My dreams haunt me, the memories of the past chase me… hopes of the future torment me.
Am I sane or insane? Does it matter…
My soul longs, the spirit is strong but the flesh is unable to endure.
My pain surrounds me, like a wall of razors
Each to an end, each to a beginning.
I grow so tired of the runners stress.
Yet peaceful shores lay so far off.
Is there nothing to comfort me?
I see again that face in my minds eye
that which haunts me
of the love lost
what future could have been?
oh is there no end to it.
The heavy weights come crushing down
my bones creak and fray
but refuse to shatter
the struggle never ending
the escape is null
while the path lay shrouded in darkness
the road back bleak as the distraught.
this eternal business no longer serves its purpose
my feelings overcome me
my mind trashed, heart rended loose.
fear, uncertainty, doubt are but trifles.
of anger and sorrow
nothing else to give, nor to take
only one thing remains
I stand alone against the onslaught
but not truly alone
yet my strength is week,
I have little more to resist with
the temptation is strong
the mind cracks and buckles
and the body flows
but only an empty sorrow prolongs
tis to which end?
And what fate shall lay before
to one road lays death
to the other, does my heart reside?
only time will tell
as I try not to fail
I crumble ever so
but unyieldingly remain
to struggle on to an uncertain end.
hope is like a sword with two edges
it lends the power to survive the terror
yet it cuts as deep as the bone
surrender is not a ranger word
though I be not one, my vocabulary is the same.
the ability to give up is not mine
to the true path I seek
to stay the course and fail no more
until that fateful day comes
when I become one again
no longer spread to the winds
but to a bright future bound.
— the ravings of a lune.
TODO: Make Packages
build on test machine, transfer to laptop:
GIMP
Qt4
PyQt4 ?
probably inkscape
logic:
kolourpaint doesn’t go far and krita is not a program I’m formfotable with
I’d like access to Qt4.3.3 on my laptop rather then just my desktop — compiling under windows is not fun compared to a unix box that includes a compiler, debugger, editor, make, and most every thing else to start with 🙂
Some times it pays to be single
Well usually my Grandfather sends me a check for my Birthday and a check to split between me and my Mother every Christmas. It didn’t come for Christmas so of course my mom took him off her card list, yeah you could say she’s like that 8=).
When he noticed that the checks was never cashed he had my Aunt call and resend them so… $400 arrived today. Normally I split things 50/50 with my Mom and the Christmas check usually is sent for both of us. I’m not going to say what I usually do with my share of the Christmas money less any one start thinking I’m a nice guy :
According to my estimates we spent it at a rate of about $130 an hour LOL.
I figured I could get the memory card I’ve had on my brain and stop buy and ogle the Digital Cameras and Printers at Best Buy. I didn’t find the 1GB Kingston card I was looking for but there was a 2GB SanDisk one for the same price plus a cheaper 1GB one from PNY (makers of my nVidia GPU).
When Ma saw there was actually a few cameras for $99.99 she was interested in (finally) getting one. Because the family camera, uhh predates digital cameras by 2 or 3 generations of de facto standard film? I wasn’t very set on buying one initially but, why not when there’s finally a chance to afford it lol. So I got myself the 2GB SanDisk card and went back for the 1GB PNY so there would be one SD Memory Card for transferring my files and one for using in the Camera.
We got a Nikon Coolpix L11 Digital Camera. It’s a compact 6 Mega pixel one with an LCD on the rear. I think I like it, first time I’ve ever used a digital camera really. I find it a little hard to aim using the LCD Monitor on the back because I’m used to the old family 110 film using camera for which my own is a similar model I got as a kid. It had the view port in the centre of the rear lined up with the lense and the flash to one side of it. So even if you couldn’t see crap you at least knew what you were aiming at ^_^
I’m no Peter Parker when it comes to photography but I think I’d like to learn more about the science involved in taking decent pictures. Thumbed through the user manual but I’ve yet to play with the new Nikons feature set. I know it can do Wav audio and Mov video and stuff but as always. Either RTFM or play as you go hehe. On this one the flash is centered and the lens is offset towards one side. It’s very nice that you can see what your about to capture on the screen. When I read the manual about how it dealt with pushing the shutter release half way for the AF/blah blah and all the way for taking the shot I was some what worried it would be to easy to by pass the half-push but it works really well.
It’s got the USB Cable and an Audio/Video cable with it. So using regular umass or PTP it should be able to transfer files easy; my Desktop has a 9-in-1 card reader but Ma’s only has USB. This also makes me happy that my Flat Screen TV has a set of A/V ports in back and in front, i.e. DVD and PS2 ;-).
It is technically the “Family Camera” now but I think I’m probably going to be the only moron who knows how to do more then take a snap shot with it without jogging peoples memories (I’m the RTFM guy) lool.
Sadly I was unable to find any reasonable Laser Printers that were not also all in ones. Found three inkjet based Hewlett Packard models, one regular printer and two all in ones. The regular printer was makreed as working perfectly on linuxprinting.org as was the two all in ones but the scanners were not listed as supported by SANE :
I could probably have gotten things going with the one all in one over a Wifi connection but I didn’t want to spend $120 for the sale price for parts I was not going to need (Ma has an all in one). So I took the cheap regular one. It’s just a HP Deskjet D1455 printer but it should work great with HPIJS.
The thing is compact which is great because there is almost no space to put it !!! The paper tray is a good enough capacity because where it’s likely to be put — reloading it will be unpopular for me. I also liked a lot how the Ink Cartridges come in two packs, if they gotta charge ya $30 or so they outa give you a fair deal for it after all. But not only can that you can also get two colour or two B/W cartridges instead of one of each in a package. I don’t do a lot of printing myself so most of the time it is just hard copy. Ma wanted me to get an extra cartridge so I got a pack of 2 blacks.
Me and printers generally don’t mix well, hey I use hard drives for a reason !!!! Namely that I don’t own a filing cabinet lol. I also like the idea because if my mothers printer goes down or needs fresh ink she could always use this one and I do intend to hook it up to my OpenBSD Box for network printing.
Tomorrow I’ll need to fsck with it. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind putting it on my desk here just for the extra space but that is still at a high premium : I don’t really need a printer so much as I wanted one. I also like the idea because ma could use this one for work rather then going nuts buying cartridges for hers if it goes down. She does a lot of B/W printing and her all in one gets very pissy about doing any printing if you don’t keep all colours full which can be bloody expensive in the middle of the month !!!!!!
With the memory cards, I had an interesting problem. Trying to write to the 2GB card made FreeBSD reboot. I used Vi as root to create a new file on it with a test string. The file got created empty as the machine rebooted… After I stuck it in the new family camera and took a random snap shot of my desk. Plugged it back into the box, mounted it and used FreeBSD to view and delete the files – worked perfect, even made another test. Funky but hey, as long as it works lol.
The only problem is while FreeBSD detects my desktops internal USB 9-in-1 card reader it doesn’t seem to find my laptops 4-in-1 🙁 So that is gonna take a little mucking around.
While walking around I also saw some thing by chance, nab’d a Trace Adkins CD which just happens to have my favorite song on it :-). This is like the first time I’ve bought myself a Music CD in 5 or 6 years or so loool. While we were there my mom grabbed a few collections of Johnny Cash so hopefully I’ll get to rip those later xD.
I used my laptop to rip my CD, worked quite well and I’ve got a nice battery of oggs. Konqueror can also do inflight ripping. Just open the CD in the file manager, choose the format (wav/ogg/mp3/etc) and copy the files to your hard drive and it will automatically rip them for you ! I tested it but found it a little slower then I cared for but I’ve got to admit. That is some pretty damn good desktop integration of music cd’s !!!!!
I fed the CD through kaudiocreator and ripped them. I chose ogg because I generally only rip to MP3 when I use Windows Media Player for the deed. I think I might let Amarok finally organize my music collection, it’s small, under two gigabytes but that’s because I almost never buy (or can afford to buy) music. If I had the money to spare and parts of the music industry wasn’t such jerks I think I would probably get most of the songs I listen to on the Radio, on Audio CD. But hey, in this world of DRM and $$$ crazed people I’d rather listen to the radio and skip the on-demand freedom of ripping the CD to my hard drive when it sends more ca$h their way.
I just hope I can get the card reader on my laptop going because I don’t have enough cash left for an external USB one… And that’s the main reason I spent the $20 for a 2GB one. If I dumped ~/Music and ~/Video’s to my file server and maybe my wall papers collection I could fit my entire home directory on this Secure Digital memory card.
For me, it’s just a pest to have to use my file server as the man in the middle if I want to work on files from one system or another. So often projects started on my desktop get done there and ones on my laptop Dixie get done there. Which is probably why the master version of my “home directory” and all personal files are on my laptop along with lots of source code and documentation lol
I remember one time I had money to spend.. I set aside $100 to donate for [SAS]. I’ve always wanted to be able to donate but my personal income is not connected to how much work I do :. It was a good idea… Until my family bled me dry before it could be done.
You could say my family can smell money… lol.
It’s kind of odd that I’m the only one that doesn’t place much value on it. It’s just paper, you can trade it for stuff but not good for much else unless you’re short of toilet paper.
I was able to set aside like $70 dollars or so by ***NOT*** spending the gift money I’d received for several holidays but that got drained to.. I never ask for repayment and with the exception of the $100 I set aside last year… Usually give when there’s a need. My replacement graphics card was bought with the money my mom would have used to repay me for the money I gave her from my schooling. I thought about setting aside some of this money today in hopes of donating some to [SAS] but I knew if I tried that some one would find a way of spending it.. *sighs*.
If I had a steady personal income I could donate weekly.. and without others finding ways to spend it for me :
You know, I think I am glad to be single at the moment.. Not currently involved so no fund fundellation spent that’a way. Because I know what I would do with that kinda cash to spend on that special some one today, ok I can be a bit of a romantic at heart, so sue me :-P. Got to admit, pretty good timing as things happen to be… hehe.
My family would still have some thing to say through 8=). I could always be a bastard and say no.. but I’m not greedy, selfish maybe but not greedy. And my family usually finds a way of being needy whenever I have the ability to be of assistance… I’m not complaining but I’d still enjoy a little more freedom.
I figured, it was about time I spend money on myself for a change (y). I’m $400 lighter but it was well spent and not all of it on me either.
out of $400,
Private expenses:
Printer – $70
Extra ink – $30 (Ma’s idea)
HP Paper – $8
Memory card – $20, $15
1 Music CD – $14
Family expenses:
Camera – $100
3-4 Music CD’s – ?
Dinner – ?
Remainder used as a gift and empty pockets for me again hehe.
Windows will make you bald
Today I had to set my Sister (in-law) with an e-mail account and access to it via my moms Desktop. So of course the obvious question is either she needs her own user account (in windows) plus the e-mail account or ma’s outlook would have to be setup to deal with the multi-login.
So I created the new user account for her, gave her an icon for outlook express next to the recycle bin and internet explorer (v6.x) on the desktop, set a wall paper and user pic (she loves Betty Boop).
Trying to find the docs on Bellsouth/AT&T’s website for creating a new e-mail account was not exactly as quick as I hoped but still easy as pie. I used my PC for that and RvS crashed in the process lol.
On Ma’s PC while logged in as the new user account for set up. I got a pop up from the windows security center just to tell me info I already knew. The Dell Support Center came up too, which we haven’t seen come up in many a year now ! Internet Explorer came up 404 on the pre-set home page (dellnet or some thing) and outlook express gave an error about the computer having no internet connection. Told it to go fsck itself and moved on and arranged for a pop-up less user log in.
Either AOL must have/had an in with Microsoft or a nice hackling plugin because outlook was set to launch AOL Instant Messenger on start up! And a general option for it too, like what the heck man. Now M$N or some thing from Microsoft I could understand but not AIM rofl. Although that PC’s got the good AOL client for AIM, the install is like 3 years old so it’s a version before AOL bloated the thing out. Which is really why I took to using all in one messengers like Kopete.
So I had to get that disabled, change the user picks, change the user names to match blah blah. Norton 360’s added toolbar in IE6 is not exactly welcome by my family — note to self, under no condition allow users to use IE as a default browser if I’m ever tasked with admining windows machines. And ban all Nortan and Mccfee products on machines with less then 768MB of Memory. In point of fact, make sure they pay extra for the psychiatrist bill for working with Windows.
So kicking about with Windows XP, Dell, Outlook Express, and AOL it was no problem to set up. But oh boy oh boy will you never find me using Windows for more then “Gaming” and similar reasons while Microsoft and other companies still are in power.
I’m a Unix man by nature and have a militaristic mind set. I value clear concise no shit assessments and not being nagged by pointless and flashy programs popping up taking several seconds to display only to tell me what I already know or worse try to sell me some thing 8=)
Windows, wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot long cattle prod if I had a choice… Still it’s the only decent platform for playing *real* video games on. Experience has shown the consoles are, uhh I’ll zip my trap before some googler flames me <_< hehe.
This reminds me of why I do not want to buy Microsoft VISA, why my laptop and file server run Open Source unix based operating systems, and why I use few programs that are known to “annoy” me. I want to get work done, I know how to read the fine manual, and software that bitches at the user should be fed through a hex editor, operating systems included 🙂
FreeBSD, now that is a sensible design… it won’t nag you ever ten minutes or so.
With similar hardware specs between my laptop and ma’s desktop, the only other principal difference being I have a Sempron Mobile (AMD budget model laptop CPU) and hae has an early Pentium 4 (when 2Ghz was new and costly). My laptop running FreeBSD runs faster then her Desktop running Windows XP SP2 + NAV and now Norton 360 – even while running KDE on the laptop. Programs like Norton remind me why I’ve heard jokes about system admins automatically having a users quota reduced for trying to run heavy programs on time sharing systems hehe.
A hostage and a hard case
It was a round of Island Estate on Hostage Rescue and unfortunately I was the last man. I had used up my 3 Flash bangs, one getting to the second floor from the stairs in the lobby, one in securing the room/balcony/bathroom area up top. And another in securing the upper hostage in the bathroom overlooking the pool.
Extracting the hostage I went back and checked the room joining the piano room and courtyard together and figured, “crap no bangs” so I jogged back upstairs. I figured if I would have to storm the lower hostage without tactical aids, that end would be the best.. Worst case bursting in and shielding the hostage if one of the tangos would flee rather then shoot…
Crossing the pool room I heard a tango, drew my second kit and realized I took frags instead of gas. Usually I’ll carry 3 Bangs, 3 CS/Tear Gas in Raven Shield or 6 Bangs but for some reason I had 3 Frags. So I said what the hell, lobbed one in the pool room and took it down.
Moved on to the bottom of the stairs right next to the courtyard hostage… MP5 locked cocked and ready to rocket. I figured to have the best chance of success I was going to have to use a frag. It might kill the hostage or injure him but it would at least give me a fair chance of getting inside alive.
I rolled the door open, careful not to flag my muzzle around the door jam as I got the grenade ready (pin out, spoon thing on). I knew there was a partition in the middle of the room and Raven Shield sadly always places the hostage behind it with the tangos walking around the room. I bounced the frag carefully off the wall so that it would land just far enough to hopefully be far enough behind that partition that it wouldn’t kill the hostage, RvS is that way lol. Realistically I would’ve expected shrapnel to go through the partition and injure the hostage at a minimal.
I stormed in after the frag, MP5 up taking down the tangos. There was two behind the hostage, using him as a shield as it happened. blew the one away with a stream of deadly taps and kept the last burst going until the final suspect was down for the count. Circled around (I was still in front of the hostage) and kicked in to the side bedroom with the hostage trailing me and gunned down the last threat. With like 2 rounds left in my MP5, I drew my Sig P228 and ran like my pants were on fire with that hostage all the way to the LZ before any threats could pursue us from the courtyard. I was not going to press my luck poking my head out !!!
The room looks like this, the X was where I put the Frag, the H is the hostage, and the T’s are where I found tangos.
_____________________________
| me [stairs] |
|___[door]__________________|
| | |
| H T |
| | T |
| -------|----[door]-|
| X | |
| [door] |
| T | |
| | T |
|_____[door]____|____[door]_|
I was standing right next to the kneeling hostage when engaging the two tangos in the one room. So I guess you could say I used the human shield against them lol. The tango in the other side room I took care of by flanking around the partition and in through the door from the side where I placed the frag (X).
Some of us older troopers in [SAS] have thought about using frags to clear the room like that, but from the opposite side of the room. I’ve even done it once but this time I was really shit out of luck, I contemplated restarting the round for a moment but decided it was not my way, and kept going till the end.
To be honest, I don’t want to have to EVER DO THAT AGAIN !!! Clearing hostage rooms with frags is crazy. But hey, when you’re between a rock and a hard case why not go down with a bang? Uhh frag lol.
Broken hearts, broken glass
sigh
There are a few family heirlooms that are mine, most of which belonged to my father and have been given to my by my mother over the years. Tonight as part of the operations to rearrange my room into a suitable working environment I’ve lost the one I love the most.
I put my fathers candy dish on my new “desk” along with the sacred heart statue (one of my mothers most treasured from her collection) and a small one of Matthew the Apostle (a gift because of my middle name). I figured, safest spot there is available while I work and my laptop was like a half a foot away, although with a major pile of stuff on it lol.
There’s a simple cloths hanging thing, basically two polls on rollers with a crossbar to hang shirts from, the darn thing is well known for falling apart and in fact has been leaning for months :
Trying to move it to get to my bookshelf, for which I plan to throw out the remainder of as my old friends stand is now there… The rack came apart, the one poll narrowly missing the sacred heart statue and the crossbar impaling the lid of the candy dish :'(
I would rather it have hit me in the heart then strike that dish.
There’s at least 6 or 7 large pieces of the lid and tens or hundreds of smaller shards. The glass was mostly just on the floor in one area and on the side of the desk. Both sets of my spare sheets were also close enough to catch glass as they were right next to it. So I can’t even change my bedding tonight. I vacuumed the area and most of the room as well as blocking it off so the dog can’t get there. With luck maybe my mother can glue the bigger pieces of the lid together… That’s what she did with Babies top. A very small oil lamp, I think my Grandmother busted it (her mom) and she glued the pieces back together.
The actual dish (bottom) is fine and the contents are too aside from the shards of glass. But the top is fragged. My father used to keep his keys and things in it. And so have I for about the last 10 years (that I’ve had house keys lol) along with some of my more personal items. Of all of the things that I have, I’ve always loved this heirloom.. I’ve always tried to protect it from damage, it had one lone chip in the lid and until now I’ve been able to keep it safe. I think it was my great grandmothers, I know it was from the farm and like over a hundred years old.. In fact I’ve only ever seen another one like it in my life.
My mothers not killed me yet, maybe she knows I’d do it myself if I thought it would help : but I know my Aunt (Dads sister) would fracture me if she was here and he’d probably break my ass with a belt if he was alive, although in that case it would’ve happened in the first place…
The most important items I have in this world, that dish, the radio, and the gramophone… all of which are much older then me and have been in the family for generations… Heirlooms even before they were passed onto my Dad I would reckon. It’s long been my hope that some day I would have the means to restore that radio to working condition. I doubt that workable vacuum tubes and replacement parts would be around by then even if I knew how to do it but hey, a man can dream can’t he?
I’m sorry pa…
Writer’s Block: Last Night’s Dreams
What did you dream about last night?
Live Journals Writer’s Block
Oddly enough a subject on my mind lol, dreams :
At first, the pilot of a ‘Mech on some sort of commando run. Like a cross between the RX-78-2 Gundam and a VF-1 Valkyrie. I remember I ended up walking into an ambush, knocked out half of the enemies flight pods but trying to retreat back to cover. Resulted in a pair of Gundam Sandrock like ‘Mechs piloted by famous magicians trying to make minced metal of my ‘Mech, each with dual heat-sickle swords in hand.
Closed in and took them down point blank with Hyper Bazkooka, Shield, and Beam Sabre.. What an odd way to deal with the threat lol. Get close and get “in your face” with a bigger weapon <_<
After that it changed to a DOOM like setting in FPS mode. I remember coming to the end of a corridor over looking an area with several small structures with zombies, deamons, and imps in infantry formations on guard. I remember jumping and doing the walking in/out of sight trick to pick off enemies using the Super Shotgun (double barreled), the trusty chain gun and plasma rifle.
Strangely I find myself often dreaming about games. Especially stuff in the light of SOCOM, Syphon Filter, and Raven Shield / GRAW / SWAT. The Doom, Quake II/IV, Aliens, and various others of course making the rounds too.
I must admit though, I find the issue of programming and the graphical work involved (code wise) for such games quite fascinating. But sadly to complex and time intensive for me to study on my own :
reminder: 3d card specs
http://www.neeyik.info/3dspecs/
very good link, thanks mage
A classic
Just watched Red Dawn on TV tonight, first time I’ve ever seen it actually.
Needless to say, you don’t fuck with the Americans: We’ll put a cap in your ass.
The movie lays out a real nightmare scenario, a political shift in Germany pushing NATO into collapse, Russia in a massive enconmic disaster and the USA a land ripe for the plucking so they thought… The “Wolverines” proved for then an annoyance to the occupation forces. Supposedly as World War III kicked off most of Europe sat our their duffs watching the Russians and the Americans slug it out. While the British remain the only loyal friend on the US side.. much to the comment “they won’t last long”, I’m sure some one thought that during world war II hehe. And that China ended up getting involved on the American side, based on the drop from a Billion to 600 million or so “screaming Chinamen” mentioned it’s probable that the the tactical nukes were’t limited to the invasion :
The beginning of the movie is down right unnearving. The kids sit in class listing to a lecture about Atilia the Hun as Soviet paratroopers land outside. Shooting the (unarmed) teacher as he approaches and firing RPG’s into the school.. War is one thhing but slaughter is another.
A small band high schoolers flee into the hills and resist. When townspeople are executed in retaliation for the Wolverines actions they launch a counter attack killing the a group of executioners and wreaking havoc on the enemies rear lines. Going so far as to dar to bomb an HQ under the noise of the guards.. The passing of coded messages over the radio, one heard in the Longest Day in point of fact does suggest they were not the only ones giving them a run for their invasion money.
An interesting tid bit from the IMDb’s trivia section:
“The film’s replica Russian T-72 tank was so precise that when it was transported to the studio, two CIA agents followed and wanted to know where it had come from.”
Hahahaha !!!
Restructure and Refeeding
Well, got some work done.
Completed the change over (mostly) from a single hard-coded dialog for handling the output of processes to being a subclass of a display builder like parent class. Python doesn’t support abstract classes as far as I know or even private members for that matter (but has a nifty name mangling like thing for a making a naming __convention).
The original reason I wanted to do this is I figured that A.) The class was cluttered with code common to any ol’dialog window and B.) The rest of it was just specialized for the task of running a process and nabbing it’s output.
So I moved the common code into the NPM_AbstractDisplayDialog class and wrote a NPM_ProcessDisplayDialog subclass of it to replace the original NPM_DisplayDialog which also will allow me to use a similar dialog for other tasks without having to duplicate the code they would share if I was to implement another like-wise class in parallel. Because for example the NPM_DisplayDialog class was setup to ensure the process was neutralized before completing it’s termination I setup NPM_AbstractDisplayDialog::aboutToDie() as a signal to connect a slot from my subclass(es) to be called to do clean up, basically an advisory destructor you could say. And I connected it to the button to call QWidget::close() to this slot so aboutToDie() is sent when the dialog is about ready to be terminated.
I also found a fixed a small error in the pkg_info parsing, things like that is some thing that most concerns me.. lol.
Now the remaining problem is I’m starving and it’s 0746 Zulu (that’s 0246 local morning)… Must find food, then I guess I should get some sleep :