Year: 2010

Exorcising the Demons

by

The last bomb finally dropped as I new it must, and my friends turned in their resignation. This is the worst day of my life so far, because the only thing I can think of that could be worse, is becoming an orphan. For me this has just been an utterly breaking and strength erasing event, and I’m sure it’s no triviality for my friend either (but this is still my journal lol). Getting through work felt like doing it with a corkscrew twisting though my stomach.

I drifted off to work with more tics, shakes, and rattles then you can point a stick at, I’ve nearly thrown up about four times, and I’ve had to remind myself, “You don’t fucking cry!”, just to hold it together. As is my custom in times like these, what ever pieces were left, I cast myself back into the forge and let them reshape.

There the Spidey01 we all know, nearly died of his pain and grief in this matter. Very close he came to being replaced by a very different creature, one cold and remorseless like a machine: I looked for the first time in my life, at taking a path, where I don’t know whether it threads along the side of light or darkness… willing to become an archangel or a knight of hell itself, a pure devil even, if it should need be,  ready to destroy anyone in the future who would dare rise to damage SAS, to become a monster if it should need be, something that would make Wiz at his best or worse, look like a limp noodle, for the sake of ensuring that never another war grace these shores. Whatever the cost might be in doing it, whether it would mean welding Souledge or Soulcalibur, that it would be done just the same. In short, take any and every action necessary to ensure that things like the past two weeks, would never be needed again.  I pondered over this course that lay ahead, describing it in my mind, in a sort of disturbing and epic form of poetry that can only exist in ones mind, just what I would be committing myself to. In thinking through that new beings description, what its name would become in place of Spidey01, and what my personal emblem would be in such… I found myself staring back at me through that emblem.

The death of Spidey01 and the rise of an avenging monster would have been the legacy, that Rouge, Valroe, Noer, Medic, Scout, and Ambu left behind, the price of their resolvability; it would also have been committing the first petty act of my life. Looking and questioning my reasons for such a choice of path, deeper at it’s heart, I found the thought that, “I never want to feel like this again”, more then SASs interests was to be found. That creature is so different then myself, that it would’ve warranted changing my name to reflect becoming a different person – an incident like something out of the old testament. Part of my soul cried out, “I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive”, and that nothing will ever kill that tiny silver of goodness in me.

So who emerged from those soul searching fires?

Spidey01

 A sharper more refined image then before, but still Spidey01… not the demon that beckoned. Today’s the closest I’ve ever come, to losing who I am. My name on the net, is incredibly personal, and is an identity that reflects me to the core…. it nearly died, really. Yet as surely as I have rejected darkness and evil all my life, I reject that idea…. of being a devil, even for my own reasons. Spidey01 still lives for what ever I’m worth, and I’m here to stay. Light or dark, right or wrong, I’ll not abide by either, I’ll just raise a flaming Spatha in one hand and a great axe in the other, and leave the suit of armour behind. Perhaps such a beast is really what SAS needs to ensure that the next golden age remains one for us as a group, but I am nether machine nor monster, only a man, and I will not yield my humanity. Whether that’s for anything, anyone, or even myself, I’m a man not fucking machine.

 

One fortunate thing my life in the real world has taught me about times of bleeding out, eventually you will run out of something to bleed with. When having to watch today ceases to hurt, only time will show. In connection to something I once said of myself, being glad that I’m not made of tin, because I would rust: the words of the great Wizard of Oz come to mind…
As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.

 For better or worse, I have one.

Absolutely moving song

by

Tonight while waiting for Funny Girl to start on TCM, I overheard a very moving song during the previous movies exit. After all my years, I can’t help but contrast it against the paths that I have crossed, relationships made both in my real life and in the virtual world. It’s rather like listening to a tender memory.





Mmm. Mmm.

Memories, light the corners of my mind

Misty watercolor memories of the way we were.

Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind

smiles we give to one another

for the way we were.

Can it be that it was all so simple then

or has time rewritten every line?

If we had the chance to do it all again

tell me would we? Could we?

Memories, may be beautiful and yet

what’s too painful to remember

we simply choose to forget

So it’s the laughter we will remember

whenever we remember

the way we were.

In salute of old friends and comrades alike… cica 1996 – 2010.

A new dream cluster..

by

Somewhat of a strange cluster of dreams :-/. Ranging from hanging out with a female neighbor, to developing a new mobile device (a good one hehe) over lunch, being a Jack Ryan’ish CIA agent sent to an island full of racists, for a meeting with a quack dictator about to be knocked off; who’s as nutty as the guy in The In-Laws, to leading a last stand of Colonial Marines and civilians in a shopping mall, against a brood of Aliens, including a show down against a non-canonical but really pissed off King Alien, lol.

All in all through, a much better grade of dreams then I’ve been having lately. It’s usually a good sign when my dreams are mostly non nonsensical, although there seems to be a greater amount of combat involved. *Shrugs* prior to the last swing change in dreams, half my night was spent dreaming about the code I wanted to get written lol. I don’t place the same level of analysis on dreams that some people I know do, and I don’t think I would want to; I merely remember the interesting ones. Sometimes I draw similarities, such as reoccurring terrain/environments that find their way into several dreams.

There’s only ever been 4 or 5 dreams to ever scare me in my 21 years of life, even though most dreams I’ve ever had in the past 8’ish, could likely be called a nightmare by most peoples definition of such. On the other hand there is significantly few things that can phase me, that dreams rarely have any impact on me. Should we just say, I’m not easily frightened, either in the real world or dream world. There’s enough outlandlish things in my dreams, that I’m usually aware that it’s not reality, somewhere in the back of my mind; perhaps that helps?

by

Well things seem to have wrapped up to a fairly good night, except I’m not sleepy lol. I seem to be getting better at Clan Arena  Quake is rather addictingly fun, and if the resolution on character models was increased, would perhaps come closer to the current commercial grade of graphics, rather then just good. Also got to join Weasel for a few rounds in RvS before calling it a night.

The real problem is I’m not sleeply :'(.

by

Today has been marred both with bad and good news, I reckon the bad, will be the last shell I need watch dropped, but the good, effectively ensures the future. So, I guess ’tis time to cast the reel, and hope to enjoy the coming age.

Darn, youth is so wasted on the young :-P.

Stylist thoughts: What I would like my journal to look like

by

The current site style was selected because it’s fairly simple and provides a good bit of space in its layout, even if it is rather plane.

Irregardless of the finer details, the ability to coop with content breaking out of their boxes is somewhat of a necessity. I often post snippets of code, command output, or even action logs here, from whenever I’m working on my own crap. Although my terminal runs 80 columns wide, there is no such garruentee when I reach for the pre tags. Because of how Blogger handles titling untitled posts, much the same applies to the archive barlet.

I don’t have any problem with web design, although I prefer working on server side code rather then doing the visuals, should we say, I find it a more rewarding experience for the amount of effort I put behind coding.

by

Last night I took the liberty of configuring Blogger to notify me by E-mail whenever comments are made here, dang, Live Journal did spoil me with all the notification features! Blogger however seems a smoother platform to rely on, my only real complaint is the site templates. One of these days I’ve gotta take some time and create the look / feel site design I want, which is much easier to do here (for free) then paying Live Journal for their equivalent level of control.

After being notified of a comment made today on one of last weeks entries, I also searched through a few pages of posts just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. My apologies if I’ve missed any comments left between 2010-01-30 and 2009-11-13. It’s rare anyone actually leaves a comment lol.

by

Things have finally settled a bit, this is perhaps the closest to a proper day off yet: played Raven Shield for a few hours on the [SAS] Proving Grounds, took a break for chores and followed that up with some Quake Live, then went back to the [SAS] Proving Grounds for a couple hours. Then a few rounds of Clan Arena in QL before dinner.

I don’t play much Clan Arena in Quake Live, because it is rarely my `style` in the public servers; maybe more formal matches might be better. CA games basically amount to a round based last team standing form of competition, where everyone starts out with a Mega Health, and virtually all standarded weapons, plus plenty of ammunition; the catch of course being, there are NO power ups, no health kits, no extra ammo. You best have rocket launcher skills as well ^_^. Managed to get in a few good team games, before ending up in a mixture of 2vs2 / 1vs2 games, giving great chance to practice weapons selection and application. I also learned of a spot on one of my training maps, where you can rocket jump over (or camp on top of) a wall. One cool feature of Clan Arena mode, is you can rocket jump freely without taking any damage; it lends itself to a very fast, furious, and high octane form of combat. Although, it often becomes a crazy melee.

For lighting things up a bit, Charles Dickens Great Expectations, and Wanted. The former redefines the expression (from the more modern vernacular), of “Gee, what a small world! While the latter, is a gritty but enjoyable action flick, with some very nice fight scenes—that kid is to fighting ability, what a Terminator is to durability.

A day behind schedule, but I’ve also taken the time to burn a SMGL disk, that I’ll likely setup on my desktop, and experiment with porting code to x86_64, as well as playing Quake Live under Linux. Sourcemage is a GNU/Linux distro, that I actually found when Googling for some git operation lead me to their wiki; it also looks like a distro on par with my tastes. I was smiling the other night, when I read a section header in the install docs, about knowing thy `compiler`, until I realized it said `computer`, and my glasses really needed a cleaning lol.

Of friendships, promises, and commitments

by

As if there wasn’t enough stuff to throw off my focus (on non-SAS matters), looming in the shadows is where a friend will drawn their own line in regard to whether they will stand with [SAS] or apart from it. For me, it’s very hard to take, because I knew, before helping bring this person into the group, that in all probability, they would have to face this cross roads in time (in fact, rather then sugar coat that outlook for my friend, I poured a lot of salt on it early on, and left the decision to rest on their own head).

It’s the second time in my own history here with [SAS], that I will have ever have considered throwing in the towel if person XYZ chooses to leave; the first and before this, the only time, was when I spent a period of time trying to keep another very dear and tired friend from losing his faith. Some people have had the same feelings about me, that’s one of the reasons I stand tall and walk hard through the storms. I’ve always enjoyed being with the people around me, because you never know how long GOD has put them there. The thing that hurts me, is knowing that the friend in this particular question, will have to go through that rough decision, and there is nothing that I can do to make it easier for this person. Because if I could remove the issue from ever having to come up in their membership, I would trade an arm to lift that weight. All I can do, is watch, wait, support, and accept, whatever my friend chooses.

As to where my own path lays in this, I know two things. When the storm started, I made a decision very early on: that if I ever lost my place in [SAS] trying to fight it for the sake of my team as a whole, that I would sooner eat dirt and shallow chicken vomit, then serve under (thenow) NTF_LTC_Rouges command, if he started a competing unit; I won’t serve under any man who would break his word the way he did, out of spite. Like wise, my thinking reminds me, at my core… there is just this stubborn, ornery, stiff necked, tough fscking son of a bitch, who just will not lay down and die.. if it feels like walking on glass, I’ll stand on my legs and fight on, because

and for how many times in my life, I’ve had to come to that conclusion in both [SAS] matters and with my own family—I will never go back on my own word, and I gave that the day I committed myself to this TEAMs future. I will not make a liar of myself, no matter what comes of that choice, because being loyal to the vision, was a promise I made to myself, and something I have never wished to break. I’ll not stoop down to someone else’s level, and that is ironed across my soul even more, after calling Rouge on his own integrity issues; and I’ve done that to his face plenty enough times for it to matter. It is a bygone and stone age concept, but my honour will never yield to a lesser path.

Once an [SAS] man, always an [SAS] man, and I am an [SAS] man, overly tried and true to be sure, and they can type it on my tomb stone in bold if they want, because here I stand, come and get me…. WHO DARES, WINS!

Somehow it figures…

by

that when I finally find something therapeutically healing to do, my family has to stab until my hearts no longer in doing anything.

Some times I think, rule #0 of surviving life, is to remember that there is no one who cares.