Month: October 2008

Had a nice nap, but a strange dream.

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The earliest thing I can remember, was a gathering of family. I remember we were getting into boats and were rowing out, my Grandfather was at the other end of my boat and said something about a everyone taking ‘swim’. I said I didn’t know how to swim, which is technically true. So plans were changed and the water was covered with this huge blue canvas and we all piled out of the boats and setup for the get together, or whatever we were doing there…

I laid back on the canvas and thought to myself. About how the last time I felt like this without having to worry about the swaying waves washing over me, was years and years ago to when I was about three years old; sloshing about in the huge pool in the back yard with a snorkel, fins, and an inflatable tube. Hmm, it’s probably been at least twelve years since I was last in a pool, let along those days lol.

Then it began to rain, so we draped green canvas covers over our ‘camp ground’ and went about business. Someone asked me to look something up, so I fired up my laptop battery power.As the weather got worse, the group split: some went in search of better shelter, a few stayed; I was assigned to stay put. Sometime later, I got thumped on the head, pulling off the canvas to take a look; I saw that I had been hit in the head by a failing tree branch, and the corner of the area was riddled with such debree.

So I decided it would be better to get out of here, even if it meant getting a bit wet lol. In the ensuring action, which in the real world would’ve resulted in a laptop yielding electro-shock therapy… The last of the group moved into the building like structure at the center of the area, as the rain got even worse. I helped with setting up the stetting up the ticker storm-guard on the point of entry.

Next my attention turned to food prep and emacs. Then Aunt Ruth and some others were trying to get in, so I removed the storm-thing from the point of entry to let them in, and then was set in search of emacs, xemacs, and another funky coloured pen labeled ‘3.5.1’ or was it ‘3.5.8’, or ‘3.8.1’, or ‘3.8.5’ or something like that; it was supposed to be a fork of XEmacs :

Why on earth would a Vi-lover dream of emacsen!?

That’s when I woke up in a cold sweat, looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool.

Losing the war: On evading lisp

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AAGGGGHHH !!!!

Why does Lambda Calculus and Scheme have to be so damn interesting!!!

I need to be kicking myself into a standard tool kit of language+libs+utils, not learning a new one lol. But I have an addiction to learning things :

Perfect choice from a favorite raido station

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If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.

I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘ Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.

And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
GOD bless the USA.

From the lakes of Minnesota,
to the hills of Tennessee.
Across the plains of Texas,
From sea to shining sea.

From Detroit down to Houston,
and New York to L.A.
Well there’s pride in every American heart,
and its time we stand and say.

That I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
GOD bless the USA.

And I’m proud to be and American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
GOD bless the USA.

— Proud To Be An American, Lee Greenwood

Days roaming

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Hmm, a most unusual day…

I was invited into the meeting in #pcbsd-team today on freenode. Some interesting discussion, but still a bit boring; well, what can I say? I’m still tight lipped about my own operations ^_^. At least though, the developers are trying to improve things, but there are somethings I keep to myself for the time being. And hope they take care of the more serious things. The whole time I was busy with a SSH session to my laptop, working on code haha! But I did pay good attention while I was present. Somewhat of an odd feeling really, because I’ve generally kept a good distance from PC-BSD.

As to other business of the day, I’ve been working on my little ‘nag’ app. The basic premise of the program, is to take notes, keep them, and when necessary, shout at me about them. In the past, I’ve tried applications with sticky notes, which usually take control of my second monitor or a spare virtual desktop. I’ve also tried PIM software, but I find I always end up spending more time in programming the useless thing around my schedule or arguing over portability issues :. The only problem I have with it, is the choice of either file-system, sqlite, or xml based storage for notes and metadata. The SQLite way would be the fastest for me to write code for; but somewhat a sidestep around my love for accessing data through textual interfaces.

Something like:

~/.nag/
      notes/
            1/
              title
              text
              ...

would be the most fun to have to work with as a user of my own program, which I’d be using daily lol. Actually, it kind of reminds me of the Process File System, but procfs’es usually live in memory only. Standardizing myself around Python for most stuff, has really helped me get work done… Now if only my old friend Perl wouldn’t keep starring at me when ever I see the need to process text……..

I’ve also gotten the priority ‘go code’ on one of my projects in [SAS], at least with this… It’s far enough displaced from the old-sludge I have to maintain, that I can actually define it’s behavior correctly, and do it in a sane way the first time around. And make sure that this project, will result in something that *will* stand some test of time, without pissing off the next coder!

Now if I could do something about camping out [SAS] Proving Grounds #3 and playing Battle For Wesnoth every chance I get >_>. But hey, I’ve was stuck in front of a code editor for almost a 4 days straight!!!! Then I had to go back to work 🙁 🙁 :-(, so a lit’ game time ain’t that bad a change of pace hehe.

Writer’s Block: Customizable Party

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Invent a political party for the nation in which you reside. What does your ideal platform consist of?

Live Journals Writer’s Block
(General disclaimer, I mostly hate politics) That action is better then political ideology That what is morally and intellectually right (enough), is what should be done. That being just and right, is better then being extreme and [right |or| wrong], because it will eventually become unjust. That working together as a nation, is better then bickering along party lines — compare the last 8 years, to 1939-1947. In the course of life, I’ve learned that there are only a handful of absolutes: GOD, Life, Death, and Tax. And it would take volumes to properly explain the above ^, which would probably open things up to a form of internet driven political kibozing lol. But in honor of the two ruling parties of this nations political system, a few quotes that stand out to me:

To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last–but eat you he will. — President Ronald Reagan (Republican) When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. — President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic)

And to further quote a great man, who did get off his ass and step up to the bat when America needed a man of action (which is really saying something!),

“Be sincere; be brief; be seated.” — F.D.R.

Amen.