Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, I’m not feeling particularly too cheerful this christmas. My back hurts, I can’t seem to wrap my head around religion and I’ve this nagging fear that there’s this guy with a pitchfork and horns gonna do a lot of ass kicking when I die..

On the other hand, I made the Mushrooms of Goodness today ™. Unfortunately, I ran out of salid oil and had to use olive oil, and it’s olive oil that’s gone a tad stale so they taste a bit of stale olive oil, but they’re still tasty and they still make me feel somewhat better about life.

I’ve also been enjoying Buffy – we’re almost done with it, and I’ll miss it, but the good thing is I got to see Once More With Feeling again. Ah, such a good episode – take note, all television producers – make at least one episode that is a musical. Does the Simpsons have a musical episode? If so I must make a mental note to download it..

In other news: Prayer, apparently, is thinking words in the general direction of God. This either means that God is monitoring our thoughts all the time – a act of somewhat questionable morality – or can sense when something we’re thinking is directed heavenwords – I guess when you’re omnipotent, doing things like that isn’t a particularly big deal, but it seems quite the impressive stunt to me.

My dreams have been getting stranger lately.. one recently had quite a good, all original soundtrack, including trance and house music – and here’s the amazing bit – none of which I’d ever heard anywhere else before. So apparently I have a midi sequencer in my head just like Mozart. Or else some higher (or lower) entities are injecting messages there. Or some combination of the two.

I have enough hair for a ponytail. I guess this is good news.

Me and Kayti went to visit her family in Colorado, which went mostly without incident, and my family in South Carolina, which also went mostly without incident. (I don’t include my family pointing out that I’m fat, which is obviously true, that I’m unique, which sadly probably isn’t [they somehow manage to make unique into a insult, something I wouldn’t think was possible], or the ‘peace’ which my uncle gave me as I left which I’m just going to assume he meant literally, since trying to figure out if I should be offended for a satorical version is more effort than I care to put in.

My family on my dad’s side I think is thoroughly tired of having kids who wish it was still the 70s, and occasionally insist on acting as if it was. But, hey, from a free-love and peace-love-hope-lets-stop-the-war standpoint, the 70s were my kind of decade. Of course, from a fast networks and really nifty information bits and freedom to say whatever you want in a public, searchable forum, the year 2004 does me quite nicely.

Anyway, so let’s just say that the visit with my family went well, for a visit with my family. (I can rest fairly safely assured that they don’t read this, aside from my mom occasionally, because I suspect they’d really rather forget what I’m up to. I have this nagging feeling the opposite might be true as well. Might be the ‘support our troops’ bumper sticker and the american flags and whatnot.)

I read some of Al Franken’s latest book. Apparently it’s just as well that I’ve been completely ignoring the news and mailing lists and whatnot, because if I hadn’t been, I’d be having heart attacks about the horrible things Bush is doing. But I’m looking the other way and figuring it doesn’t concern me, which probably is another offense that will have the guy with the pitchfork and horns standing over me shortly after I die, but that’s neither here nor there.

Argh. There must be some literal biological difference between liberals and conservatives, just as there’s some literal biological difference between gays and straights that we haven’t found yet. (I’m so annoying, thinking gays are gays because the software made ’em that way, and that maybe it’s our world’s automatic reaction to overpopulation)

If anyone wants the recipie for the yummiest pickled mushrooms in the world, just ask.

Anyone for a game of kitten poker?

I really want to think I’m not evil. But I’ve broken people’s hearts through gross incompetence, I’ve no idea what I want, and my back hurts and I’m really inclined to drug it into submission and beyond. ANd I don’t particularly feel guilty about that. Why couldn’t the human software designer have included a ‘okay, acknowledged’ signal for pain?

I want to be happy.

I hear they make drugs for that too. Maybe I should try some happyzac..

Oh, and I’m writing a novel. I’ve got about ten pages so far, but it’s a start. And I will finish it, and I will publish it on my web site, and no one will read it, and I’ll get bloody depressed about that. And it will have always existed lurking somewhere in the digital equivilant of infinity anyway.

According to The Wikipedia, the HitchHiker’s Guide series sold 15 million copies. This worries me because there are 6.4 billion people on earth – which, even if each copy has been read 20 times (a generous estimate), only 4% of the inhabitants of earth have been exposed to Douglas Adams. This would seem to be a serious oversight.

[Interestingly enough, that 4% includes my mother]

As a side note, he died of a heart attack while working out. If this isn’t a good reason not to work out…

For those of you who don’t already know, I recently became the owner of a second-or-possibly-thirdhand enormous stuffed tiger named Khan. It’s always fun watching people react as they come into the living room and find him there, sitting on the couch. He’s a fairly realistic looking stuffed tiger (I thought he was life-sized, although I’ve been informed that real tigers are a bit bigger than he is.. still, he’s large enough

Well, that was a fun bit of frustration. Mysteriously, it works if I use a dynamically created object, but not if I use a static one. Go figure.

In a bit of home-construction-work the other day, I created a replacement window facing for the heat pump.

ANd now I’m listening to the Funky Ceili, which lately has been stuck in my head, especially during sex. [Hm. That’s not a song you want stuck in your head during sex. People getting inadvertantly pregnant, castrated, and shipped off to New York.

And, I’ve ordered another heat pump for the office, so I guess I’ll be creating another one. I bought a handheld reciprocating saw, which has to be one of the most satisfying (if hard on the back) tools ever. The last time I used one was when I was building the EV to remove large chunks of the rear to make room for the battery boxes. They go through sheet steel like a blowtorch through butter.. 3/4″ plywood is a little trickier, at least until I found the speed control.

Anyway, so, the end result wasn’t the most beautiful thing ever, but it keeps the window from leaking, which is the important thing.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

So, I’ve completed my most recent project, only to discover it won’t work in WinCE, even though it works beautifully in unix. This apparently has something to do with the Embedded VCE linker being the most braindead beastie on the planet.. even though I’ve generated a valid DLL by anyone’s standards, whenever I try to link to it I get LNK1136: invalid or corrupt file (aka I have no idea what to do with this file, you want me to glue it on?)

Whenever I try to statically link using the .lib version, even worse things happen. Like, when the DLL gets loaded the application hangs in system calls unidentifiable.

(tears out hair)

I note that texas has a ballot initiative to define marrage as between one man and one woman and make recognizing any other relationships similar to marrage illegal. It’ll probably pass, too, texas being texas and all. (We are talking about the state that is proud to have brought you dubya, after all)

Why must people spend so much time in other people’s bedrooms?

I got most of that out my system. It’s amazing how much fun you can have with two MC505s and a DJ mixer. I want to write some patterns for them and go out somewhere in seattle and do my own show this way. All my equipment would fit in a small car, if I just brought a couple of 450s, the DJ mixer, the microKorg, and two 505s.. and I could *rip it up*. I kept a solid 20 minutes of bangin’ psytrance going without dropping the beat once.

I know that Grei would look down on the DJ mixer I have (it’s a Berengher DJM-700) but for me it’s a incredibly nifty mixer. I’m really not clear on what the difference between it and the pioneer is.. it’s about as noiseless as one could wish for, and all the faders are VCA, so waht’s the big deal?

There are times I go for brand loyalty.. but most of the time, I just want things that work.

IN debt beyond all possible belief, and yet I’m tempted to buy a bunch of house records and a pair of turntables and learn to be a DJ

What is wrong with me?

It’s amazing how little I actually knew about the Bible. For some odd reason I’ve always felt vaugely resentful of Christianity – perhaps because I was forced to go to church – and so I never actually learned until very recently what it said.

I’m still worming my way through the new testiment. Who knows how condemned the whole book will say I am.

Sorry. I promise that’s the last religion that will appear in my journal for at least a week. 😉

I’m done beating my head against the problem of what religion I should be. For now, anyway. I have no idea which of the world’s religions are right. I hope that God really does forgive. I hope that love wins.

I’ve been doing some hardcore coding again.. I seem to be doing okay at it so far, although my attention tends to wander more than it used to.

I am trying to grow less selfish and more open. Who knows how successful I may or may not be.

Kayti tells me I was talking in my sleep last night. When she woke me, I had no memory of a dream however.

Trying to get back to a day schedule. Haven’t been too successful yet, but who knows..