't have to come up with creative solutions for anything. Everything is simple if you can afford the correct tools.

2002.04.17.23.17.10

All means of communication we currently posses and employ at best can only approximate what we are actually thinking. Many things we simply do not have the vocabulary for.

2002.05.05.01.24.49

Go go gadget spite. Operation 4.0 is a success. Who knows what this look in my eyes is? It is hard, it is fear, it is imagining what might be.

2002.05.05.01.30.24

It is midnight. We choose were we will go from here. We are alive. That is self evident. The past brought us here. That is self evident. However, we can go anywhere from here. The dreams of our parents don't have to be our dreams. Not just forward or backward. We can go anywhere. There is no forward or backward. There is no right or wrong. There is no good or evil. Maybe those things do exist, but only if we say they do.

2002.08.30.04.10.23

I beleive that if you do nothing in life but help educate the next generation beyond the education of your own generation, you have made the world a better place.

2002.09.13.16.23.22

This site rocks: http://home.mweb.co.za/it/iti04330/atheist1.htm . This guy is angry and atheist. I'm not very angry these days. Es fruet mich nicht.

2002.10.10.00.59.33

I have been thinking alot about physics today. I know very little. Socrates beleived that the reality we preceive is but a shadow of what is really there. This is how I view physics. We can find equations that model motion of things, and they turn out to be very acurate under most conditions. However, the systems we have to use are complicated, quarks, nutrenios, things we have never seen (like gravitons). They all go into modern physics. We have to use them all to explain what we see. In the science world, I define true as something that can be used to accurately predict something. So something is true, if it contains enough truth to be useful to somebody for something. So maybe our physics is true in that sense. However, I suspect that in order to receive a fuller understanding of the underlying principals of physics, we need examine everything in N dimensions. N being defined by how much processing abilities you might have at your disposal. At N=3 we can explain many things and model many things through some rather complicated assumptions and interactions. Maybe at N=7 things make more sense. Maybe at N=100 we can model almost everything with very high accuracy. Maybe as N aproches infitity we might actually know what is going on. However, if you are a person experiencing apparent N=3 space, thinking beyond N=3 is very hard. The geometry gets weird, your brain can't visualize it well. It is just wacky.

Bah, I don't know what I am talking about. Most likely, this has already been done by someone smarter than I.

2002.10.10.01.09.49

No one has called me a smartass in a while. It disapoints me. People used to call me that all the time. I never considered it any sort of insult. I liked being the one chalanging peoples idiotic statements and questioning stuff.

2002.11.27.23.51.19

Almost two weeks ago, me and two other guys, comprising the the ACM programming team Virginia Tech 3 proceeded to beat everyones ass an take first place in the 2002 ACM mid-atlantic regional. It was fucking amazing. It was exzilerating. We trained hard, with some very capable direction and experienced people to pratice with....which clearly paid off. Winning such things doesn't fit well with my the tragic hero concept I have built up in my mind. It is kinda wacky to explain, but I always envision myself as being that guy in the movies who sacrafices himself so that others can live. I think that is just me fantasising about being noble, about being a hero. I think most people think like that more than they admit.

2002.11.28.00.38.23

Taking this history class, reading these books....alot of fucked up shit has happened. Just in fairly recent US history, there was the killing and removal of natives, slavery..those were the big ones that come to mind. Maybe things like that will happen again if we are not vigalent. I wonder what I might have done if I was there. If some officer told me to shoot a bunch of dirty indians, would I have been able to say "No, Sir." and try to convince anyone who would listen to stop the insanity. If you were in the US before the civil war, would you have tried to not notice the fucked up situation, or would you have acted against it, or participated in it? I think I would have acted against it, but who knows? I view the incidents with a much different perspective than those then must have, but I don't see how it can be that much different. I think if someone tried to convince me that I was their property, and I beleived I was powerless to stop it through less violent means, I would attack my would be captor with every weapon at my disposal. Surely, I would probaby die, but my children and my people will not be slaves if enough rebel completely. Fucked up times. Hopefully they will never be repeated, but I for one, and anyone I can influence will be watching and ready to step in and say no. All I can control with certainly is my own actions, this dosen't mean I wont try to effect the world around me.

2003.01.21.02.23.05

On conflict: Here are my rules on conflict. When attacked by a would be opponent: If the opponent in his attack does you no harm and seems unable to harm you, then no response is necessary. Perhaps this would be foe could be made a friend. Just because he would be your enemy, does not mean it is in your best interest to let him have his way. If your opponent does harm you, but does not endanger you seriously, then you should respond in kind. Do not escalate. If you are attacked with words, respond with words, if you are attacked with guns respond with guns. With this course, hopefully when the time comes you can make your opponent understand your actions. However, if your opponent is a serious risk to you and shows willingness to attack, then respond with all necessary force to protect yourself. Escalate to the point of destroying that which would destroy you. However, before marching with aplomb down a path that may lead to the world population being eased with your urn, try to see a way out. See how the conflict will end and the consequences there of. See how all parties can exit with honor and dignity. If there is no such path, then blood will run. Often your opponent is scared and would jump at a way out without bloodshed or loss of honor. After too much is spilled, there is no such way out. In a conflict between foes of near strength, with one superior and confidant and one inferior and threatened, I always bet on the underdog. The underdog will enter the fray with fear, which will remove all reservations. He will attack at full capacity with every tool in his arsenal. He will attack with blood and tooth and kitchen sink. He knows he will be at an end if he fails, and will think of nothing beyond the battle. His worthy foe will think to his coming victory and beyond. He will hold forces in reserve for the next conflict. He will not understand the life or death struggle of the underdog. He will, very likely, loose. In the end, the one who is willing to give up the most will win. Such a contest will help few, except to pay the salaries of the undertakers. Such thoughts as above have some truth, but they are insufficient for now as it perhaps always has been; we all have the same views and see the same things, but no one can speak or understand the language of his neighbor.

2003.03.03.17.35.39

Step 1, acceptance. I have a problem. Specificly, I compulsively spend. Often I think it has to do with not having anything to look forward to. When you order something and it is being shipped to you, then you have something to favorably anticipate. I don't think I am ever going to look at or give a shit how expensive any of the food I buy is. Littlle shit like that wont make much difference. However, I will try to not buy crap that I don't need. I will try to only purchase things I can afford and things that I will actually appreciate in reasonable proportion to their cost. Thus far, for most of the time my ability to generate income has been able to keep pace with my extravagances, but I suspect that will not always be the case. I am going to get my shit togather while I still have decent credit.

2003.04.19.00.04.26

The origin of every bitter cynic is a disappointed idealist.

2003.04.19.00.10.30

We have a trained tendancy to view everything as boolean. One choice or anouther. Guilty or inocent. This duality is embeded in our minds. Thinking that way limited your options from infinity to two. I advise against viewing decisions as forks in the road. Instead they should be considered just different paths in a complex forest. Any direction that you can envision is travelable. If you can see a path to where you want to be, you can make it happen. If you can't see a path, get to somewhere from which you can.

2003.04.19.00.11.25

When people give me shit, I should probably thank them. They fuel my spite engine, with which all things are possible. Spite is my antidrug.

2003.04.19.00.17.59

I recommend that everyone read Frank Herbert's Dune series. Ignore the characters and the plot. They are intersting, but not what it is about. Read it through once. Then maybe read it again in a year. Each time I read those books, I get more out. Maybe I am just weird. I hope so.

2003.08.05.05.22.06

Maybe it is right to break it off. I do not know. I think we were looking for different things, and had different goals. Maybe we did each have expectations that the other could not meet....but that dosen't mean I don't love her. It dosen't mean I wont wince with almost physical pain every time I think about some little thing that will never happen again. How I will never hold her, never wake up next to her, never kiss her, and with the distance...probably never even see her again. It is so strange after knowing for so long that we would do all the things next time we met. There was always going to be a next time, until now. Every tomorrow is so much less satasfying without the knowledge that it will bring me closer to the girl I love.

2003.09.14.13.41.31

A good reason to sleep in:

Reality dysfunction
Robots running for congress
No resolution

2003.09.14.13.49.10

shouting drunks break peace
supporting local business
beer cans and thrown cups

2003.09.14.13.55.39

Metal noise attacks
Jarring mind but not spirit
Hey man, nice shot. Zig.

2003.09.14.14.00.41

Virginia Code � 27-31. Investigation of fires and explosions.

Fire marshal find cause
Every fire and explosion
Within zone limits

2003.09.14.14.10.30

We Ameliorate
Gross negligence through plain lies
The voters win again

2003.09.14.14.31.57

Sent to our apartment realtors:

Trase on ground below
Butt and beer can bonanza
Behind our building

Suggest impose fines
To ameliorate problem
We enjoy clean lawn

2003.09.23.00.11.16

Sometimes, when circumstance teaches you a lesson you must discard it to stay sane. Learning every lesson leads to bitterness.

2003.10.22.21.04.07

Reflection Essay - This above all.

I have always considered myself unique. I revel in creative thinking and new ideas. I consider "smartass" a compliment. I never like questions like "what is your major?" or "what do you do?" Most answers I could give would fail to capture the essence of my character. I dislike being categorized; I dislike being labeled and discounted. Part of my objection to such classification is intellectual and logical. A person categorized by some stereotype will have a hard time breaking through the expectations that the stereotype establishes. Labeling limits expectations and expectations influence actions. Stereotyping can establish unrealistically high or depressingly low expectations. In either case, these expectations make it hard to develop unique character. The other part of my objection stems from my possibly arrogant belief that I am special and unique and therefore no one should attempt to encapsulate me in a simple term. My purpose here is to discuss some of the traits I believe make me unique and my logic for why I do them as best as I can determine it.

Much can be learned from analysis of someone's relationship with the social environment they find themselves in. I prefer to bend my environment to my will rather than let it bend me; I believe that adhering to my personal ethos despite any adversity is one of the most important contributions I can make. I am not always as resolute as I would like to be. I am at heart a very trusting and malleable soul. However, I know the trouble and regrettable choices malleability can bring about. I now try to take an active role as possible in deciding what goes on around me. I enjoy voicing the dissenting opinion in a group and by force of argument and personality swaying the majority towards my view or at least making my view respected. How I shape my environment is not nearly as important as how I let it shape me. I endeavor to not allow people around me to influence my emotional state unduly. Of course, I do not always succeed. The challenge of self-improvement is one of the more satisfying aspects of being human.

If I know someone who I do not like, over time I try to forget what I do not like about the person. That way if I encounter the person again, I do not compel by expectation the person to be the same jerk that I knew before. I like to give people the opportunity to improve without having to worry about my past judgments. This way, I find myself surrounded by fewer jerks than the average person, I think. There are some exceptional cases however. Some transgressions cannot be forgiven easily.

I think that we have a predisposition to think about many options or situations in life as dual in nature. Every coin has two sides. In law you are either guilty or innocent. In war you are friend or foe. In morals you are right or wrong. We apply the same duality of thinking in making decisions. In movies and plays - as well as our own lives - the protagonist finds two possible actions, weighs their pros and cons and chooses one. Often both options are in some way negative, and the situation is simplified to a dilemma. I believe that this dual thinking is a major flaw. Every coin is a sphere with an infinite number of sides. There are always more than two options. When confronted with the options of working or further education, I chose both. I managed to find a situation where I can work from my apartment and still go to school. I come to important decisions; I always look for options beyond the obvious ones. Don't just think outside the box, smash it and light it on fire with disdain.

I fear the above text is full of my limited wisdom. The only activity I like better than talking about myself is giving people my sophomoric advice. In the end, it all comes down to me trying to improve myself to make me happier with who I am.

2003.11.30.02.40.10

I just watched Requiem for a Dream. It is one of the best movies I have seen recently. It is poignant because all the characters are believable and understandable. I can see where they are coming from. The standard movie is someone does something stupid and gets fucked for it. Or maybe someone does not do anything wrong and gets fucked by some jerk anyways. In this movie, no one is really screwing anyone. Everyone is just doing their thing and shit goes bad. No one does anything that major wrong...shit just goes arwy.

2003.12.15.09.23.15

So little time, so much regression.
I walked to campus and back late last night. That was kinda nice. It was quite cold and windy. That just made it more enjoyable. I made this mistake of reading a scrap of an old email. It reminded me of how much I used to target certain people with my neuroses. To these people, I apologize. I would do it more directly, but one I have no idea how to contact and the other, I told her she would hear no more from me. I intend to keep my word on that. Thinking about all this shows me how close I am to doing the same thing now. It is probably for the best that I know almost zero unattached females. There is no one to focus my particular transference insanity on. The problem with believing you know what you are looking for is that you tend to see where it might not exist.

This is one problem with my nocturnal sleeping patern that I slip into every now and then....so much time for introspection.

2003.12.15.09.25.33

Fuck it. Once more unto the breach, dear friends!

2004.01.07.03.08.30

Launched a new political site. Don't have any real content yet, but that should be remedied shortly. VotingMind

2004.03.12.00.52.32

I do not know where else to go, so I walk. Maybe I will arrive somewhere, maybe I will not. I do not know for sure. I go in hopes that I will meet someone who can see as I see and in doing make me see more than I saw before. The hope is slim but I go regardless.

Recently the idea of professionalism has been on my mind. I think my definition of professionalism is seeing that a job is done well without regard to status or ego. That means admiting when you have made a mistake. Allowing that there might be a better way. Equal part defense of your own plans and considering the plans of others. Defending the plan you think is best with all your vigor and reasoning capacity and then when a decision is made, the ability to jump wholehardedly in the course adopted.

2004.03.12.01.53.46

Just for anyone who is not clear:
God is a crack whore.

2004.03.12.01.59.32

religion is the belief in the absence of evidence. I have religion...I believe in human kind despite the overwhelming evidence.

2004.03.12.02.01.08

There is always some brave soul who can see past the divisions of the time...who can see the fate of humanity...who is a citizen of the world

2004.03.19.03.59.14

I have been amazingly disconnected from reality recently. My escapism has exceeded normal bounds and gotten close to times only matched in high school. Part of this is not wanting to deal with some projects I should be working on as well as just generally not wanting to deal with society. Today in class I noticed an odd sension that took me back to high school. It was a dual sensation....everyone in the room was quiet to me because I couldn't relate anymore. I listend to them, and their experiences sounded similar to mine, it just didn't connect. Also, everyone was louder because I needed to listen. I was not part of the flow/group, so I had to listen to know what was going on. I couldn't just tune out and move with it. The data flows and I am not quite with it any more. I don't know if this makes any sense, I suspect that it does not.

I need to return to my center. Some stupid little thing was bothering me alot not many hours ago. It was some silly thing in someones away message whom I barely know....that shouldn't get through..that should not reach me but it did. Jung would I think have a great many things to say about my atempts to isolate my conscious from my unconscious...to deny emotion and embrace only logic. I know it can not be healthy, but without it how do I stop from being vulnerable? From being hurt? From crying in public? Maybe the answer is that I don't need to do those things...I used to think that my walls were gone...I think that maybe I just dont know how to turn them off anymore. I think when I at my strongest/most centered/best is when I resolve to what I believe and say what I think...and if I get hurt, so be it. But maybe that is just anouther way of denying emotion..to say that it hurts but it can't effect me is to deny its reality and power. How do I resolve the power of emotion over my belief that no one should have power over me and that any such control must be resisted? Must that control be resisted? That probably breaks down to a trust issue.

I think one of my many problems that is I never talk to anyone. My roomates see a thin slice of who I am...I think I show them who I aspire to be. Of course, maybe I'm not fooling anyone. I should probably talk to someone...which lucky soul wants to deal with my shit? I know there are a handfull who would if I talked to them...in that I am probably lucky.

One of the things that really fucks me up is women...I am somewhat lonely, so occasionaly I'll meet someone who I think I might be intersted in getting something started with...then I get thinking...what do I really have to offer to a women of the calaber (strong, independant, fun, smart) that I would be intersted in? I am not especially atractive, overweight, emotionaly closed off, and apparently pretty bad in bed. What a catch...so in my mind I fail before I even try (which I will grant saves time and reduces ackward conversations). I do have my strong points (honest, intelectual, caring) but those are the qualifications you would want from an encylopedia or a friend not a lover.
Like Shevek, I am not a unified whole, so I can't get any work done.

2004.05.10.05.43.19

Reexamine your concept of right and wrong, especially of sin. Consider instead the human as a complex machine made of cells, atoms and neurons with no free will (for sake of argument). Consider the machine does something that is deemed counter-productive to society (murder for instance). The machine has no free will - it could have done nothing other than what it did, so is not morally culpable in any spiritual or religious sense - and yet in the interests of society at large the machine must be adjusted to make the action it took less likely to occur again. Sin and wrong and justice are just concepts we apply to allow our inherently empathic self's to override that empathy and perform or condone the sometimes distasteful adjustments (imprisonment, capital punishment). I'm not saying we should abandon morality or justice; they serve a very important role weather to believe they come from divine will, moral absolutes, or a form of organic enlightened self-interest.

I am however arguing that we should examine the roots of these things in terms of what changing role they play in society. I think that sometimes a society will redefine right and wrong, sin and morality based on the situations of the times. This has been done before, an example being slavery. At one point the practice was widely considered normal and acceptable. Now it is considered abhorrent and inhuman. This change in thought occurred with the decline of the concept of birth defining station which lead to nobility, commoners and slaves in Europe. Instead the new concept is everyone being fundamentally equal at birth, which precludes slavery. This is just a very obvious example, I'm sure there are many more lurking in history. What will we see in the future? Will overpopulation lead to murder being allowable if certain forms (like a duel with established rules) are followed? I think we need to recognize that these changes in the definition of morality occur and are most likely occuring now. Where are they going? Is that a place we as a society want to be? What can we do to change the direction if we wanted to? I think no matter your leanings on the origin or morallity, these questions must be answered.

2004.05.16.23.09.38

Last night I exhorted some friends who were about to go off into the real world to do something actual importance with their lives, rather than just working for a living. For a definition of "real world" see this from FreeBSD fortune:

Real World, The n.:
1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a deceased person.

These friends in question had graduated and were about to leave town to do other things. I think I will try to follow my own advise. Towards this end, I am going to write up some of the projects I have been kicking around in my head and put them up on ye old net. As the linux leftys would call it to "open source them". Maybe that way I can attract some cohorts.

2004.09.17.13.14.45

I have launched my open software code site, link. I've been planing on doing this for a while, I have just been lazy. I'm going to try to put the stuff I have already coded up without worring about the oranization so much (which has been slowing me down). I'll reorganize later if need be. I wish I had my surgical team to handle this crap for me. Heh.

2004.11.19.01.55.24

My will power is shit...which means I often neglect the things I say I am going to do...which makes my word shit. This bothers me. I really need to get to work.

2004.11.19.02.39.44

I really don't talk to anyone anymore. I used to talk to Jeff...but we have grown apart...even before he went to the morman stronghold. There are some other people I talk to, but for some reason I never let any of them see the entire picture. I wonder why I have this strange desire to isolate components of myself and show them only to certain people. It is odd.

2004.11.19.02.58.44

I have decided that I will not sleep till the sun comes up today. I used to think that it was a poor idea to seek a new romance without being stable first. Something I picked up at some point...move from dependance to independance and then maybe to codependance with someone. I'm thinking that from a yin-yang view that is bull. A person cannot be a unified whole. You can be mostly there...you can be mostly stable...but you can never be completely independant. We are a social species and just not wired that way. I'm not entirely stable right now. Mostly stable...Mostly harmless...

2004.12.18.02.24.42

Sometimes it is enjoyable to just pound your fists on some nearly impossible task...knowing there is no way you're going to pull it off, but giving it everything you've got regardless....I did that with the RSA factoring challenge this week. I tried a bunch of weird shit...bugged all of my roomates with insessant equations...and of course failed. I ended up with a silly neural net that could never work and a bunch of equasions that went no where....I tried and it made me feel more alive than I have in a while.

2005.01.23.00.24.20

It is ok to not have all the answers. It is ok to not have a plan, to not know what to do. It is like being a little on fire, but instead of loosing skin and flesh it burns years. It is something that should be attacked but wont nessesarily kill you. I have no idea what I am doing. I think I have more of an idea than most in that I think about it and have ideas. However...what the fuck do I know? I need to fucking relax. The world will keep on even if I dont do anything. Doing nothing is what I fear the most...I fear being like everything else...I fear living for myself and doing nothing greater...I fear just trying to be...I fear living for myself...thinking about it, I am clearly neurotic...however that is not new information. I have a bit too much of a desire to be the tragic hero to just be...my identity is defined by my beleif that I am somehow important or will be import...that I will make a difference. Logicly I know I am not that special...I am not that smart....I am not that good...I dont have the work ethic actualy get anything done...however, if I fully accept that I dont know that I can live with it. I am too much the nilhist for that...if I don't think I will do something important, why bother living at all?

2005.02.08.02.01.11

I thought I had posted something about this last week, but checking my page apparently I had not. A friend of mine, Cpl. Christopher Lee Weaver died in Iraq almost two weeks ago. He was serving in the Marines. My contact with the man is somewhat disproportionate to how his death has effected me. I have spent maybe 20 hours in direct contact with him over the course of 5 years or so. It feels like it was alot longer than that...he had a way of getting in your head, or at least he did with me. He had a way of cutting through all the BS and making me question myself and my actions. Danell put a voice to exactly what I was thinking in the eulogy. She said that Chris will always be with us in spirit reminding us to do the right thing for the right reasons, even if it is hard. I know this is probably said of many people who die...but Chris Weaver was truly unique. I dont know anyone else with that style and flair for the brazen and outrageous and yet so full of compassion. I really would have loved to see what sort of man he would have been in middle or old age, after knowing so much about living already when a young man. My philosophy with regards to role models is to borrow what traits I like and respect from those I encounter...in little bits and peices to help build who I strive to be. I have never known anyone, real or fictional that I would like to borrow more from than Chris Weaver.

2005.02.16.11.57.32

Here is a block of text I threw at the end of a particularly poor essay that I am about to turn in:
Here is an improperly formed haiku about this essay:

Questionable Essay
Expressed slightly before due
D is for diploma

Another one, slightly better:

With crazy haiku
Ameliorate poor essay
Probably not work

And here is one about literary essays in general:

interpretations
no better than other reads
book is not that long

One about this book:

Well ordered
C.S. Lewis ideal world
Not, I think, for me

2005.02.25.22.38.54

I dont know if what I want is out there or not. I know for certain it is not in how so out I go. Something is more than nothing, always.

2005.03.07.19.44.19

a ball at the mall
rectilinear servitude
sanity now scarce

endearment lacking
compensate with diamonds
good consumers, we

brain is enflamed
angry piano is all
fucking dresden dolls

2005.03.25.14.35.18

I just remembered that I dont have time for people who don't care about me. That does make things simpler.

2005.04.21.02.43.14

No matter how long I live, it will never fucking be ok that Chris Weaver isn't with us.

2005.04.28.20.32.58

On Intelligence

I have a theory on the basis of intelligence. This theory is that all decision making entities are rule based. These rules dictate how an intelligent agent acts. The rules may be learned or innate. The rules for a biological decision making entity might be:

1) Stay physically safe. Either fight or run away from anything threatening.
2) Maintain food intake. Eat.
3) Continue the species. Procreate.

These rules might apply for almost any animal with any brain to speak of. The rules have an order of precedence. An animal running away from another animal that is trying to eat it would probably not be worried about eating or procreating at the time. Lower importance rules are only handled after the higher priority ones.

An advanced social animal�s list of rules might start with the three above and then have additional rules:

4) Advance position in social hierarchy.
5) Improve personal prosperity.
6) Improve prosperity of society.

Number 4 here might include activities such as challenging the alpha male for dominance, running for mayor or joining a country club. Several of these goals may be met by a single action. Building a bigger house (5) might lead to higher social standing (4). These might be in differed orders for different people. I�m not trying to assert anything about their orders, other than for each entity there probably is some such ordering of rules.

I believe that intelligence can be measured by the ability of an entity to change the relative importance of the rules. For example, a person might decide that the betterment of society is more important than physical safety or eating (Gandhi for example). To do this, I believe a certain level of introspection is required. On some level, an intelligent entity must understand the rules on which they operate and change them. Maybe this is what people mean when they brandish terms like �self-aware� about.

On Computer Intelligence

I think the same concepts of rules and the ability to change them can apply quite nicely to computer intelligence. I purposely do not use the term artificial intelligence because it implies the intelligence created by us humans with machines is necessarily less authentic than our own intelligence.

Consider a simple computer entity in charge of electrical power distribution on a space station. It might have a set of rules like:
1) Supply power to life support.
2) Supply power to hydroponics systems.
3) Supply power to communications systems.

Suppose that there is a long term power shortage and the there is only enough power for life support. The agent will using the rules cut power for hydroponics and communications in order to keep life support functioning. Then all the plants in hydroponics die and the crew starves to death a month later.

Suppose we had an intelligent agent using the same rules. This agent might decide that life support can be cut back and part of the station evacuated in order to save hydroponics and thus the crews lives. Or perhaps it could have set aside some power for an emergency communications broadcast asking for help from earth. One could certainly argue that the simple agent was poorly written and should have included instructions to handle this long term power shortage scenario. However, the reason we want intelligent computer agents to be able to handle situations that were not foreseen. It seems that we do want an agent that has the ability to change its own operational rules based on the situation.

Suppose we have the same station. This time, the station�s automated systems are controlled by an intelligent agent that includes the abstract rules of: 1) promote the prosperity of humans on this station 2) promote the prosperity of humanity in general

Suppose the station observes an asteroid pass that is on a collision course with earth and at the same time there is a dust cloud blocking communications to earth. Lets further suppose that it is possible to send a warning to earth, but it will take almost all of the stations power and will have to be sustained for at least 10 hours to ensure that the signal gets through. If the station does this, all the crew will die due to lack of life support. In this case, the agent should put rule two above one and try to send the warning. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Suppose that in a separate case, the agent controlling the space station decides that humanity would be best served if they were not so damn stupid and decides on an aggressive plan of killing off any humans who have an IQ of less than 110. In this case, the agent decides that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Both cases are logically similar, sacrificing some for the benefit of the rest. How can we build an intelligent agent that supports one conclusion and not the other? Surely we can put in some empathy rules and some respect for the rights of the individual rules, but that might be enough. History has examples of humans deciding that a genetic cleansing was a good idea and in theory we all have empathy for each other. Can we build a system which is smart enough to be useful and predictable enough to be trusted?

Asimov had some similar ideas expressed in I, Robot as well as some of his other books. However, I think he neglected the ability of an intelligent entity to change their world view and the rules until any action is justified. Even if we do put in rules for things to avoid doing certain things, intelligence is only real if it can change the rules. We have plenty of examples of it. We (humanity) set rules for ourselves and then justify breaking them. It was ok to steal because my family was staving. It was ok to kill him because he had hurt others. It was ok kill these people because they are less than human.

2005.05.29.22.03.57

Breakout


What is behind that smile?
Are you really there?
Do you really see me?

Your eyes say you do not trust me
I guess you have been hurt before
Mine probably show the same

We�ve talked, but not communicated
Transmitting blind and on guard
Real identity shielded

If we don�t reveal or hope or trust,
we can not be hurt again
Self-imposed solitary

2005.07.17.03.48.35

My advice to everyone:
Use the good. Discard the bad.

Let that which you like become part of you.
Be what you admire.
Discard everything else. It is just noise.

2005.07.23.02.43.35

I miss the person I was. I miss getting outraged at the world. I miss falling in love hard and often. I miss caring. Every day I seem to become more of what I always distrusted. The job working bill paying adult with no real dreams or hopes. Only fantasies that we wont admit and accept will never happen.

Everything seems to have been turned down and faded. I don't cry anymore, I become a little meloncolly. I don't love anymore..there are just some people I like.

2005.07.28.16.39.45

I am full of bees
but they are lazy lazy bees
nap time for the queen

2005.07.28.16.41.56

digging up the earth
what hidden treasures might lie
many sharkeys lighters

2005.07.28.16.43.38

rocks and mud and sand
form a hilarious fake stream
do I look this fake?

2005.07.28.16.47.55

message in the wind
flung with suppressed silent hope
will never hear back

2005.07.28.16.52.31

everything goes well
still whine about lack of love
shut the fuck up, fool

2005.07.28.16.59.05

blink click blink click blink
hold flashlight to my eye ball
vision all spotty

2005.10.27.02.14.07

Tonight I have made the carndinal sin of hope. I hoped that someone I talked to gave a shit about me, and I was wrong. Life isn't about how much I want to kill myself, it is about how much I might be able to make humanity better. I do not matter. It doesn't matter how much I want to trust a blade into my corrotid and spill my blood all over the floor...what matters how I might make things better for others. It doesn't matter if I am miserable in the process. So I live.

2005.10.27.02.17.03
I want to die a little less than I want to live....apparently that is enough.

2005.12.12.20.50.53

I hate Christmass. Let me count the ways. 1) Santa Claus is crap. It teaches moral lessons that I find suspect. The main point is "be good so you get lots of toys." You shouldn't be good cause it will help other, you shouldn't be good cause it is the right thing to do....no! Be good so you can get toys. People are only selfish because we don't teach them that it is wrong. 2) Commercialization is crap. However, we live in a capitalist consumer driven economy so that is what happens. I can deal with that. 3) The season of goodwill toward man is crap. That should be all year. I don't like people who donate $20 to united way during December and are then pleased with themselves as good people for the entire next year. You should give every month. Especially if you are in a position where you are financialy comfortable. And I dont mean when you have paid everything off and are debt free, that will probably never happen. Our society could not handle it if people actually did that. I mean if you know that you are going to be able to make all the bill and loan payments this month, then donate something. 4) The music is terrible and repetative. At least I don't listen to the radio, so I am mostly spared.

2005.12.13.01.58.53

Just because you know you've lost is no reason to give up. Maybe the universe doesn't know what you know.

2005.12.13.02.03.17

Having never done something before is no excuse for thinking you can't do it.

2005.12.15.01.27.04

I was going to say goodbye to some people, but then I remembered that no one cares...so I just left.

2006.01.01.16.49.27

I'm going for a walk. Not sure to where. Not going west, I know what is out there. I can't go south, if I go that way I know where I will end up and can't risk that. So north or east...

2006.01.19.02.05.59

It is important to laugh at life. God would be pissed if you didn't find her joke funny.

2006.02.02.02.22.12

What do you do when you are in so much pain that is seems unbearable...but you can't ask for help because you know you don't need it. It has been like this so long...you know it wont kill you.

2006.04.25.01.39.22

There is no great universal purpose or reason for life. There is nothing outside looking in on us. That does not mean there is no purpose, but it is our place to decide what our purpose should be. The only one watching us is us. We are the architects of our own future. So what should we do?

Should we try to understand everything? Should be build something that lasts? Something beautiful? Something noble? Should we create? Should we destroy? There are many of us...we can do all these things. We are doing them now. We can almost certainly do them all better.

Nothing is right or wrong unless we decide that it is. Nothing is noble or good unless we pick some concept out of the ether and decide to tag those attributes on it.

We have inherited bodies and minds that are quite flexible and certainly not perfect, but they will serve.

Most of us continue like the animals we come from, we strive for survival and beyond that to activate the triggers pre-programmed into us that cause parts of our chemical brains to release things that make us feel happy. The struggle for life and happiness will always be there, but we need to set loftier goals or at least consciously choose our goals. Maybe simply being is enough of a goal for life, but if so it should be based on decisions rather than just continuing as we have before because of inertia and instinct.

What I think the purpose of life be will most likely differ from yours. However, your feet are not attached to mine so we can walk separate paths. We are not right or wrong any more than the numbers 3 and 4 are right or wrong. They are different. Maybe the purpose you see will be counter to mine. Maybe this will set us in contention with one another. I might fight you, but so long as you follow something you have chosen and think it the right thing to do, I will not hate you.

I think we all have a different view and will see a different path. I'm not saying there is a fate for each of us or karma or any such concept. I just think we will all see the same universe from a different angle and reach different conclusions. We should listen to one another but draw our own conclusions. But maybe I am wrong about that. Maybe you are surrounded by idiots and should listen to none of them. However, even idiots know some things. If something is true it will resonate within you. With that internal check, it does not matter where you get your data (friends, enemies, idiots, evil geniuses, god, etc).

2006.05.11.03.45.47

I wager more than I can afford on a single deal. I put it all in and go to the wall with it. I know I live and die with this one thing.

It turns out shitty. Even if I didn't see it all that time, that look in her eye tonight tells me that I am nothing. If I weren't a fucking stubborn son of a bitch I would have known that five months ago, but I hold to hope. I hold it so long that I think it is going to kill me. I let it tear me apart. I sit huddled in a ball thinking that I never want to feel this way again...that I can't take more of this. But that is the fucking joke. I can take this. It might be a few days before I can stand up again, but I will and I do. I can take this indefinably. I don't know if that means I am strong or stubborn or the sorriest son of a bitch who ever had the misfortune of living, but I can take it and I can go on. Don't ask what that look in my eye is...you don't want to know. There are four lights.

2006.07.03.14.20.40

new bright blue laces
I am on the town tonight
almost like new shoes

2006.07.15.02.16.21

I consider anyone who eats applesauce cold a heathen.

2006.09.03.19.22.20

Perched on a stool
The Sanguine Sage of Sharkeys
Oasis of wit

2007.04.09.00.13.57

The truth as I know it: Good friday commemorates the day the Jesus hit Nero with a fiddle. In fact, fiddles have beem important in the development of religion for millenia. Siddhartha Gautama hit his first students with a fiddle until they agreed to cease desiring things, as desire leads to being hit with the fiddle. "Life is suffering, but you might be able to avoid the fiddle at least." Even before that, Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Way) about a way to play a fiddle perched on a rock in a turbulent river. It was later misinterpreted to be a monograph about philosophy using water as a metaphor. That is all.

2007.04.09.00.16.44

I am considering changing the layout to a single entry per page and navigation buttons. I am considering this course of action for the following reasons: to be able to know if someone is linking to a particular entry, to know from the logs if someone is reading alot, and to be able to throw some good ads on each page. Given the content of these entries, that could be hilarious and bring me a few dollars. and I mean a few. Three would be surprising. I would be startled by four.

2007.04.12.16.58.38

Bernard breaking build
Makes Brian lament loudly
Better take a nap

2007.04.13.20.22.45

I have a new projects page. I've started documenting some of my more interesting projects. I've started with some notes about my Argus Array project. I should be adding more, info about the software. Projects

2007.04.17.00.04.21

Today (or yesterday rather) was a weird day. The wind is currently angry. It has been all day. I think it has its reasons. It is a thin thread between life and death. I think in modern places like this, people forget that. I've heard that it is the standard in the Islamic world that day begins when you can tell the difference between a black thread and a white thread. It is a new day for many here. A thread many of us forgot about or never knew is clearly visible.

2007.05.03.00.28.23

I think I can understand what Cho was thinking. I have not been down that road, but I think that I have seen what the start of it looks like. It starts the way most peoples teenage years start. Feeling lonely, angry, confused and unsure of yourself, almost completely out proportion. We stand free but don't know it at the time. We feel hedged in by the expectations of others and of ourselves and of the world we are inheriting and our hopes and desires and dreams and greed and lust and every other damn thing. We don't look in every direction, we scream and lunge in every direction. We flail against imaginary boundaries trying to reach some goal that we can't visualize or understand or define. We don't know what we want, but it is not this. We cast about sporadically. Maybe in trying to find our place we are rejected or voluntarily withdraw from some group or identity. Then we isolate ourselves. If those jerks don't want us, fine. Their club sucks anyways. Whatever. Eventually it doesn't matter if the isolation is self imposed or imposed by other or imagined to be. It becomes an identity, a protection, something comforting always worn. It tints the world and protects us from it. The normal us vs them becomes me vs them. It allows us to view any attempt to break through as a ploy or conspiracy. Disregard and feeble attempts by the 'others' to drag us back in. The logic is internally consistent. The cloak the protects us also poisons us. Our world makes sense, but it is terrible and very wrong. Stew a few years of being on the outside looking in. Only seeing the cruel or cold or banal. Finally you see that either you are wrong or society is wrong. You are the only one who can really see what is going on. You have to wake them up and they are in so deep that the wake up must be rough. Maybe it is revenge or maybe you are trying to make them see.

2007.05.08.09.14.31

Silly FSM
My Noodly Appendage
Touches everything

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

2007.09.28.15.59.52

The following is the best thing in the world with no exceptions:
xkcd - there are so many gems. The author has captured the essence of our times from a certain perspective that I seem to share.

Other things that are also good:
questionable content
friend bear
stuff on my cat

2008.06.11.17.01.14

The New York Times has an interesting article on hate speech:
American Exception Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech
I think in this matter, the US is on the right track. There is no such thing as an idea that is too dangerous to spoken. Living in a free society means hearing many things you don't agree with. At least that way, you know who is a fucking bigoted small-minded asshole who should be ignored. Without free speech, it would be harder to know who these idiots are.

2008.07.22.13.38.25

I recently posted a task on Amazon's Mechanical Turk for people to write 20 Haiku's for $0.50 each. Here is the result:


A boy and baseball 
He loved the game way too much 
and now it is over

The lines are painted 
The lines are painted white and 
They are painted black

A little green frog 
Sitting on a big brown log 
Jumps into the stream

Spam is snouts and lips. 
A homogeneous mass. 
Pass another slice.

The green faery is good 
She makes me see pretty things
And tastes so very good

Blogging, wasting time 
Spending hours online surfing 
How much did I learn

Fresh smell of dog poop 
Wafts through the open window 
Dog days of August?

Timeliness stillborn. 
The enduring pain of life. 
Flowers fade in the rain.

There's a chocolate cake 
it needs to be eaten soon 
I'll eat it right now.

I will eat the Spam, 
To satisfy my hunger. 
Where is the Pepto?

Wind blowing in trees 
Wrapping and bending with force 
Hairspray does not hold

Will I eat the food, 
Heaping mound of putrescence, 
or will it eat me?

Bed--comfy and warm. 
Where would I be without you? 
Uncomfy and cold.

Pitcher gets the sign. 
He is thinking to himself, 
"How do I throw strikes?"

why are you not here? 
the tile is done; the tub full. 
Evergrid is too dry.

I hate the mad dog 
He snaps He growls He whimpers 
He poops on my lawn

Pen clip clicks clicks clicks 
New guy whistles twee tee tee 
Madness, osmotic

I hate the summer 
It is always too hot out 
I hate my sunburns

I can't stand my job. 
I wish I'd win the lotto. 
Free money kicks ass.

economy bad stock 
market is really sad 
i am steaming mad

2008.09.30.11.46.35

It is my firm belief that the only necessary conditions for a person to do a thing is that the thing needs to be done and that the person can do it. Whose fault or responsibility does not need to come into play. If a thing needs to be done, do it.

In that spirit I with great trepidation announce my acquisition of Bank of America for the price of twenty US dollars. Under my stewardship I hope to lead Bank of America in specific and by example the financial industry in general back to dignity, accountability and finally eventually profitability. It will likely be a long hard road, but it must be traveled.

I think my determination and will are captured here in my picture below.

2009.02.23.21.26.49

Why do we care what the "founding fathers" thought or planned? Sure, they were wise many and had a plan but they were just men. They were in a place and a time to build something grand and did what they could. They had vision and understood people and tried to think beyond those who came before them. It is right that we consider what they had in mind and consider what wisdom they wrote down to share. But their arguments are not he final arguments. Can't we look further to the future? We can choose were we go next. Things mean what we decide they mean.

2009.08.07.11.33.32

Here are some recent projects I've been working on:

A genetic programming image generation deal: Image Nest

Uses genetric programming to try to make images that might look cool. They are kinda like abstract art if you are into that sort of thing.

An Android Game: Time of the Turnip

Not really fancy yet but might be cool

A multiplayer/network play framework for Android and iPhone games Ploxium

Android client works pretty well. iPhone is still in progress.