Cars
I heard somewhere that 15% of the American economy runs on or near the automobile. I wish I could track it down online. Europe has a marvelous transit system. It all depends on how much countries invest. Some cities in the US have a good public transit system. Those are not countries. How much do you spend on your car, or cars? I'll bet it is a fair piece of your income. Some of you might pay more for your vehicle than in taxes. Remember to include your insurance, maintenance, tires, tickets, gasoline and Armor-All. Think of the transit system we would have in America if even a sizable slice of that was spent on rail.
I'm bias. I can't drive. I'm sticking to my guns. What we have now sucks. OPEC has us by the short hairs. There are cars that get 50 miles to the gallon. No one wants them. Every one wants a gigantic SUV. I heard a study on the radio that says automobiles have become the faction accessory to replace shoes. People own different cars for different occasions. It makes me ill.

View from Scott's office
We have a nature preserver behind our building. It isn't really a nature preserver, but it is thick with trees. Scott's office looks out from the first floor under the company. In the morning if you turn off the lights it looks like a cave looking over a lake scene. Between that and the candy he keeps on his desk, it almost makes it worth talking to Scott. :-) (kidding Scott)

Days
It is just going to be a challenge every day. I'm not missing anything. I have to remember that. When I'm upset, that is a normal feeling. It is valid. Things piss me off. I should act pissed off. Things are going to make me confused. That is motivation to learn.

New Mobile plan
600 minutes and unlimited nights an weekends with T-mobile
365 days in a year
104 weekend days (52 x 2)
365 - 104 = 261 full week days
261 / 12 = 21.75 weekdays per month
600 / 21.75 = 27.5 minutes per weekday
600 minutes per month sounds like more than that.

First Order of Business
We have a guy up here who comes in every morning and if, as is often the case, he has left his coffee cup somewhere, he hunts it down. The last few weeks he has participated in software testing and had to track someone down who has the key to the lab to get his coffee cup.

SWEET!!!!
Dr. Who is coming back to British TV. It is only a matter of time before it makes it's way to the states. If Overnet has anything to say about it, it will not take long at all. I'm such a Dr. Who fan. I remember staying up late on Saturday night just to take in the crappy special affects (let's jus face it shall we). The acting wasn't always great. I liked the sidekicks too. They were always kind of funky. They never seemed to fit in to society. Like me. I hope it still has that beyond reality feel that it had in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Some of the first Dr. Who episodes were in black and white. The first time I played with a music keyboard and heard all the sounds that it made, I realized where Dr. Who got its sounds. The laser beams and the funky aliens in rubber masks, or hiding under trash cans with flashlights (torches) strapped to their “heads” made the show a classic. I hope they make the new show with some of this in mind.

Tattoo
A friend of mine, who has been on Earth long enough to know what's up, told me “Don't get a tattoo. Every old person I know regret getting theirs'.” The thing is, I don't intend to ever get old (in the Peter Pan sense). I have thought about a tattoo for fifteen years. I have waited this long to choose what I want on my body for the rest of my life. It is easier to get a divorce than get rid of a tattoo. My last marrage lasted about 18 months. We only knew each other for about a year. I've given this one fifteen years of thought. That means I should get twenty five years of satisfaction. That puts me at about sixty. By then, they will have talking video tattoos like on Futurama.

Tattoo
I have figured out what Tattoo I want. I have given my guardian angle quite a bit of grief over the years. I would like to get a weeping angle. Sitting a bit slumped on the floor with her head in her hands and her wings formed a bit around her like a mother bird might surround her chicks. I picture brown straight hair wrapping around her arms as she weeps for me. I'm going to give myself a little while to think about it before I pull the trigger.
Who knows a good artist?

Sympathy Camera
I want to get a new digital camera. It is $500 or so. I don't need it. I've been going through a rough time lately. It is just plane stress. I never learned how to cope with stress. Anyway. The camera is sweet. It has all the features I want. The trouble is, I just don't need it. I'm going to wait.

Wireless Routers
I've bought three wireless routers in the past couple of months. They are from three different manufacturers. They are all four port wire switches with 802.11b wireless access points built in. Here are my results.
Old non-wireless NetGear : This router, “The Iron Horse” as I like to call it, has a metallic case and as performed flawlessly for years. If I didn't need a wireless router, I would not be trying to make something else work.
Wireless NetGear : This router has one of the best interfaces for maintenance. The trouble is, the wireless portion of the router dies after about fifteen minutes of use. No matter what I do I have to recycle the router to make the wireless connecter kick in. I'm currently using this router because I get the best Overnet numbers through it.
Wireless Linksys : This router has a crappy interface for maintenance. It also lost it's memory every twenty four hours and required a complete reprogramming. This is typical of Linksys equipment. They all suck. Now that they are owned by Cisco, I believe Cisco sucks too. if it is smaller than a refrigerator from Cisco, don't trust it. Josh asked to try this router out. I tried to warn him.
Wireless D-Link : This router has a nice interface. Every about thirty seconds the wire side of the router disconnected for about half a second. This makes Overnet run at about three kilobits for download speed. That is very bad. it is like slamming the door shut on the computer's fingers at it is trying to do it's job.
Summary : Wireless routers Suck.

Mr. Deeds
I was watching Mr. Deeds while typing this up. The scene came around where Deeds asks every one what they wanted to be when they grew up. People said Firefighter, veterinarian, and cool stuff like that. I wanted to be self sufficient. I wanted to depend on no one. I wanted to work for a living and support myself without help. I suppose I am exactly what I wanted to be.

Best use of P2P
All the stupid gaming sites have delays on their free downloads unless you pay them for the no delay Bastards. I've found that I look at the file name and size, then fire up Overnet to get the download. It is faster than waiting through the artificial delay. Sometimes the delay is over an hour for the download to start. I understand the need to make money. There is no right to make money in the United States.

Wallpaper
I found a wallpaper for my computer at work. It is just an aquatic plane on a lake or a river with bunches of moss floating around and what might be a moose or a tree stump on the edge. I like aquatic planes for some reason. There was some TV show on a million years ago that had an aquatic plane flying around.

Life is Short
I'm going to give up DND. I need to concentrate on Tpro. The whole game point thing is driving me nuts. Adam, the DM, wants to balance the field somehow and it just isn't going to happen. It isn't fun anymore. They are all a bunch of game-ist engineers. I'm a narrative-ist.I was screwed from the start.

Day Job
Yesterday I was on my way home from the day job with all these aspirations of getting some code done. I got home and was dead asleep in 15 minutes. I woke up at 1:00 AM and have been up ever since. I'm groggy.

Tat
I need a tattoo. What of though? I've considered Marvin the Martian, "God - Family - Freedom", a dragon, a cross, a gnome, a fox (my spiritual animal), and others. What is best? A friend of mine has a nice centipede on her arm. She has a chaos symbol, but I can't say I like it as much. Most guys get tats on their chest or arm. Some women like ink on their lower back. I'm sticking to my upper arm. I saw a Cops episode that had a nasty chick with an ivy all over her body. It was disgusting.

Lunch
A buddy and I are heading over to Whole foods for lunch. There is this guy who makes the sandwiches there. I haven't learned his name, but he is a big fellow and makes big sandwiches. When he is on sandwich duty, we don't need to get a bag of chips.

Written 2003-09-10
I keep catching the company I work for asking software venders to patch old versions of software. This is like taking a 72 Mustang to Ford and asking them to add airbags. Buy a new car.
They also demand that complex programs be written I Visual Basic because the managers can read the code to figure out what is going on. That way they can lay you off in the middle of a project. I've wanted to ask a million times "If you walked into a mechanic's and said 'Fix my car, but don't use any socket wrenches.' do you know what look would be on the mechanic's face? ... This one right here."
Managers only understand hours and dollars. They are not aloud creativity or reason. I just got back from lunch. All we did the whole time was dump on management. This company is in trouble. Then again, all big corporations have similar problems I'm sure.

Written 2003-09-11
It is September eleventh again. The news noted there were less people at this years anniversary. I keep hearing phrases like “We will never forget” and the like. I just don't believe it. We Americans hold nothing sacred. It is raining outside. I remember 9/11/2001 was clear and sunny. I remember leaving work early because I wasn't sure how the buses would run in the afternoon. So much has happened in two years. I've fallen in and out of love again. I've started a business with friends.

Family
My cousin wrote a book called Blood the Masquerade, The Story of Ryan. I'm on chapter seven of thirty four. They are short chapters. That must be a trend lately in printing to make up for out ever shorter attention spans. Her book is about vampires. She has some medical background that shoes in the book. So far, so good.

Work
I'm at work sitting in a darkened mini-computer lab tapping away at this entry between tasks. I feel a bit less alone typing a message to the masses. There is a window in here and the sun is on it's way up. The window looks out on the parking lot. I can watch people scamper about on their way into the building. Someone just came in the lab and asked a question. My solitude is broken. No big deal. It had to happen sooner or later.
The tint on the window is more clear at the top. There is an overhang protecting the upper window from direct sunlight. This building is twenty years old. How long is window tint supposed to last?
I looked at my earth. It says nine eleven. A slight chill runes up my spine. Its been two years. My watch is analog.

I look tired
One of the guys up here who's wife and he just had a baby said I look tired. He asked what was keeping me up and I had to say "two jobs". I feel tired. I've been a grump lately. Nothing a week in a Caribbean brothel wouldn't fix. (I'm kidding Mom) It doesn't help that I'm in the midle of a dificult project for Tellro an my day job. I can handle the Tpro stuff, it is the corporate crap that gets tp me. More ovet, it is the personalities that get to me. When someone asks me who my bos is here, I answer "everybody". It is getting old feeling like the only indian sorounded by chiefs.

<Fiction>
This is story told by one who knows the history of the Borg, and his here to relive it.
While encounters with the Borg are still rare, the time line we have chosen for ourselves runs mirky from lost lost memories. The Borg are a problem that might have ended mankind in a few generations. That was not to be. We had to fight for our existence. We will have to make a decision that will end all of a living thing, everywhere. For all the creatures that have come and gone the Borg nearly survived for the lack of conviction.
The Borg didn't start as we know them. The Borg are a consequence of peace.
When an intelligent being wants to control that which is too simple to out-smart, too small to squash, that being wants to control disease, cure cancer, mend bones, repair tissue, enforce laws ... the last is the Achilles' heel.
When we finally defeated the Borg, wiped them out, we learned much from them. The most useful contraption acquired in our trial are nanobots. They do all the things listed here and many times more. There were creatures, I'll call them people, from a time before mankind who desired to eliminate disease and make themselves live lives free of injury and pain. Some say they wanted immortality. The Borg nearly obtained it. To this end they wrought upon the fabric of life, nanobots. A name a child might call a new toy. Striking terror at first for the fear of joining the Borg, then becoming part of our existence the nanobots will simply chose a new host, us, from which to extend their legacy.
It takes a short while, after the Borg leave our sight, that we want the life without pain or fear of injury. We find some mistake made by those people so long ago. They tried to use the source of their salvation to control those in their own world who did not fit in, criminals. The nanobots, used for communication in the military and civilian life had to be changed to control criminals. The nanobots had to be made to dominate the host. There had to be a central point that dominated the criminals. This collective mind would allow one voice to overcome the individual. The trouble is, one lone designer of this new system failed foresee the disastrous results of testing on himself. The very instant the nanobots in his own blood realized a new, a superior way, a new religion among the machines, they told other nanobots. The path was simple. Tied to everything, inside everyone, in an instant the seed of the Borg was sewn.
</Fiction>

What do you think?

Movie
I'm watching Reservoir Dogs. This show is all about choices. It is a cliché that our lives are just one long line of choices. They make up who we are. They determine whether we go to heaven or hell. They decide how much money we make. The whole bit. I could make a choice of finishing my program or watching a movie I've seen fifteen times. Well, guess which I'm doing.
Work was nuts. I had to call in a vendor to fix their own software. It turns out they had updated a database for some guy named Mike at our our company. We ended up identifying the trouble and I put up a quick fix for the weekend. I'll double check everything Monday. That was a choice. I made it and now come the consequences.
Last night I came home and collapsed. By the time I got home, I was so wiped out that I couldn't see straight. (even less so than normal.) I was in la-la land by 6:30. That was a choice.
These two choices along with a bunch of others mean that I haven't completed the backup program that I started more than two weeks ago. I'm out of excuses. I chose to make it work this weekend or else. Or else, I'll call in sick Monday and do it. It is so difficult to come home and get work done. I don't know how the other guys do it. They have families and other responsibilities to attend too.
OK, I started working on the program.

Psudocode 101
Psudocode is a list written logically that kind of looks like code. It won't run in any fashion. It might look like the following.
####
Check for this (15 lines of code)
If this is good then (5 lines of code)
Do this (50 lines of code)
Else
Do something else (10 lines of code)
End IF
Get user information (25 lines of code)
Verify user's information (100 lines of code)
Write user information to the database (10 lines of code)
####
I have 350 lines of code so far. There isn't a bunch left. I have the psudocode from Tom. It is a great help. Tom wrote a section that helps scan a log file. That hundred or so lines of code including comments which translates into three lines in the psudocode. That's how psudocode works. There are two hundred lines in the psudocode. I mentioned before that I'm having trouble following some one else's vision of the program. I'm coming to terms with it.

Maryann was the only one on the island I wanted to rescue.

Labor Day
The holiday has been pretty fun. We ended up at a buddy's place eating barbecue and ice-cream with strawberries. We are going over Sixteen Candles. We are debating what kind of geek Ted is. Long Duck dong just came on. I remember watching this movie years ago. Molly looks more like my daughter might now. These people used to look like peers.

Middle East
I worry about what happens in the Middle East. Just narrowing it down to Israel and the Palestinians is difficult. They are all interwoven. For centuries the people from all around the area have had tribal customs. Only in the last couple of centuries have nations been the norm. Now Israel have declared war on Hamas. It is just the latest step in a long chain of events. I believe one tribe has a dispute with another tribe. Then they make friends with a third tribe. The two tribes gang up on the other tribe and so on. Now, thousands of years later, people are taught to hate each other and no one has known why for several generations. They make up reasons. The Middle East is no different in this respect than say Ireland or Africa nations. Peace will never come until the people stop teaching their children to hate, not just “those guys”, but any one. People refer to this as the cycle of hate.
Are there ever legitimate reasons to fight? Of course there are. When the Nazis invaded Poland, that was a good reason to go to war. When Communism took hold in Vietnam, that was a bad reason to go to war. The USA was fighting an idea. If only we had known that people get sick of Communism after a couple of generations, things would have been much better. There is really no telling.
I wish there were some one who had the pull to stop it all. Everywhere. God doesn't seem to want it to end, else it would. People used to escape this cycle by moving to some frontier. That is why people came to America. The land of the free. The classless society. That isn't entirely true. There are no new frontiers. There is nowhere for people to run too. There is nowhere to hide. Now, one must fight for freedom. I know Europeans took America from the indigenous population. The American Indians didn't believe a person could own land. All land belongs to Mother Nature. Thus they sold Manhattan island for a handful of beads.