I knew I should have stayed in bed this morning

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Well, I’ve about had it for the day. The one goal I’ve had was to shave and get cleaned up, her royal pain decided to go shopping before her job interview, so that was delayed. To top it off while passing the time with my laptop, waiting for her to get back from the interview; I found an error in the systems git package.

When leaving, we was pulling out of a very tight space and this little piece of plastic sticking out of the bumper caught on the neighbouring car. It left a small ~1″ scratch on the other cars fender and took off most of ma’s bumper. The fords front bumper has been hanging by a thread for over a decade with a large gash and shards sticking out, because when it was smashed up back in Florida by someone that ran a red light, my mother didn’t spend any of the insurance money on fixing her bumper lol.

Waited for the owner of the other car and apologized for the scratch, she didn’t care but took ma’s insurance information and gave us her name/number just in case. Unlike some people in my family, I hold myself responsible for my mistakes; some people just drive off. If I fuck up, I admit it.

Tending to the family ford wasn’t much problem, the bumper is just like 3mm of painted plastic with a strip of hardened rubber glued on the front. Borrowed a scissor for cutting off the rubber link and adjusted the straps to keep the bumper hanging. Ma has had it hanging half off in one corner for years with plastic cords hooking it to the hood anyway.

Afterwards my mother asked if I thought I should still have my license after this, and I told her that I’ve seen her do much worse herself, and reminded her that she has been driving for over 40 years; by contrast I only started driving about 10 months ago. Actually now that I think of it, I haven’t even been driving for 10 months, because ma pissed away like January through May or April before she even let me drive the fucking car <_<.

As to what sort of things she has done over the years, in fact, if you search through my journal far enough, you’ll find a record of ma smashing the rear bumper in the grocery store parking lot, and just driving off illegally. Now how is that for being a responsible senior citizen?

God’s Gonna Cut You Down

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You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down

Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler,
The gambler,
The back biter
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down

Well my goodness gracious let me tell you the news
My head’s been wet with the midnight dew
I’ve been down on bended knee talkin’ to the man from Galilee
He spoke to me in the voice so sweet
I thought I heard the shuffle of the angel’s feet
He called my name and my heart stood still
When he said, “John go do My will!”

Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler,
The gambler,
The back biter
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down

Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand
Workin’ in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down

Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler,
The gambler,
The back biter
Tell ’em that God’s Gonna Cut You Down
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut you down
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut you down

God’s Gonna Cut You Down—Johnny Cash

I think this is my theme song for the year.

Random codeness

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Been contemplating about a few things, that are arguably, the programmers equivalent to several mortal sins. One of these involves standardising my world around a given language setup. Yes, choosing the best tools for the job rather than the same tools can sometimes be troublesome.

The languages I’m considering, are C++ and C#. Python would be a good candidate except that I’ve waay to many lines of Python over the years lol. Behind the C++ factor, is simply put, Richard Gabriel was correct when he said “The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++”. Frankly programming in C++ is a bitch. It’s not so much the language, which has plenty of warts, as it is building projects causes headaches. Most of which is a mixture of complexity and the inability of people to manage that complexity before shipping it. The other factor, being C#. I’ve come to rather like C#, because it takes the best part of languages like Java, i.e. using bytecode rather than native code, but unlike Java 6, C# 3 and up is actually a modern fucking language. Java can kiss my rebel dick. It’s retarded.

C++ gives painless (as possible) support to C code, while adding some goodies: automatic ctor/dtor invocation, formal namespace schematics, semi-generic data structures, and often disabled or unused support for exceptions and runtime type information. There are also a lot of libraries written in C++, that are less than easy to use in other languages; the fact that many are often less than easy to use in C++, is aside from the point obviously ^_^.

C# is more convenient than C++, because of a more modern syntax (Java can really fuck a duck for all the modernness of it), and because it has the ultimate in language killers, which C++ lacks—A big fucking library. Where as C++ provides stream based I/O, container based data structures, and not much else beyond your systems C library. C# has a large cross-language class library, which essentially throws networking, XML, basic graphics on top of that, and a much more portable interface to system stuff, like Process class and the file system code.

That is the big killer: libraries that are easily incorporated. C++ lacks that. In fact, about the closest you can get is throwing in Boost, POCO, Qt, or Wx. Plus a few other odds and ends.

C# is a much more pleasant language to work in and takes the pain out of compiling projects, because it really can’t get much harder than which defines to set and which files to compile into what. Something that life would be fucking great if C++ could say the same, even on a single platform group. Unlike Java, it’s also possible to build C# projects promptly and trivially combine code with many other languages.

C++ however has a much wider range of libraries readily available without needing glue code, if one can stand the bitch and a half of making them work o/.

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I decidedly prefer Qt over GTK, and wish it’s third party language bindings were better, outside of Pythons o/

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When there’s long stretches between entries, that is when I flush thoughts to my journal; there’s usually one of three causes. Either I’m to busy to breath, hitting rock bottom, or both. Looking at my posting records over the last four years, this seems to be fairly consistent o/

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It’s been a bit busy lately, I’m very tired right now. Friday a friend figured out a way that I can get around my mothers’ communications block sufficiently, so I spent most of today (well, technically yesterday in another 30mins lol) filling out another round of job applications. Somehow, I think that I’ve learned that GOD and friends make better obstacle removers, and family better obstacle creators.

With a little tweaking to get my laptop into the loop, I should now be independent of ma’s phone systems, and thus her control over that aspect of things. The past couple weeks have been rather lax, largely because of losing the commu’ block. I can apply all I want, but a lot of good that would do if any calls back get routed to /dev/null, now does it? Using this new setup, I’m free of that delema. Finally!

Family may as well be the most vocal proponents in favour of the idea that I’m a useless bastard worth less than the lump of flesh in front of my computer, yet also tends to be the most obstinate bunch about helping improve life’s situation rather than hindering my plans.

Really, it is annoying. How people can act saintly and blameless as a white sheet while dangling the knife they’ve been stabbing with, and do it in such a way they can fain innocence. At least, that’s what it looks like. Yeah, I believe 0+6 can be > 0, don’t you? Not.

Hurt

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Somehow, this really makes me think about the life of Johnny Cash.

I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that’s real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but I remember everything
what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
upon my liar’s chair
full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
beneath the stains of time
the feelings disappear
you are someone else
I am still right here

what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

if I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

Hurt—Johnny Cash

Should’ve Been A Cowboy

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I bet you’ve never heard ole Marshall Dylan say
Miss Kitty have you ever thought of running away
Settling down would you marry me
If I ask you twice and beg you pretty please
She’d of said Yes in a New York minute
They never tied the knot
His heart wasn’t in it
He just stole a kiss as he road away
He never hung his hat up, at Kitty’s place

I shoulda been a cowboy
I shoulda learned to rope and ride
Wearing my six-shooter, riding my pony, on a cattle drive
Stealing young girl’s hearts
Just like Gene and Roy
Singing those campfire songs
Oh, I should’ve been a cowboy

I might of had a side kick with a funny name
Running wild through the hills chasing Jesse James
Ending up on the brink of danger
Riding shotgun for the Texas Rangers
Go west young man, haven’t you been told
California’s full of whiskey, women and gold
Sleeping out all night beneath the desert stars
With a dream in my eye, and a prayer in my heart

I shoulda been a Cowboy
I shoulda learned to rope and ride
Wearing my six-shooter, riding my pony on a cattle drive
Stealing young girl’s hearts
Just like Gene and Roy
Singing those campfire songs
Oh, I should’ve been a cowboy
Oh, I should’ve been a cowboy
Oh, I should’ve been a cowboy
Oh, I should’ve been a cowboy…

Should’ve Been A Cowboy—Toby Keith

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Somehow seeing a [SAS] header on a video being marked as NTF training, makes me remember that someone in [SAS] hosted a F&M exercise in GR1, and filmed it. I remember it being posted in the forums back in ’09. Now if I could just remember whether it was Valroe or Sniper who filmed it, lol.

Sometimes you can only laugh or cry

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Today is one of those lovely days, you know, the kind where you would rather …

Day started off with having to take the car in for emissions inspection. The usual being badgered well in advance. Got maybe five or six hours sleep, depending on what hour it was when I finally dozed off. Garage declined to do the inspection, because of steel belting showing through the tyres and the front end being so far out of alignment that the bay chief didn’t want any of his techs putting it on the dyno. That means driving over to the mechanic and dropping about $230, plus picking up a pair of aft tyres later on. I’m still counting down the hours until my mother can figure out something venom filled over that one. When I was loading the car for tomorrow and noticed it leaking a bit of anti-freeze, I couldn’t help but laugh. It’s so fucked I can’t do anything else, except cry and I would rather laugh until I cry. At least that’s the best of both choices.

Obviously the most cheerful thought of my whole day, is of course: my mother wondering if I’ve any money she can barrow or anything of value to haulk in a pawn shop. The fact that anything I have to offer, is likely on her collateral with a loan company being aside the point. I intend to call a few pawnshops and see what they will take for a few bits of electronics, that I doubt will carry much of a price. All my life, I’ve never been alotted anything of value (unless you count friends tangibly). Like I’ve got anything to pawn, that isn’t a piss in the bucket?

It’s nice, when I need help, she will sit on her fat ass for half a year. When I turn to the job issue, she’s another obstacle. However when she needs something, she’ll all but sell my plasma to the first bidder. Ain’t love grand? Undoubtedly, I point out that if she wants help out of me, she shouldn’t have pissed away my time on the whole license/job thing. I wonder if they still buy human hair.

My original plan for the day, was to just work on getting as much of a small coding project (that I really need to get done), than focus on the job issue for the next several days, distracted by my workload. With my mothers near perfect commu’ block, I don’t expect that to work out very well. Trying to get a call through this place is futile and she keeps it that way. Between my mother and everything else, obviously nether objective has gotten done today. Some people have fun gaming or partying, coding relaxes me and I enjoy it.  No one seems to be able to understand that, except for more my kind of people. Those are rare.

It makes me fucking sick. I’m not good enough to care about, only good enough to be used. That’s what life here is like. I would do well, if I learned how not to care. Even better, odds are, if I learned to be amoral and give up on my concepts of right/wrong, ethics, and the like. Sometimes I hate being me. Unlike a lot of people on the earth, it doesn’t matter if you can be of use to me or not, I care about you the same either way. Like I say, I have only one face.