Holy Crap!! It's Sunday!!

It's sunday, and I still haven't posted yet. Good God do I ROCK!! One thing is for sure though, this whole experiment with blogging has given me a better understanding and respect for the people who do this for a living.

For instance, my web-comics. It's come to my attention that I don't even READ my webcomics as regularly as the creator creates them. Now this is arguable that the creators job is to create and entertain while my job is to be a code monkey, and therefore we have different focuses and direction. Although I must say, I WISH I could read my comics more regularly.....DAMN YOU CORPORATE WEB-FILTER!!! DAMN YOU!!!

But, just for entertainment's sake, I'll share a couple of my more favorite comics that help me deal with the gravity of the situation in regards to my own geek-ness. A quick list follows:

• Penny-Arcade. My favorite for many years
  
• Ctrl-Alt-Delete Behind Penny-Arcade, but still freaking awesome
  
• Sluggy Freelance. Yet another that I've been reading for ages
  
• Real Life Comics Amazing what a person can do with Illustrator
  
• Something Positive One of the few "Not Gamer Related" comics I read
  

Now these are just a few that get me through the week, I'll probably update sometime with a complete list. That or, once I actually finish my website design, I'll have them all linked up there under my "Influences" section.

Peace brotha!
~M.

EDIT:

I forgot to tell you, Amazon's got cheap Xbox 360 wireless controllers, although I'm sure you've found them already. Just figured I'd throw that up there for the hell of it.

God Bless us, thank God it's over!!

W00t!! We survived yet another year! Well not yet, but very soon at least. I have a perfect record so far at breaking my own schedule! Not only did I not get my first post in on Wednesday, I completely humped the week in the ear by completely blowing off any posts what so ever. In my defense, I was futile-y attempting to install the 64 bit version of either Ubuntu or Debian on my new computer system at home. Not only did I manage to not get either distros to install completely (or partially for that matter), but I also got a crash course in the inner workings of file systems (ext3 to be specific) and linux swap "drives".

As to rub the whole situation in my face, the 32bit version of Ubuntu installed beautifully. It was exactly what one expects when installing Ubuntu. Kubuntu, from the Ubuntu base, installed and ran. This being said, it ran, but it didn't run great. All of the KDE cute little animations ran smoothly, but when you brought up a window, and tried to drag said window across the screen, it lagged and or jumped like I haven't seen in an OS for ages! I checked out the specs on the system, and I was utilizing about 70% of the processor, and almost a full gig of memory! Now this may or may not have anything to do with my problem, but I did think it was plenty weird. So needless to say, all my free time now is being spent pouring through the Ubuntu forums trying to figure out what the hell's going on.

Speaking of my new computron, I have to geek out over it for a little bit. Ahem. *cough cough* I GOT A NEW COMPUTER! Yay for me. Anyway, this year I decided to go with a Dell, because given the situation (I did some contract programming for a firm, and rather than give me cache, I whored myself out for computer hardware.), it was easier just to send them the specs on the system that I wanted, and have them ship it to me. The other reason that I went with Dell was that they finally are "building" computers with AMD processors. So I picked me up a Dell E521 with a AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2 gigs of ram, 320 gigs of HD space (for all the pr0n ya know), a 19 inch Ultrasharp LCD monitor, and an ATI x1300 pro. I know the card is a little weak, but it was the best one that they had available, and it beats the living pants off of the old radeon 1700 pro that I was using.

Ok, I feel better now, and I have a feeling that, given my neurotic propensity towards geek-ness, we'll be revisiting this topic again. So with that, on to Christmas.

I hate Christmas. With every fiber of my being, I despise the holiday. There are some people in the world who just say that they "hate Christmas" to sound cool, or feed some anti-social urges, but in all honesty, there are very few ANYTHINGS out there that cause such a violent and uncontrollable loathing as Christmas. I probably sound very bitter, so I'll explain.

In any given Christmas, there are 2 unavoidable factors, Family and Tension, and both seem to feed off of one another, creating a series of days that go down in personal history as "The Longest Days of my Freaking Life".

I was recently married, and I used to joke that the best way to handle in laws was to marry an orphan. I should have taken my own advice. Without going into great detail, any time family is together, it is tense at best, and nuclear (as in explosion) at average. There is no one in the family apt at "Just letting it go". Everything is seen as a personal attack, and counter to those means.

For instance, we had the in laws over for a nice supper last week. The father and 2 brothers were sitting in the living room watching TV, the youngest son gets up to get a soda and steps over my dog. Now Ms.Tinklepants (name changed to protect the innocent) is a weird dog and freaks at the weirdest things, one of which is someone stepping over her. So the father and the older brother take it upon themselves to chastise the youngest, vocally and severely. The problem, it's My Dog in My House. Once again, I'm sure we will revisit the topic of in laws many times in the future, so we'll just let it go at this.

Then there's tension. As in any marriage, there is plenty of tension as 2 people learn to live with each other. In my wife's own words, I am a stacker (I find comfort in making logical piles of corresponding and related items) while she's a sorter (neurotically labeling everything in it's own box inside a bigger box of labeled items). She's also a control freak (which is weird because she prefers to be controlled "in bed"), while I'm too apathetic to be controlled. She's the kind of person who has her Christmas shopping done a full month ahead of time, while I sit there on the day before the day before Christmas going "Meh, I'll figure something out." You can just about imagine the fireworks that come from a combination such as this.

That being said, I need to get back to work, so that I can pay the Christmas Bills (yet another "benefit" of the holiday).

Neurotically Yours,
~M.

A Liar already.

Glad to see that I can completely not stick to anything that I say, and completely lie to myself about a posting schedule. Sunday is not Friday, not even in my personal reality. But I suppose on the flip side, it's better late than never. How will I ever forgive myself.....OK I'm over it.

As it was, rather than attempt to post on Friday and use company hours to fulfill myself on a personal level, I ended up heading over to 1up and reading an article that they had posted that rang some very intimate bells with me. Life's managed to sneak up on me here, and I am a part of the first generation to grow up with video games playing an intricate part in my life. Hell, video games even made one of the biggest of "Life's Decisions" for me, what I wanted to do when I grow up (create video games, and thus I went into technology and programming).

This being said, Life has managed to sneak up on me. Up until this year, I had lived a relatively relaxed existence, with a minimal amount of responsibility, which was exactly that way I liked it. It all started with a realization, in the form of a birthday. My 26th birthday to be exact. All the way through college, one of the euphemisms that I threw out with much chagrin was that "Life ends at 26. I mean what good happens after you turn 26? If I have my way, I'll never have to worry about it" Then suddenly, I WAS 26, and was stuck metaphorically eating my words. Not only did life NOT end @ 26, I didn't feel any different at all, in fact I still felt pretty youthful.

A few months later, while going through the junk mail, I received a "Random Survey" that promised to send me $5 for filling it out and sending it in. I have made it a personal trait to not turn down free money, so I sat down to fill it out. My second epiphany came with this survey. Name: XX XXXXX. Age: 26-32. Right there. Without even knowing it, I had slipped out of the youthful demographic(18-25), and joined a completely new Age Demographic. It was official, I wasn't young anymore. I now joined The Middle. I think I hid in my room for a week.

I found solace in a place that was warm and comforting, and didn't care that I was approaching "Half way to 60" (for those who are bad at math, that's 30), my Xbox 360, and Gears of War. Somehow, splattering digital avatars all over the screen (and getting splattered myself) seemed to ease the pain, and I came to a conclusion: Sure I'm getting old, but because I'm getting old does not mean that I have to give up what makes me me. For as long as I live, I will continue to geek out over hardware upgrades. Never will my monitor not be adorned with my Little Yoda.
Sure we as a generation are growing, but we're still the original, and I myself will continue to play on. I just might have to balance a little more. The Wife does kind of frown on All Night Gaming Sessions, and until Halo 3, I'll just her have her way.

Peace and Gibs,
~M.

A promise to you, my Unreaders.

So on Monday of this week, I broke down and created this blog, as much to humor a personal friend of mine (to protect his identity, we'll just call him Chewbacca) as to humor myself and in turn waste some of the desperately long and meticulous hours that we call a "9 - 5 Job" that is such a necessity these days. Unfortunately MY 9-5 turned into a "7:30-5", but I'm sure we'll get into that eventually.

Anyway, after quizzing Chewbacca about the "blog-o-sphere" and the intricacies that make up a "blog" let alone all that goes into "blogging", and it became apparent to me that right off the bat I need to set an initiative. And then stick to it.

As you all know, the first is the easy part. Hell pretty much every day I wake up with initiative. Pretty much the first thought on my mind is "Today I am not going to hit the snooze butt.....ok maybe just once." It's the sticking to it that is a pain in the ass.

So here's what I propose to myself (especially considering that it is myself alone that probably will end up reading the vast majority of the writing here. And if per chance, someone is unlucky enough to stumble upon my literal haven, I sincerely apologize), the absolute minimum post rate is 2 per week. One on Wednesday, and one on Friday. Monday's suck because......well I don't have to justify this, we all know Monday is the worst day of the week, and then there's Tuesday. What good ever happens on Tuesday? Microsoft releases patches on Tuesday, and that might be all the excitement that one needs on a Tuesday. And then there's Thursday. With a Monday / Friday post schedule, use Thursday to build up the anticipation for the wonders that you read on Wednesday, which are nothing more than a precursor for the Friday post. And for my next act, I'll stop child labor in Malaysia.

Anyway, I must get going, Peace and be well.

~M.

Wow, I finally did it.

Here I am. There was no way that I would have guessed this morning as I rolled out of bed (at an awesome 5:00 in the A of the M), that I would break down and finally create my own blog. As I am currently at work and wasting me some good company time, I'll just go ahead and keep this short and sweet (because when you work for an Orwellian company, Big Bro's always right over your shoulder. ;o) ).


Tell you what, I'll come back and post more later, maybe tonight. Hopefully I'll update this significantly more often than my actual website eh?

Peace, love, and orgies!
~M.