Never been one to let the carrier drop

I apologize for my lack of journal entries. I’ll try and be better in the future. 😉

I also apologize for the lack of quality in my last journal entry. Here’s my list of excuses:

1) I’m sick
2) I haven’t written a journal entry for so long I’ve forgotten how
3) I’m very upset by current world events
4) I’ve lost all my brain cells
5) I suck

S.

Look, I know I have a tendancy to oversimplify things. But it seems to me that it’s not particularly difficult to determine if a action has at it’s root peace or war, love or hate, unity or disunity, respect or disrespect.

I say this because one of my basic, core beleifs is that peace and love are desirable attributes, not just as long term goals but as short-term, day to day goals. I realize that I don’t always achive forwarding these goals (Sorry, lux) but I do make a effort.

There are people out there – a suprisingly large number of them – who seem disinterested in peace and love. Some just on a personal level, and some on a national-politik level. These are the people who lovingly caress their guns, looking forward to the day that they can again stand up and pull the trigger. These are the people who start flamewars on mailing lists, just because they can.

What I don’t get, and I know I’m oversimplifying this, is what motivates these people?

Some people get personal satisfaction out of war, I know, in the same way that I get personal satisfaction out of strategy games. It’s bigger and more fun if it’s real, they say..

Some people delude themselves into thinking that every war is about ‘national security’. Some of the ways they do this are downright creative.

And, some people just get off on hate.

I just don’t get why.

Could someone please explain this to me? Explain wanting to direct your anger towards another person, so I can truly get it? I joke about axing dubya, but I could never pull the trigger and all my friends know it. I can’t actually make myself feel the emotions that would lead to the death of another person.

I wonder if that’s part of army training. ‘You’ve got to be carefully taught’, as the song goes. Can you teach people to hate? I bet you can.

You are 62% geek

You are a geek. Good for you! Considering the endless complexity of the universe, as well as whatever discipline you happen to be most interested in, you’ll never be bored as long as you have a good book store, a net connection, and thousands of dollars worth of expensive equipment. Assuming you’re a technical geek, you’ll be able to afford it, too. If you’re not a technical geek, you’re geek enough to mate with a technical geek and thereby get the needed dough. Dating tip: Don’t date a geek of the same persuasion as you. You’ll constantly try to out-geek the other.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Sleep. Need sleep. 😉 [just got back from DefCon (yesterday) – vegas is a lot further from Seattle than SoCal ;-)]

S.

1) Charge digital camera batteries
2) Clean out car
3) Insert seats in car
4) Investigate possibility of bringing keyboard. Weigh PITA against possible entertainment value
5) Go to bank (before 5p)
6) solder voltage regulators into MK3s and install CPUs..

To pack:

Radio charger
Radios (CB, 2 meter, FRS)
AVR programmer board
Megas
Video camera
video charger
Keyboard (?) and PC speakers (!)
Clothes
Food [hit TJs for those Thai bowls!]
Water

1) Las Vegas, NV
You have got to be kidding me.

2) Honolulu, Hawaii
Too touristy

3) Little Rock, Arkansas
WHAT?

4) Albuquerque, New Mexico
They must mean some Albuquerque I’ve never been to..

5) Sacramento, CA
Okay, this one I can kind of see

6) Portland, Oregon
Hmm…

7) Las Cruces, New Mexico
I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of this one..

8) New Orleans, Louisiana
I imagine some of my friends find this amusing.

9) San Diego, CA
Again, I can see this..

10) Hartford, Connecticut
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been there..

And.. apparently it didn’t quite make the top ten..

11) Orange County, CA

I don’t think I trust this report. Anything that didn’t list OC at all but listed Las Vegas? If it wasn’t for defcon, I would never go to Las Vegas – frankly, the place scares me..

It amazes me how many people who used to be regular talker users now use livejournals instead. I guess it proves that we weren’t really listening to each other or something – except that we all comment on each other’s journals. 😉 So maybe it’s more like we find non-realtime a more conveniant way to interact. Which I guess it is.

A old friend told me that my journal was too dull looking, and that I needed a icon. Problem is I can’t think of anything that iconofies me.. ah well. I’m holding a contest, the winner gets something or other, what should sheer use as his LJ icon?

Well, I’m still here. I realize I haven’t had much to say of late – that’s because I’ve been in a strange sort of mental stasis. I guess I was avoiding actually thinking in the hopes that if I stopped, my life would go away. Or something.

I’m again working on the software for the mk3 boards, after quite a while of slacking. And qm.sheer.us has gained a average of one feature a day – at the current rate, in another year or so it might actually be pretty good.

Met with what may become my band the other day. Kind of a unusual situation – we all played every instrument.. [as in, I did one song on guitar, one song on drums, and a few songs on keys.. ] – I liked the vibe, and both the guitarist and the drummer seemed smart and leftward-inclined.

Speaking of leftward-inclined, I got a call from the guitarist from my *old* band [old here meaning when I was 18 or so].. I’m starting to think northern virginia poisens people’s minds. First Leeper, and now him – The quote I like the most is ‘I hate to think what would have happened if Gore had been president for Sept. 11th – he probably wouldn’t have done anything’.

Um, exactly.

So, let’s see.. which is better – killing a bunch of innocent people through disrupting aid efforts while completely failing to kill your target, or doing nothing.

Hrm. That’s not a very hard one, now is it?

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In other news, I note with some amusement that all of my doomsaying of past years is finally coming around, and the stock market is falling like a rock. Whups, I guess it wasn’t just the dot coms after all. In fact, as it turns out, some of the non-dot-coms were bigger con jobs than the dot coms.

I find george bush talking about financial accountability and responsability rather comic, though – I mean, here we have a guy who would almost certainly be doing time for a long list of things if the public ever found out a list of his crimes.

Anyway..

Quote from a story on MSN:

U.S. President George W. Bush said last week Washington would use all tools at its disposal to topple Saddam. He has branded Iraq part of an “axis of evil” supporting terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction.

Sometimes..

WE MAKE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.

WE DO.

Not Saddam, who may have some unsavory habits but probably couldn’t make a intertial guidence system with all the resources at his disposal..

Hell, he couldn’t even buy the silicon needed. Last I looked, his people can’t even buy antibiotics. And I don’t think there’s that much uranium in iraq.

We’re evil.

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Actually, maybe everyone’s evil. Wasn’t taht the tenant of some of the early christians? Mankind is fundamentally evil? Seems likely that it’s true.

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