My tummy is so spinning out of control right now. I woke up with the most terrible cramps. They’ve subsided a little bit, after being awake for a while. Still, it feels like there’s a boxing match going on in my stomach–and I’m not sure who’s winning. I had some McDonald’s yesterday for the first time in months.. And perhaps the last time in years–like mwshook once told me.. It’s definitely pure poison. Argh.. This is worse than spilling hot coffee on my lap. I wonder if I could cash in even more? *grins devilishly*

It’s one of those days where I probably shouldn’t have crawled out of bed, and not just because of the tummy. It’s kinda dreary today, with no sun in sight. Somehow, I think the sun would’ve been better for me. lol.

A lil LAN action going on this weekend, but there’s also Astronomy Day going on. I’m probably going to split LAN action time for that–there’re going to be a number of festivities going on up on Monte Santo (an observatory/planetarium is up on this mountain, for those of you unfamiliar with Huntsville). I might even haul my telescope along.. I haven’t stargazed up there in ages 🙁

SG-1 season 7 came out yesterday. w00t. I’m going to start looking on eBay for it, because I’m sure there were actually copies out on eBay before yesterday. lol. I have a feeling that SG-1 might be one of those shows that lasts 9 seasons or more, like The X-Files. Even if it doesn’t, there’s always Atlantis.

I was feeling a lil sick at around the end of the week but, after plenty of sleep and rest, I think I’m totally kewl again. I hope. I don’t think I had anything major; I was exhausted, for the most part. Sleep is definitely a good cure for such things, of course 🙂

On the road to recovery, I got a laptop 🙂 I decided to forgo the 6 month wait and go for one. It’s quite the uber spiffy lil machine. The biggest deal is that it’s an Athlon 64–you don’t find many laptops like that *drool* When I was shopping around for it they were quite rare, indeed. It has a rather kewl feature that it clocks down when you’re not using a lot of resources; it’s something that I hadn’t seen in my own machines but only heard of. It’s quite niffty. The best part is that it’s an uber enough machine that, if I were too lazy to lug the laptop, I could bring it out for some LAN action.

It’s been a nice lil gray October day all day.. I don’t think it ever got above 55; I so love this time of year 🙂

So, Penny just decided to start to make a meal of my foot; without provocation, she jumped on her hind legs at the couch and proceeded to nibble the top of my foot.. Now that’s most certainly smarts.. She seemed quite adamant about it.. Perhaps I should sleep with one eye open as Keith may be right; she will claw my eyes out in my sleep.

This week went by so uber fast that I truly can’t believe that tomorrow is Friday.. Today went a lil slow because I woke up at 4 and couldn’t fall back asleep. It was definitely no so cool. It was about as uncool as the Astros AND the Cardinals making it to the NLCS 😛

I’m pondering getting another laptop, but I probably won’t actually do it for another 6 months or so.. The laptop I have now will do quite fine until then.. But, I think this time I wanna get a Winders box.. My iBook has been quite awesome, and I can’t complain about its performance.. Still, it kinda sucks to have duplicate versions of the same software for the differing platforms.. that and I could totally bring it to a LAN if I were lazy 😀 I’m planning on getting an Athlon 64 of some kind–whatever may be fashionable in 6 months.

So tired.. Must sleep..

Pretty dang good weekend. I’m watching the Farscape marathon on Sci-Fi on my Monday off. I know about as much about this series as I did when I started watching SG-1: relatively nothing. That’s what I definitely love these marathons. This is a frickin awesome series; I hope I don’t go out and buy the DVD box sets in my enthusiasm again. haha. It might not be a bad thing. One thing I think I will never buy are the X-Files box sets.. They’re way too overpriced for words, in comparison to pretty much every other box set out there. XF was an awesomely kewl series and all, but not that kewl.

The playoffs (baseball) are in full-swing.. Of course, since the Cubbies aren’t there, I don’t care all that much. But, I find it strange that this is one of those few years in which I hope that the Braves win the Divisional Series. The Astros are tied with them right now. The only downside to the Astros losing would be that I think the Astros would probably have a better chance against the Cardinals; and yet I really don’t want a Central Division team getting to the Big Show. Argh.

Christopher Reeve died today 🙁 He was only 52. He had definitely come a long way since he broke his neck in 1995; I thought he’d eventually walk again like he said he would.

Sucks when you’re the only one around with a Monday off. lol.

..and it’s only the beginning of October 🙂

I don’t know what it is, but Friday nites are always the worst.. Of all the weekend, this is the nite in which I totally wanna do nothing but slack. I’m tired beyond all belief. I think I just stay up too late during the week playing Final Fantasy XI 🙂 Maybe I need to ditch the uber ultra nerdish ways and settle for a milder brand of dorkish. lol.

Enterprise premiered tonite; I have it burned on DVD. The second bout of Presidential debate is about to begin. This is one of those townhall-type settings. It should be interesting, I guess.. I don’t know.. I betcha it’ll just be the typical–both sides slammin the hell outta each other; the press will call it a draw. Beh. So predictable.

Anyhoo, off to go watch and stuff.. Then maybe get to Level 15 before total exhaustion collapse 😉

We moved at work to better digs at work. We consolidated all of the software people together into a room. The best part is that we all have our own cubicles. w00t. I’m definitely all about a little room to call my own. Before, there were 4 of us in one cube–a rather large one, but a cube nonetheless. I am now a citizen of Cubeville. Scary.

It’s really starting to cool down, not to mention that it’s getting darker earlier. I think fall is finally just about here. yee haw.

I’m headed to a new LAN on the 23rd. It looks like it’ll be quite rocking, especially since they’ll be playing the same games we play at the other LAN. I’m definitely all about some more LANed Battlefront; it’s a kewl enough game on the internet, but it just seems like it was made for LAN-ing. As with the Battlefield games, this one seems to have pretty good co-op action.

Anyhoo, other than that, nothing to really report from the front. Just chillin out, watchin some SG-1. Good stuff. I’m into season two right now. This is my first time seeing most of these episodes, and they are pretty darn awesome.

As I speak, I am watching the Cubs whoop the snot out of the Braves 9-4 after 4 innings. Of course, if they had won yesterday they still would have been eliminated by the end of the day yesterday. This season was quite bittersweet. I figured they were going to go very much further than last season. Instead, they’re probably going to have one more win than last season, and no postseason to show for it *sigh* Ahhh, well.. it’s not like they ended the season without a fight.. They’re not total losers.. I think that era is now gone, even if they didn’t get as far as I would’ve liked them to.

Something happened last night that hasn’t happened in a long time; I lost in bowling *GASP!!!!!* I lost 2/3. There was actually one game where I didn’t bust 100.. I had a low of 80 and a high of 144.. Not a very good night of bowling, for sure. It was still a blast, though. I’m definitely a big-time bowler.. Maybe not so big that I’d join a league, but definitely fun enough to play every few weeks or so.

This election is turning out to be really strange.. This country is extremely polarized for this one; it’s very surreal. We’re almost ripe for another civil war, although I truly doubt things would get that extreme. While I agree that we haven’t found anything in Iraq to this point, Iraq was still a damn good idea.. I think, though, that would have been a bad idea if it turns out that the dethroning of Hussein caused or is causing the proliferation of WMD in a way that wouldn’t have been done if we hadn’t gone in. Ultimately, I don’t think that’ll be the case. The world and, more importantly, the terrorists see that Bush does what he says. I think this country is in pretty darn good shape security-wise.. At least at the moment.

The Patriot Act does scare the heck out of me in many ways–but the only thing that truly petrifies me is if it remains a permanent fixture of our security once the world settles down. I think it’s a good band-aid for security for now. Repealing at this point would be a bad mistake; I personally don’t see my rights being trampled on but, of course, any surveillance that might be under the cuff. I have nothing to hide.. Privacy is never a guarantee in any nation, even ours, but the Patriot Act should certainly not be a permanent fixture.. And, I don’t believe the current administration sees it as one.

Socialism.. The Democratic Party’s mostly left-leaning policies also frighten me. What can I say? There are elements of both parties that frighten me, but socialistic tendancies frighten me the most. I am of the belief that government should be charged with administering very little. At most, the purpose of government should be defense and the creation and maintenance of basic infrastructure (e.g. roads and bridges). Social programs and discretionary spending run rampid in Washington (even with Bush in charge), and I think Kerry would do nothing but increase that. I believe that welfare should be eliminated; charity should be a decision left up to the individual and not left to Washington bureaocrats, all of whom are quite distant from average Joe American. Government should have nothing to do with health care, mostly nothing to do with education, nothing to do with “family planning”, and certainly should have nothing to do with a pooled pension (social security) that my generation will never see. Most of all of the above should be done on either an individual/family or local level.

Socialized health care will give the nation nothing but hospital after hospital riddled with inefficiency. VA hospitals; they are the epitomy of inefficient health care. Imagine a whole nation of hospitals run in that way. You don’t even have to wait for it to happen to see it happen.. Look at Canada or Europe.

I really don’t care what Kerry says, the tax cuts were not for the rich. Everyone got one.. I was a student when the tax cuts went into effect, and I was making around 10K at the time.. Even I got a tax cut. Democrats, and many Republicans, complain about unemployment. If you do happen to give big tax credits to corporations, then they are given a monetary incentive (e.g. the wages) to hire more and new workers. This brings down unemployment, which also helps the economy. We may have a wartime economy going, but that doesn’t have to mean that we need to take more from everyone.. War should be a good hearty portion of how things are spent in Washington, but it doesn’t have to be all-inclusive. Things are dire, but not that dire. Certainly, much of the almighty pork in Washington can be diverted–even if on a temporary basis.. We have many battles going on as a nation; not only the War on Terror, but also a war to keep unemployment down and keep the booming economy booming.

There are those who say that Bush was given his chance and blew it. Of course, if I were given the intelligence from not only the CIA but European intelligence that Hussein was both creating WMD and working to procure more, then I most certainly would’ve done something about it. When you are dealing with the possible distribution of that to terrorists, you can’t help but act pre-emptively about it. If he didn’t act, and something happened, then we’d be in one terrible situation if those weapons did get distributed due to our inaction. I’m sure many of the terrorists see nuclear weapons as nothing more than very large firecrackers.

Anyhoo, enough of my political ranting. Election time just gets me all worked up sometimes. This country is very evenly split, amongst those who care.. Basically, it’s 1/3 of the country who are one way, 1/3 who are another, and 1/3 who don’t care. Either way, it will more than likely be a minority that will elect the next president–I doubt that either Bush or Kerry will get 51%.

In the end, it probably doesn’t really matter. He who gets in, gets in. Personally, I don’t think Washington has much of an influence over my every day life and I hope it stays that way no matter who gets in. The less they take away, the better. Isn’t that one of the things this nation fought against in its infancy? It does disturb me, though, that apparently Kerry brought a cheat sheet to the debate on Thursday. If we can depend on that kind of honesty from him at a debate, then what can we expect from him as president?

It’s been kind of a slow week, since coming back from that class. That’s definitely a good thing, I suppose. I definitely don’t miss lectures.. Argh, and I still wanna get my masters; I wanna get it, but I want to avoid all that lecture crap. Thankfully, being CS, they will prolly post all their PowerPoints, anyway. w00t. I kinda can’t wait, but I still have to take the GRE. I’d better get going on that–I need to study up at least a little for it.

The LAN over the weekend was quite the blast. Battlefront was definitely quite a kewl game to play over the LAN. Heck, it’s quite kewl over the net, too. I was pondering starting a dedicated server for that game and have it go 24/7–the game really is that awesome. I think that the best map is Hoth. It’s quite kewl, tripping AT-ATs, and blasting AT-STs to smitherines.. Then again, it’s pretty kewl walking in the AT-AT/STs, too–they’re uber sweet and better than walking around on the open ice. Meacham got a very nice new house, so there was plenty o’ space to stretch for the LAN. It was uber nice.

After watching the whole Star Wars Trilogy on DVD, I most definitely approve. The changes Lucas made were transparent; I never would’ve noticed most of them. In fact, I had to go online to see most of the little treats that were put in there. At the end of Return of the Jedi, for instance, you can see the Jedi Temple on Coruscant out in the distance. I won’t give the rest of them away–what would be the fun in that? 😉

Nothin to do after a dejecting Cubs loss but to sit around and watch some Trek all day 😀 I got season one of the original series late last week. I’m getting so many DVDs that I think I’ll never have any need to watch TV ever again. lol. Ever since I got out of college, I’m actually finding that I’m watching TV less and less. Other than Sci-Fi Friday and Enterprise, there really isn’t anything I watch, except for maybe a few minutes of news when I wake up. For some reason, the Internet is much more entertaining–not to mention games 😀

It’s really starting to feel like fall out there–it’s 83 degrees, and I’m pretty sure that was around the high for the day.

Other than that, nothing really going down; it was definitely a nice weekend.

SO, this class I’m taking for work is finally over today. Only downside is that I have to take a test before I’m totally finished. I think the only thing I miss about school is actually the learning part and not the test part 🙂 You have to get an 80% or higher to pass this test, so I guess that’s what gets me nervous the most. You get to take it again a little while after if you don’t pass (after a short review). The test is on Unix, so I’m not all that concerned that I don’t know the material; I was just never an uber good test taker. Ahhh, well. I’m sure it’ll be all good. I’m so knowledgable in Unix that I truly could be an administrator. Oh, for the power of root *drool* lol.

Have a little bit of a sore throat this morning–I actually woke up during the night with it. I hate when that happens; sore throats are usually so annoying to me that I have a hard time falling asleep again when I catch myself with one. I need to go to the pharmacy and get some lozenges; I absolutely hate that spray stuff.

Tomorrow is another LAN! 🙂 Happy times. w00t. There haven’t been many new games released since the last one–except for Battlefront. I think that we’ll most likely play that one at the next LAN. Of course, even now that we’re graduated, some people are still squeemish about buying the grossly overpriced computer games. Gee, I wonder why? Hmmm… *COUGHGAMESARENTWORTH50BUCKSNOMATTERHOWAWESOMETHEYARECOUGH* On the plus side, I’m selling an old video card today–perhaps I shall get the new game with the moola. w00t, indeed.