The future is what we make for ourselves

The future hasn’t been written yet, I can never accept anything else as fact. The future is only what I build of it…

I’m so tied of this place, so tied of being surrounded by fools. They are everything I reject: I refuse to be cruel, I can not hate, and I will not be like them.

For a better part of my years, I spent time learning to fight, to defend agaisnt whatever might come. Now I find myself, facing a new demon: one inside the head. The only way, to win the war is one battle at a time.

The future is what we make for ourselves.

There will be a day when I no longer hurt, when there is no more fear, and I am no longer alone. I will stand tall and plant my feet upon this rock, and I shall not be shaken from my path.

Sun May 31 03:44:23 UTC 2009

Probing the lost

Tonight after, umm never mind that. I sat down and started cracking into some math books. One advantage of being the youngest son, I have inherited all of my brothers old high school books. Quite some time ago, I decided that if I was ever going to find my way into making heads or tails of mathematics, I would have to start at the “beginning” so to speak, walking forward from there. Starting the frame is Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus.

Since my education in mathematics is, should we say for the sake of brevity, almost worthless: I have always found it more difficult to understand then computer programs or computer science. The further I look though, the more and more I am starting to see thw twistedly interesting connections between math and computer science, and software engineering.

So far, I have come to one rather rapid conclusion. If by the 3rd or 4th grade, I had actually been progressively exposed to high school level maths, rather then the same ol’shit: maybe I would not have spent the last decade of my life — being so unbelievably fukin’ bored shitlessly stiff with school work!

Not to mention, that I might not be paying though the time-clock of life* in order to catch up on the fun, if I had been….

Comparing the texts to programming languages abilities to express like wise, I am also starting to understand why the space cadet keyboard was invented, and wish there was a programming language that so-applied it in order to a new level of terseness. In some funky way, how things is expressed in these books reminds me of a lot of Perl: learn enough of the notation and you can make heads or tails out of almost anything, and then try and figure out if you understood it or not xD. (Although arguably Perl has a 1up in that department, in that 5.8.9 came with >170,000 p-lines of documentation describing the language, etc.)

Once my curiosity is piqued: things start to click into place… and I have never been a geek that does things by halves (^_^)/

* that is, I believe time ≅ life: much the same as the old saying goes, “Time is Monkey”, to me “Time is life” !

Step on my toe, and I’ll scream…

Got to bed fairly early, it was only 04:30Q when I logged off; not sure when I fell asleep but at least the sun wasn’t up yet.

Got up for work, and was annoyed that my shoes hadn’t dried out yet! My old “Utilishoes” are to tight period, let along for working in; and my mains have a very short outsole, so the inside got pretty drenched yesterday at work lol. Tried cramming my foot into the shoe with socks on, that went over like hitting a lead wall… So no real choice except to put up wit hit. Yeah, battered foot and wet shoe, not a good mix.

Really what I would like is a good pair of jungle boots. There are three things every soldier deserves for equipment: a good pair boots, a decent weapon, and canteens that don’t leak on the quick march. What better way for a civilian to find a decent set of boots? One reason why jungle boots interest me, by definition they more or less need a good balance between the heat and the soak lol. With so much need for desert boots over seas now’re days, who knows, maybe surplus stores might even be in surplus of jungles… haha. They certainly can’t be any worse then the kinds of shoes I’ve had to deal with over the past 20 years :-/

It’s been a very long day

I was up to around 07:00Q, miserable when you’ve got to be up by 10:00Q :-/ Every night, it’s getting worse… having trouble thinking clearly at night lately in so far as coding goes. Always tossing and turning with thoughts between my ears that have to wait, driving me nuts! To bad life is not like a cartoon, where you can just whack yourself in the head with something big and heavy, and take a nice nap xD.

Work today was probably best described, as “Dead’er then the horse I rode in on”. With how much the toe was trobbing, instead of pacing during my busy…wait portion of things, I sat down… bad idea. Nearly ended up snoring, and when it was time to get up, my foot was so numbed (and sound asleep lol) that I nearly fell flat on my face… getting down 4 flights of stairs was not fun.

I was actually kind of happy though, it was raining. Plus it started getting worse when I had to be outside lollololol. I am kind of a strange person, I like being out in the rain for the most part: everyone I know, just loath’s it. Eventually it got bad enough that I conceeded to using an umbrella, instead of walking around in a T-shirt: horizontal wind and rain is a good time for an umbrella. Really, if I had the proper kit and footware for it, I wouldn’t mind walking in the rain, yeah… mad as a hatter.

Managed to get home and *eventually* tend to my foot. Ma’s shouting at Coco, reminds me of why I don’t take things out on other people… (I prefer to avoid such things, unless its in regard to someone directly causing the problems lol.) To top it all off, Willow ran over my bad toe, going about 15-20mph, sigh.

Today’s work on the servers, also makes me seriously thing that Windows NT is ridicules in a network centric capacity…

Wow…. I politely ask the dog if I should have a spot on my own bed, and Willow looks at me, as if such a thing was a crime!

This calls for going “BEEP”, until she moves lol.

troff and family, is there anything you can’t do?

I’ve been thinking of writing an article on some of my tactical experiences for whatever value they may offer, and as such the obvious question would arise: what to write it in?

Anyone who says Microsoft Word or some variant of that light, you can go stand in the corner right now 😛

Most of my documents lately have been done in POD, since I’ve only been writing Plain Old software Documentation over the past couple months. Normally for regular documents, I just use LaTeX. I have also been contemplating learning more about the more ‘black magic where few people care to thread’ parts of LaTeX, really I’d like to dig up a few books on it as well, but hey, whose got that kind of cash? (I wonder if the local library has anything on mathematics worth a fart: typesetting in LaTeX with or without an air on the math side is not there either.) But I also have a soft spot for troff / nroff: I rarely use it, even for manual pages if it can be avoided. Yet I really like troff, even raw troff. It would be a perfect excuse to study the ms macro package and possibly even take the time to learn how to use pic!

The question I posed to myself, was how would I go about handling references in troff? I know it is possible, just couldn’t remember how: so googled for

bibliography system for troff

. That lead me to a paper named ‘Some Applications of Inverted Indexes on the UNIX System.’, written by M. E. Lesk. So far that seems to be quite simple and would get the job done fairly easy.

The only thing I am used to, is working with Bibtex. So the whole refer thing is not too alien to me.

If it wasn’t for technology like TeX/LaTeX, troff/nroff, POD, ReST, Texinfo, or various Docbook/SGML/XML type stuff — I would likely use plain text and [ab]use the C Pre Processor from my C compiler in order to implement simple textual macros xD. There is no ‘perfect’ system in my eyes but POD is my favorite… (Hmm, I really should look at MOD someday!)

Yeah, obviously I am not a fan of word processors: despite having used them heavily for years.

I’ve spent the last half hour or so, trying to keep a straight face lol. Friend tried to pull a prank on me, and I was trying to stall to compute the implications of pranking back, or just exacting a revenge… in various ways. He’s so lucky I don’t have a cruel nature. And if you are reading this, the thoughts I mentioned were only part of the possible retaliations that came to mind 😛

When you can look at something serious, and find about an 8-15% chance they’re not trying to pull your leg, you know it is tempting… to not have a lot of sick fun with it at the pranksters expense. Some how, I think either I know some crazy people, or I’m just to kind hearted lol.

Icon, the programming language?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_(programming_language)

Geeze, it looks like a nifty language!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicon_programming_language suggests something exceptionally fun to work with as well…

Quote of the day: 2009-05-24

No man is an island unto himself, nor a pillar of stone or bust of marble to be adored for pureness sake: evil lurks in every mans heart, just as surely as goodness may lay nestled in thy bosom?

Writer’s Block: Word for Word

How many (if any) songs do you know by heart? What are they?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

I don’t think I know any single song by heart, since I generally avoid singing outside of church lol. With how much silence life requires at home these days, I do sing ‘inside my head’ so to speak, since that is really the only place outside the internet where I have a free voice of any sort :@.

Generally it’s the songs that I either feel a connection with, or end up hearing the most that start to stick. Most of Folsum Prison Blues, which is also arguably one song I would want to pick up: if I ever learned how to play the guitar lol. I believe it might also be the first or second tune I’ve ever heard from Johnny Cash. A number of Trace Adkins, Taylor Swift, and several Alan Jackson tunes also rattle around my brains every now and them. One song that I know fairly well, is the Cocaine Blues, because I’ve heard it played toooo many times! And like wise with major portions of Picture, it’s mostly the sequencing that I need remembering.

I came here to live is probably the song I know by heart, if any song at all. Often at work, I sing it softly to myself I’m going up or down the stairs.

I grew up in a town where tough was a cigarette, and a souped up car on the county road. Nothing much to do back then so we’d make bets, on how much a drink a guy could hold, and I held my own. I learn’d to hold my own. Daddy worked some dead end job at the concrete plant, momma taught the Sunday bible class. For eighteen years I remember thinkin’ there was more to life then that, so I ran the streets to beat the devil: goin’ just as fast as I could fly. ‘Cause I came here to live, I didn’t come here to die… Momma used to wait for me with the porch light on, worry about her little boy ’til I got home. Daddy, he’d say “Listen son”, but back then there wasn’t much, that I didn’t already know. I reckon I was doing close to eighty, when I felt the tiers slip out from underneath. And I never set out looking for Jesus, so I guess Jesus came looking for me, and found me upside down in a ditch. Smoke and gas in my eyes, HE said son, you came here to live: you didn’t come here to die. Sunday morning I got up, and I went to church. That summer I got a job and I went t’ work. I met a girl in town, put some money down… on a little place with a yard.. Our little boy was due in September, but he came early in July. For eighteen days all I remember, was sitting there at his side, saying son open up your eyes. Just open up your eyes, ’cause you came here to live. You didn’t come here to die, son you came here to live.