..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.

So, I got the Star Wars Trilogy yesterday morning, just about right after I got up–Wal-Mart is almost right across the street from me. I started watching Episode IV yesterday. Aside from some audio and perhaps some lightsaber tweaks, things seemed to be very much the same. I also went through all the discs and looked for all of the changes that people were talking about–Anakin indeed was replaced in Return of the Jedi with Hayden Christensen, Naboo is added to the celebration scenes at the end, Ian McDiarmid was placed in as Emperor in ESB, and Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett in ATOC) replaced the voice-over Boba Fett. It’ll be pretty kewl to watch the movies completely, but the changes were good; they add to the continuity of all six movies, I think. And, as much as it may take my geek card away, I think the Hayden as Anakin idea was a good one. lol. The bonus disc has a pretty good Episode III featurette that shows parts of the duel and Hayden in the big black suit *drool* Been frickin waiting to see that since I found out about the prequels.

I upped the RAM in my computer to 1GB of DDR3200. Right now it’s running in single channel mode, but I’m going to see what I can do to get it into dual channel–I have 2 sticks of 256MB DDR3200 dual channel and one 512MB DDR3200 dual channel. I don’t think three will work, but I will definitely research it a bit–it doesn’t seem like I have much control in the BIOS over whether or not the RAM runs in dual channel (but I’m definitely going to check it out again when I have time). Perhaps I can only have two sticks of RAM in there for dual channel to be possible. The user manual is actually quite non-helpful in this case :\ and the online support for the motherboard. Either way, 512MB of dual channel would most likely be far quicker than 1GB single channel. Extra address space is nothing over the speed at which that address space is accessed. Alright, enough geekspeak 🙂

I had a really uber odd dream last night. For some reason, I was visiting Arizona–I think it was Mesa or Tuscon. The really strange part is that there was a huge storm while I was there with many, many tornadoes–one of which I barely survived. After the storms passed, while I was chilling at a resturant of some kind, my car was stolen! I drove around, frantically searching for it. I went far and wide into places that were most defintiely not Arizona-like. I ended up at some really ritzy yuppie subdivision of some kind where there were lots of mansions. I headed back to town. Eventually, I stole a police car–which, ironically enough, was a flying car. I hovered around town for a while and finally tracked my car down to a house. After actually floating into that house, I finally found my Ion parked outside. I got in and locked the doors (the culprit was right outside). Being a dream, of course, the guy could still get in the car. So, while fighting with him while I drove to a mall, I called 911. When I finally got through to a human, we arrived at the mall–which looked suspiciously like the one next to the Marriott in Atlanta. When we got to a parking space, I actually folded the car up and put it in a bookbag (don’t ask me). I was fighting with the guy, beating him up because he seemed more concerned about spending time in the Big House than with the fact that he stole my car. I was beating him senseless with the bookbag that contained my folded-up Ion when I woke up.

Man, I have a trippy un-conscious mind 🙂

Yeah, I think summer is definitely starting to die. It’s currently 55F (12.8C for all those Europeans that I’m sure are reading this) out there. I really need to become more weather-conscious.. I had the A/C on last nite and woke up with icicles everywhere 🙂

I saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow last night with the bro. It was a really awesome flick. It really did remind me of Flash Gordon. The ending was absolutely hillarious. If you haven’t seen it, you definitely must. It is certainly a Conrad-approved movie.

Well another week, another class. I’m continuing it tomorrow, but fortunately, it’s the last week. It’s been good getting away from regular old work for a little while, though. Still, lectures are boring 😛 All the Dr. Pepper in the world just barely keeps me in zombie mode.

I knew Alabama had to be good for something; the Miss America winner was apparently Miss Alabama. While I’m fairly ignorant of most Alabama news, I really don’t know anything about her. She is pretty, though.

Happy “Talk Like a Pirate Day” 🙂

Took a test today in that class. There are two that you have to take to get certification. Thankfully, I passed 🙂 From the looks of things, though, it looks like about half the class failed :\ Definitely no fun, but they do get to have one do-over. Hopefully, I won’t have to do that the next time around, either. I’m definitely relieved. Maybe now I’ll get a lil sleep. Between the tropical storm and this frickin test, I need to get some Zs.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out today. I think this will most likely be the final gasp of summer cinema for this year. The only thing I’m really looking forward to beyond that is Episode III. There might be other kewl lil flicks in-between, but dang it.. I wanna see Vader!! lol. Anyhoo, I’ll hopefully see Sky Captain this weekend.

The storms are gone–I actually saw very large patches of blue sky this morning. It’s clouding up again, but at least I won’t be constantly wet now 🙂 Between coming back from class last nite and going out to get food after the power went out, I was a wet dog for at least an hour. I don’t like tropical storms.

So, it looks like Ivan is going to sweep across the greater portion of the surface area of Alabama. This most certainly disturbs me greatly; hurrcanes die without their fuel very quickly (e.g. the warmth and moisture from an unsuspecting ocean). Nevertheless, it will be dying while directly overhead :-\ Mind you, by the time it gets to us it’ll more than likely be category 1 or a tropical storm. Still, it might get kinda hairy with flooding and tornadoes. To all of my Bama peeps, be very very damn careful. If you’re not, then I know you have an ass and you know that I know how to kick it 😀

On the plus side, Ivan brought a very very pretty medium rare sunset last nite:

I’m taking a class for work that is absolutely exhausting. I have to take a frickin 30 hour (or seems like it) nap every time I get home. Maybe I’m gettin’ too old to get my learn on in lectures 😉 lol. Actually, strangely enough, it’s kinda kewl to be studying again *pokes head in the sand* The class itself is only mundane because people in there aren’t of comparable saaviness that I am–unlike the way it was with all my CS courses back in college. It definitely makes things very mundane and unsatisfying.. Although, I must say I’m re-learning some very awesome things about RSA and PKI. Encryption is one of my favorite subjects 🙂 I’m also learning some kewl things about the router that I never knew before, specifically about Cisco routers.

Big Spring Jam looks as though it will be alright. As usual, most of the bands are has-beens or never-was. About the only bands I might be remotely interested in seeing would be Live, Jewel, and maybe some Switchfoot. George Clinton might be interesting, too 😀 If any of you have heard his music, lemme know what calibur he is. I think I heard a little in mwshook‘s big bubba truck while we were going somewhere.