:: So It Is Written... ::

:: Monday, July 29, 2002 ::

 

ok, so I haven't written in a while... been a lot going on, though... had to try to figure out the rest of my life in a matter of days... finally got a job offer in colorado to teach astronomy to freshmen, so I accepted, and listed my advisor as a reference... upon hearing I had a job, my advisor decided to make me an offer for the job that I've been after for over a year now... (despite the fact that two days earlier, he assured me that he still didn't know if he could give it to me or not). problem is, the research job is only guarenteed for one month... and if I didn't take it, someone else would... and it would probably be renewed for another year... so after some soul searching and fixing a burn out in my brain, I had the idea of taking both jobs... and it turns out, that's what I'm gonna do... take the full teaching assistantship, and then half of the research assistantship... it means working my butt off (yes, I will have no butt by Christmas), but I do get an extra $675 a month (minus taxes). extra money is good :) all of it has to be approved by the dean, but that should go through....

work sucks... nothing new there...

Deedee came down this weekend! :) it was good... I have to brag a bit for her, though.... her driving has infinitely improved. :) not that she was a bad driver before or anything :) but it was a smooth ride this weekend :) My first experience with a stick shift driver was carpooling with Roy in D.C. He had that BMW for 3 years and it still made me sick every morning I rode with him... Deedee's had her car for two weeks now and drives much much better than that :)

gotta run... more later

:: posted by Tmber :: 4:40 PM ::

 

ok, today's quote hands-down belongs to my brother. I asked him to look in the phone book for a place where I could take my car to get the alignment done.

Quote of the Day:
"Is your car or truck running red lights, driving over pedestrians, or exceding the speed limit? Not any more! Come on down to Sunrise where we will realign that bad boy from chaotic evil to lawful good!" -- Caleb

:: posted by Tmber :: 12:10 PM ::

 

this bothers me... no matter what combination of stuff I use, I can't seem to build this computer (S1642, $589) cheaper than I can buy it... That sucks... it's never happened before... I still can build high end computers cheaper than I can buy them, but now I can't build my parents a computer cheaper than I can buy it... For the first time ever, my family is going to own a computer that I didn't personally put together... not sure how I feel about that :)

yes, I got hit by a semi-truck yesterday... twice... I would tell you the whole story , but manda ruined it with her whole "CHAD ISN'T HURT, but he did get hit by a truck" approach... :) See, I prefer the "I was stopped on the interstate and got hit by a semi-truck, twice! same truck!!! oh yeah, I'm fine" approach :) sounds better that way...

oooo... lunch is provided by the office today... always a good thing when bosses have birthdays :)

more later... gotta work... busy, busy, busy...

:: posted by Tmber :: 1:01 PM ::

 

ok... It seems to me that everyone did, in fact, miss the point, and it feels like it set off a string of attacks in my direction. HIV and Seasame Street... Yes, puppets are asexual... I know that... my point was entirely missed... I'm not even sure people got as far as to read my point, so let me just repost it here... "the way to teach children NOT to be prejudice is NOT to go and make a big deal about how "different" and "special" some group of people are". I even restated it here "Kids are tought to make that distinction, they're not born with it."

So now let me discuss my point. Let's use another seasame street example... anyone remember this song/game? "Three of these things are just like the others, three of the things are almost the same. One of these things is not like the others. Now it's time to play our game, it's time to play our game." Now most of the time in this game, you see four kids in four corners... Three of them are playing games like football, soccer, and basketball, and the fourth one is decked out in a poncho, holding an umbrella. Now why is this such a big game for kids this age? Simple, they haven't learned to isolate differences yet. Now, what if you stuck three white kids and one black kid in those squares? Now you begin to teach children that "one of these things is not like the others" and that black kids are different from white kids... a concept completely foreign to that child. (barring parental intervention, which I will address shortly). So now lets take four white kids, but give one of them a sign that says "HIV"... Now what does that say about that kid? Now maybe we begin to see my point... maybe not, because as someone so kindly pointed out "people are .... stupid".

Now, the problem comes in with parents. Parents are the ones who teach kids to be paranoid about what they don't understand... yes, kids will fear what they don't understand, but complete ignorance is not fear... complete ignorance is bliss.. A 4-year old will never understand, so why scare him? When they become mature enough to understand, then enlighten them... That's where the sex ed comment came from. Children that young will never understand, so why try to teach them about it? It was all on an episode of Southpark... Anyway, that's what parents should be doing... Problem is, parents are stupid... parents are uninformed and stubborn... they relay their stupidness to their children, who, not understanding, fear...

In short, yes, I understand in some parts of the world it is more important to force an understanding of mature issues on children to young to understand them... However, by attempting that, you send more signals to an impressionable child than you mean to, and you stand a good chance of getting it wrong. ("this different unique person is no different than you"... confused? what if you were 3?) Things of this nature should be dealt with on a child by child basis and should not be covered by blanket education from mass media. The ultimate burden is laid upon the parents. Lets face it, if a child is being raised correctly, anyways, a parent should have far more influence on a child than any tv character.

That's my little perfect world... if you don't like it, find your own...

:: posted by Tmber :: 9:56 AM ::

 

wow... what a rain... it rained good here.. a small flood, actually :) I think brian said it best, "I thought God promised he wouldn't do this again" lol... standing water on all the roads and the one leak we got in the entire office was directly over the big boss mans comfy leather chair! lol...

I went out driving in this mess to pick up tickets (which weren't there) and got to have lots of fun driving through lakes... one part of rasco was almost completely flooded and I hit Lake Rasco going 35 and it instantly stopped my car... fun stuff!! I almost got to live out brian's life long goal of splashing someone driving down the side of the road, but a pesky telephone pole stopped me... it was fun... not sure if I've ever seen water spewing up from a man hold cover before... it was coming up about a foot and a half out of those little holes... was cool... anyway, had to stop playing and come back to work... ::sniff::

Now, through all the lightning and everything, we had no problem with the electricity, but Reeves-Williams did have a scheduled electrician thing today (not sure what he was doing)... Now, anyone familiar with computer hardware, or anyone who has ever worked in tech support is familiar with the term "power cycling"... ok... power cycling a computer is bad... power cycling an entire building is just funny... err... really really bad... knocked out a couple of computers and the air conditioning.. :) good thing I'm leaving in 12 minutes and counting, eh?

Also... speaking of tech support... I turn the corner to walk back to my office (when they guy started power cycling the building I went up front to watch the secretaries panic), I hear the following conversation:

Blonde Secretary: "oh my goodness, I've never seen this before. What does it mean?"
Secretary 2: "I don't know, I've never seen it either, but if anyone can fix it, this man can."
At this point I entered the office and she was pointing at me... so ok, looking at the monitor I see this "No Signal. Check monitor cable." duh...
Blonde: "So what does that mean?"
Me: "It means your computer is off"
Blonde: "So what do I do to fix it?"
Me: "Turn your computer on"
Blonde: *blink*
Me: "Push the power button"
Blonde: "oh... ok"

At that point, I left... I do hope she managed to get it...

6 minutes... then I get to go... :) 5 minutes... see you on monday.... or maybe sunday if you're brian...

:: posted by Tmber :: 12:58 PM ::

 

doesn't today's MT just say it all?? :)

:: posted by Tmber :: 11:12 AM ::

 

busy busy... meetings suck... well, not all meetings, but boring meetings suck, and all meetings are boring... yeah, exactly...

so on the way to work this morning, I heard something that disturbed me... and no, it wasn't the fact that justin timberlake has given up britney spears for Janet Jackson... Seasame street... yes, seasame street is going to introduce an HIV positve character next season... What the crap?? kids that young do not need to be concerned with stuff like that... they're learning ABCs not HIVs... What stupid, politically correct buttkissing adult is running that children's show now? What's next? Gay puppets? Lets offer sex education for toddlers watching seasame street (Southpark anyone?) I mean, dear God, the way to teach children NOT to be prejudice is NOT to go and make a big deal about how "different" and "special" some group of people are... Kids are tought to make that distinction, they're not born with it... man, I could go on about this for several hours, but I really better not..... I have work to do.... ::flies off::

:: posted by Tmber :: 11:01 AM ::

 

ok, that's it... no more, and I mean no more Nevercrack for Chad.... at least not after midnight... and no starting any games after 11:30... I swear that game alters time... and no saying "just let me finish this quest" or "just until I get this next level" or "oh, I haven't been here before... I'll just map it out" or... ya get the point...

I will say that nevercrack is nothing like crackablo... in crackablo, you want to be surrounded by people so you can just click away and kill them all..... not the case in nevercrack... you get more than a couple of people around you, and you die... I tried to run away from someone and end up attracting the attention of every badguy in the city. I had to run around and take pop shots at them when I got far enough ahead... I had about 12 people chasing me, and I managed to kill about 5 of them before I led the entire group back to the guards at the gate... I've managed to pick up at least a half dozen subquests by accident, and dad gum it, I need more gold... this whole one-gold-piece-at-a-time crap just doesnt' cut it when it costs 50 gold to teleport back for healing... ok, ok, I'll stop rambling...

played warcrack last night, too... I have to say that it is most challenging... brian and I played against 1 computer and died a couple of times... ummm, meatwagons are cool, and 4 autocasting master necromancers behind your attack will help you destroy towns in a single attack :) so far my favorite unit is the gyrocopter... but there are still lots of units to click on... and I have to say that the sayings are a bit more mature this time... :) sayings like the necromancer's "I loooove undead.... often" or the dryad's "I'll just use the human mating call... I am sooooo wasted"... well, you just have to hear them all :)

well, back to work for me... not that I have any work to do, but that's another rant entirely.

:: posted by Tmber :: 11:54 AM ::

 

hey, Mississippi has moved to the 5th most powerful state as far as computing power goes... Miss. State is ranked 10th most powerful university in the US, and they have a single computer that is 68th in the US and 128th in the world... They call it EMPIRE and it is massive... over 1000 processors :) take a look at it here...

so what's the top computer in the world? This is... oh my God... a Petabyte of storage... ::dies:: ::revives:: ::dies again:: ::speaks from the dead:: That thing is more powerful than all the computers of the DoD and DoE together.... ::dies again even though already dead:: can I have one?

:: posted by Tmber :: 3:29 PM ::

 

Now, for a more personal entry... I thought I'd put this separate so if any unnamed persons wanted to link to a specific entry on my blog, they could link to the cracklopedia without wading through my life....

My computer is up and running now... Thanks to Krys, Dave, Deedee, Caleb and Chelsea (believe it or not), and Brian. There's still one or two things not quite right with the system, but I'll fix it with time... Krys talked me into installing XP dual boot with 2000, so I'll test both out for a while and choose one later... Krys and David also talked me into installing Nevercrack on my computer, and I've already lost 3 hours sleep... did I mention I just got it installed last night? I had to check it out and make sure it ran ok, and when I Iooked up, it was 2:30am... stupid game... I was looking online a few minutes ago for info on the DM mode, and I found out how to break a character.... set stats, set gold, etc.... I don't care about the gold, and I'll level up normally, but I wouldn't mind grabbing some dice, rolling up stats, and then setting them in the game to what I rolled... No 40 str, but if I roll a 17 or 18, I'd want that on my character... As the game stands, I could only afford two 16's and a 13... how stupid is that? They should have either started the base stats at 10, or let you go below 8 so you can take negatives to buy higher stats... I wouldn't mind having a 3 intellgence for a barbarian or a 6 charisma for a dwarven fighter if it meant I could have 18s in strength or con... I might do that... not sure.... you do have to set a flag in some config file that will let you play with altered characters or else you can't go through the game normally.... I don't know... would it really be cheating just to set your stats to something you rolled up legally? any thoughts?

Well, I would say work is going good, but it's not going at all right now... I started to do real work today, and then got stopped by the big boss so he could go over somethign I thought he went over weeks ago... so I'm writing on my blog (duh)...

This weekend was lots of fun... got to spend lots of time with Deedee :) We went on our first date two years ago yesterday :) Of course, it wasn't a date then, we were just two friends going to watch a movie and eat some food... Then again, there was at least one nameless person who called it pretty good and said that if we ever did start going out, this would be considered the first date :) Unfortunately, Deedee and I couldn't do much Sunday... she had to drive back, so we went out friday night... We went out to eat at Jack Binion's down at the Horseshoe.... I think I picked out a pretty good place to eat :) Of course, they were having an off night and we each had to send our steaks back... Deedee's was over cooked, and parts of mine were raw... so I sent parts of mine back to be recooked, and Deedee got a new steak... no, not steak... more like thawed cow... :) The salad was good... They serve fancy salads, and I asked for a basic iceberg lettuce with carrot salad, and they whipped one up real quick... amazing fresh... I almost enjoyed the salad more than the steak :) I feel bad that we didn't get to do more... a movie, a concert, bowling... anything, ya know? We saw powerpuff girls, but that was later and doesn't count... I owe Deedee a night on the town sometime or another... Maybe the fact that I bought a car helps a little :) We did exchange gifts afterwards... Deedee got me one of the best cards I've gotten in a long long time, and she got me a sword! :) It's a cool dragon sword... Full tang, and the dragon actually comes out of the guard and wraps around the tang forming the handle, but you can still see the metal beneath it... it's very cool and very original... I've never seen anything like it and I like it a lot :)

Well, I might write some more after lunch, but I'm gonna run for now... need food... later

:: posted by Tmber :: 12:26 PM ::

 

ok ok ok... several people have noted that the encracklopedia is not quite complete... let me explain... those were just common cracks that brian and I play... there are many more that warrant entry into the encracklopedia... I'll list what I can remember here, please correct me or feel free to mention games and I will consider them for entry... :)

BattleCrack - Warlords: Battlecry
Crackablo - Diablo II
EverCrack - Everquest
NeverCrack - Neverwinter Nights (new addition)
SandCrack - Dune 2000
StarCrack - Starcraft
WarCrack - Warcraft III

Now, I know there are more games that could be added to the encracklopedia, but I can't think of them... and some don't quite fit the mold, so I'm not sure if they'd go on the list... Every game on the list has at least two votes of approval, so below are other games that get played a lot but don't quite have crack status...

Baulder's Gate - Bauldercrack?
Bushido - crackido? (i hear that with a beavis accent) slashin'crack? (get-up-little-dude-you're-not-on-fire-crack?) :)
D&D - dicecrack?
Final Fantasy (2,3 (4,6), 7, 9, 10) - no-sleep-fail-school-get-fired-crack?
Jeopardy - no good crack names.... I can only think of crackpardy (crack party, where?) and smartcrack, which makes me think smart@$$crack...
Magic - cardcrack?
Monopoly - monocrack? crackopoly?
Scrabble - scrabblecrack? wordcrack?
Spades - brian's-parents-always-beat-the-crap-out-of-us-crack?

as you can see, there are several games not on the list that still get played quite often... so what games have I missed?

:: posted by Tmber :: 11:51 AM ::

 

ahhhhh... my new motherboard won't fit in my case... ahhhhggggrrrrrrrr..... atx motherboard... atx case.... why does this not work? stupid case... so now I need a new case... not an expense I had planned on when upgrading my computer... The only reason I'm not fretting it too much, though, is that as I started typing, I got a call from the insurance adjuster, and they are sending out a check tomorrow to cover the full cost of my old blow up computer :) Did you know a PII 400 is worth $1248? Well, mine is anyways, I don't know about yours :) It's actually not too far off, ya know, when you take into account the new powersupply, SB Live Platinum 5.1, GeForce4, and all the other crap I managed to cram in that computer.. Now it will have room to grow in it's new case... as soon as I get one...

sorry I haven't written lately, I've been busy, and yet I've had nothing to say... I get to see Deedee tomorrow which is really good :) I also get to go pick up a bug today... should be fun :) Read Deedee's blog for details :)

warcraft 3 comes out today ::drool drool drool:: more crack, more crack :) WarCrack... oh yeah, the updated cracklist.....
StarCrack - duh
WarCrack - Warcraft III now
BattleCrack - Warlords: Battlecry (They have II, but it hasn't made the list yet)
SandCrack - Dune 2000 (a new addition)
Crackablo - Diablo II

Any questions? There'll be a quiz next week...

:: posted by Tmber :: 10:43 AM ::