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I think yesterday, they played just about every artists rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, that could be found in their music library lol. Much more of it and I think I would’ve had most of the song memorized by today; I reckon everyone should know their own countries anthem.

In remembrance of those who have given their lives and those who still stand ready to do so, I loaded the slong Arlington from my meager collection:

I never thought that this is where I’d settle down,
I thought I’d die an old man back in my hometown,
They gave me this plot of land, me and some other men,
for a job well done.

There’s a big white house sits on a hill just up the road,
The man inside he cried the day they brought me home,
They folded up a flag, and told my mom and dad, ‘We’re proud of your son’.

And I’m proud to be on this peaceful piece of property,
I’m on sacred ground and I’m in the best of company,
I’m thankful for those thankful for the things I’ve done,
I can rest in peace, I’m one of the chosen ones,
I made it to Arlington.

I remember daddy brought me here when I was eight,
We searched all day to find out where my granddad lay,
And when we finally found that cross,
He said, ‘Son this is what it cost, to keep us free’.
Now here I am a thousand stones away from him,
He recognized me on the first day I came in,
And it gave me a chill, when he clicked his heels, and saluted me.

And I’m proud to be on this peaceful piece of property,
I’m on sacred ground and I’m in the best of company,
And I’m thankful for those thankful for the things I’ve done,
I can rest in peace, I’m one of the chosen ones,
I made it to Arlington.

And every time I hear, twenty-one guns,
I know they brought another hero home, to us.

We’re thankful for those thankful for the things we’ve done,
We can rest in peace, ’cause we were the chosen ones,
We made it to Arlington, yea, dust to dust
Don’t cry for us, we made it to Arlington.

For those out of country that don’t know what Arlington is, wikipedia is useful and often translated.

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It’s nearly time for bed but I honestly don’t feel like sleeping. I usually don’t feel like sleeping this time of night, been forced into the darkness for so long, that it is nearly light. But in the same light, it will shortly reach a point where I’ve gotta sleep if I’m ever going to get up early tomorrow.

Generally my livejournal serves to record my experiences, and snap-short my trains of thought, even if such is usually done under an unstable state of thinking :-/.

I best just go to bed, probably will be awake ubtil after dawn as it is; and that means operating tomorrow without any decent sleep period. Then again, I’ve been known to do that… lol

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Lately I have really been thinking of different things, of one, I suppose the best choice of word is “Expressiveness”. You could say, my family has its fair share of issues… I at least have never really felt loved or cared for, so much as “just here”; I’m sure such is not the reality but if it isn’t, well let us just say there is great disparity involved in our concepts of such things, between mine and theirs. Anyway you slice it, the things that make me, ‘me’, are just generally not welcome.

As such during my life, I’ve generally sought different forms of expressing myself; always without care of who gets it and who doesn’t, because I need to be able to let it find an outlet.

In my youth I used to doodle incessantly, perhaps if things had been different, and I offored the same opportunities as my forbearers; perhaps I might still spend time drawing. Perhaps I might even have developed the level of skill at it I desire, something profitable might even have come of it (my mother studied as a cartoonist). I always loved to draw, it was a great way to just let my feelings, my imagination: let it all take shape and roll away in it’s own directions. When I got older, I started to write more often then draw; less expensive on the equipment (particularly as more modern computers became available) and easier to shield myself from areas of potential censorship. I can’t stand repression, and I hate to see or allow others to feel repressed; I do strongly value discipline and order of course, but I do not deal in absolutes either. I am an avaricious reader, once I learned to read they had to take the books away from me… and I still would be found under the covers with a sci-fi novel hidden away hahahahaha! Since the finances for satisfying my tastes ran out years ago, I haven’t read much over the past few years :'(,. I’ve always liked immersive stories, one of the reasons I so dearly loved Dune was the hours of intellectual thought it offered. With my imagination, I also like writing short stories from time to time, but do not consider myself as having any actual talent with the English language. Having been forced into a world where if it takes more then 5 minutes to write, it will likely end up an hour-long project, I have also learned to type very fast – thinkspeed, and to opt for speed over accuracy or correctness, out of necessity :-/. In the past few years, I’ve often put my thoughts to ‘file’. I think in some way, I’ve forever been influenced by King David, by way of my times in bible study. Although I was quite literally the “Odd man out” of the group, they are considered like THE best bible study group in this place. The stimulation and depth of thinking was always the awesome part of group time…

In more recent times, I’ve greatly fallen in love with programming computers and designing things, source code is almost like poetry in a way. While I reckon it might sound odd, but I do have a soft spot for poetry (with a point). I don’t think I can really describe how I feel about programming, unless you know and understand how it feels. Reading code, writing code, and understanding code; it can all tell you a lot about someone I guess. The only problem is you might just have to be versed in the same art to comprehend any of it.

Ever more increasingly this past year, I have been wishing for a way to explore the world of music deeper. Unlike most of my friends, I’ve never followed such things very greatly year after year. These days however, I can’t stand a silent PC, and can probably bicker with my old wings about the cause of that o/. I’ve developed a stronger interest in music, but have no real means to explore it properly. I do gravely regret never having learned to play an instrument, but it is probably best that I never did; since doing so would have meant an even worse living hell, growing up in this family! If I could change the sands of time and bend it to my will, I think I would learn the Violin. Why? It just seems to be the most natural fit. I doubt if I will ever have the chance, and it would take years of quality practice before I could ever play such an instrument at the level I would seek, let along the open sentence to be solved: expressing myself though it. and I reckon, that music has different meanings to different people. For the time being and likely the better portion of my life, I must be content as a listener. Yet, I sorely wish I could let what I am feeling flow through in such a way.

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I had plans for about 4-5 entries today but just not enough strength for it :-/. It’s been one of those crazy / hectic / mess of a days! The only nice part was an hour or so of SWAT before work, most of which passed peacefully.

I’ve had to work most of the day, double or triple wammies are abound lately, and having to deal with family through it all (ugh) does not help things. To top it off, I’m basically working the next several weekends. Right now, I can’t wait for tomorrow to arrive: not because it means going to work sooner but because outside working hours, I can actually have some time to MYSELF, time that’s not under the thumb of any pain in the ass but my own whims, subject to the obvious numeral unno overrides from the heavens above.

I spent most of the work day like most others, thinking. There’s just no real mental stimulation in the crap I’m stuck doing, so it leaves my mind free to drift away: sometimes this is good and sometimes it is very bad. In today’s case, my thoughts have dwelt most strongly on where I would *rather* be, or should I now say, would rather have been 8=). To just sail away from the things of man, stick my toes in the sand of some sunny beach, layin’ there in trunks & shades with a cool drink in hand, and not a care in the world, beyond sunburn that is ^_^.

Aye, a spider can dream…. been much to damn long since I’ve had any major rest and relaxation, let along a proper vacation lol. Ahh, it would be so wonderful with this weather but unfortunately the distance is, oh what’s the word, prohibitive? I’ve been on the move so long lately, I can’t freaking think straight anymore. I could really use some solid down time but that’s not gonna happen, short of a miracle. As it stands, it will probably be August before I can stand down for a while, and even then it will likely be just an intermission between burn outs… sigh.

I am so tired of just passing the time away.

Writer’s Block: Dog Day Afternoon

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The Dog Days of summer, the hottest days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, start today. What’s your favorite thing to do in hot weather?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

Laugh at people who moan that it is tooo hot out xD.

I grew up in south Florida with like a normal temp of 90F and being soaked to the bone by the time you cross the parking lot. When Georgians cry about the heat, is when I especially ROFL, because it doesn’t have that intensity to the sun, like back’ home.

You know you’ve been programming to long when ….

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you can miss-read “You don’t know whether they’re laid out from left to right or right to left in memory”, as “You don’t know whether they’ve been laid …”, and then can’t stop laughing lol.

O.K. I think I have seriously been sitting in front of a computer wwaaaaayyyy too long for one night…….

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This morning H.R.P. scheduled an appointment for the cheapest eye place in town (listed in the yellow pages of course) and canceled work for the day. I reported last nights findings and we ended up instead at what is likely the most experienced of the two most ‘suitable’ places I looked up. On the upside of using the Internet rather then the yellow pages, was finding a coupon, haha! Plus being able to download, print out, fill out, and therefore skip filling out the paper work in office. After everything was sorted, ma went out shopping (I refused to comply), whilst I tended to trying to enjoy what little time remained. Personally, I think she likely took more joy in going shopping then she would have in getting paid from work lol.

It has been maybe a decade since my last eye examination, so I knew what to expect but not quite the level of outcome. The doctor was exceptionally nice and I would recommend the place to others here. One thing that I very much like about people practicing locally over a franchise of some sort, you know if they are horrendous they would be out of business quickly. I found them professional and easy to communicate with; it’s also nice when they have a sense of humour :-).

The general outcome, my vision sucks for distance but they have yet to figure out why. Once my glasses are ready, I do very much wonder just how big a change it will make, these are the eyes I was born with: there is no other form of vision I can compare them to, unless someone wants to loan me their eyes for a few days o/. 2 weeks after getting the glasses, I’m supposed to go for further testing, which I *hope* happens. Then again, I also hope my toe eventually gets medical attention… :-/. On the subject of frames, that basically took all of 3 minutes. I don’t care very much about how they look so much as how well they work! You could say, I strongly believe that form follows function. The glasses are fairly plane, and I most likely rather then having the super geeky brain, I will now also look like a dateless nerd lol. Then again, I’m not sure if one can avoid that with glasses, unless you are dumb as a ….

My brother who was not even present, has succeeded in making my mother feel like 2 cents (a family super-power), ragging on the doctor and his practice, and bitching about the frames without even seeing them. My response to that? Well, to quote Doc. Holiday as portrayed in Wyatt Earp: all you can kiss my rebel dick! I make my own decisions, period – don’t like it, then put up and shut up.

😉

OpenArena – addictive Quake III style!

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Finding myself a bit light on time today, is tarted looking again at the ioquake3 engine with an interest in playing around with it. Of course, there is nothing better then a real world example – I tested Urban Terror and OpenArena, two games based on ioquake3 and Quake III: Arena game play. Urban Terror applies modern weapons and equipments but beyond that is not really a realism game IMHO. OpenArena on the other hand, sticks close to the core—it is as Quake like as the game play lol.

OpenArena is addictive and you can just feel your brain cells rot away as you engage in the carnage! The game is fairly simple and straight forward, you spawn, you run around, you blow people apart (gibs all over), oh yeah, and there are power ups here and there. Really, there isn’t much more to say about it then that, other then it is strangely enjoyable; no wonder the Quake franchise has made millions.

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Ahh, sitting here with my foot in a pale of water & Epsom salt, laptop for the music and the dog for company lol. Fools Gold also just started, so I’m set for the next couple of hours. I love this movie, you can’t beat a good sense of humour xD. Fools Gold also reminds me how difficult it can be to get someone out of your life…

Just got out of RvS, figured it would be best to soak my foot now so I do get some sleep tonight. On the upside though, I don’t have to get up early tomorrow, unlike the rest of the week! Down side obviously being that I’ll be workin’ later hours tomorrow :'(. Today’s job was a headstart on Thursdays work load, all the heavy crap is starting to come out of the wood-works, sigh.

Continuing my hunt  over the eye glasses issue. H.R.P. has taken out a loan to deal with the cost, and it was the toe issue that pushed things over the edge lol. Ok, so many I should be thankful… if this thing ever heals correctly that is. Most people would use the phonebook, me? I use something called the Internet for my initial scouting ;). As usual I started with the cities website (more useful then most folk here would ever dream) an dhave since moved onto Google Maps. The best eye doctor I know of is quite a distance away, so local research is required. Seems that there are at least 4 optometry practices here, at least 2 of which look suitable. Interestingly, it seems that one of optometrist also comes from Ft. Lauderdale—as do I lol.

Ahh, I love the internet, who needs to dig out a copy of the yellow pages anymore?

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So far experiments continue with SWAT 4 performance issues. Deeper testing has shown that it is no longer connected to graphical issues, not when running on my current hardware/driver config; nice to be able to max out the graphics online *and* in single player.

What happens is periodically when moving through an area, I get a stutter-lag-warp like motion: as if the whole game stopped spinning and then suddenly unlocked. The only consistency I’ve noticed is it happens when entering a region of the map that I have not been in previously—or have not been in for a while. One thought is that perhaps it occurs when the cache must be updated with stuff that has already been moved out of the games memory cache. My machine has RAM to burn so I have been testing the game with various cache sizes, but don’t honestly expect any positive result. On modern machines, cache size shouldn’t matter to much with the Unreal Engine 2.x lol.

Atm I’m defragging a few disks, maybe that might help a little. I don’t know if it is just the much greater frequency of crashes with Windows XP, or that NTFS really sucks that much worse then FreeBSDs UFS2 system. But for one reason or another, my windows file systems always end up very highly fragmented. Although on the upside, unlike Win32: FreeBSD does kind of encourage you to fsck afterwards hehe.

Hopefully my experiments will yield some fruit, and I can stop warping all over the place lol.