Picture of the Day 04.04.2012 (Thanks @PatJD)

Apparently today is WTF-Wednesday. It seemed to start off rather sanely. Err, wait.. Strike that — it didn’t. I was woken up at 2:30 in the morning by some demented dream involving bodily fluids pouring out of every orifice in my body. Like I was suffering from the same thing that happened at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Then when I finally fell asleep at 4 in the morning, I was awoken abruptly by the sound shitty rap/urban/whatever from the car wash across the street… At 6:30 in the morning!!!!

Things seemed to have calmed down for a few hours until Saucy decided to caterwaul for a few hours just to make sure that I was awake. When the roommate eventually woke up sometime after noon time, she decided that it was time to put in her encore performance of caterwauling for the whole of the neighborhood to hear it… From my windows.

Then a former co-worker decided on sharing articles like this and this… Leaving me scratching my head and giving my usual WTF response as I watch politicians provide more than adequate proof that they are seriously bat-shit crazy. Really folk? You want to lead us where? To the loony bin? Well those articles are pretty much proof to this.

Then I comment to my friend and former co-worker about this asking whether there’s more to this. And accepting as a mission like he’s Ethan Hunt and the IMF, I get the coupe de grace of an article here. So as I promised, off I go to the liquor store near to the house, pick up a six pack and hope tomorrow when I wake up with a mild headache from the drinking that the world will return to being… Well.. Less WTF as it seems to be right now..

Picture of the day thanks to @PatJD for convincing me it’s time to have a drink…

Picture of the Day 04.03.2012

I was actually hoping for something yellow instead of blue but hey, given the circumstances this will have to do. I had to scoot over to my uncle’s yesterday because he was getting the usual scare-tactic messages on how his system’s running slow, how it had all sorts of errors, and how he should spend x amount of money to fix and optimize his system.

I naturally told him that he had nothing to worry about as he had an Anti-Virus solution running, and he did have Spybot loaded up and he knew how to run it if necessary. Not to mention that I didn’t think all that much damage could have happened since the last time I was over on Christmas.

So over I went and as I suspect, it was nothing but scareware. So, while Spybot was running through the second time to catch those things that were still running, I went outside to survey the neighborhood and enjoy the slightly warm (and mostly brisk) outside air of the afternoon. It was still too early for my aunt & uncle to be planting their annuals, but some of their perennials had started blooming. This one in particularly caught my eye. These are called Glory-of-the-Snow (Chionodoxa luciliae). I need to look into why the focus/zoom doesn’t quite work out the way that I wanted, in spite of the fact that the focus said that it had properly set on the flowers themselves.

Off to read the fine manual, I suppose.

Picture of the Day 04.02.2012

Still a little early, but more and more plants are beginning to bloom. Not quite sure what this is, but it growing along the fence on the road that I was walking this afternoon. Didn’t quite come out as clear as I had hoped, but at the same time I rather liked the blur effect that occurred when I took the picture. The fungus however, seems clearer… Ironic give I’m the Mad Scientist of DA.

Picture of the Day 04.01.2012

A month later, it’s finally warmed up enough that that the trees outside the house are finally in bloom. Not sure what sort of tree it is, but the flowers look like apple — probably crab apple. Fortunately for me, I’m not allergic to them else I would be in hell as they’re right outside my window. Not to mention lining many of the streets in the neighborhood. Makes for a pretty start for spring in the neighborhood.

Entry 05/08/2011 11:54:01 AM – Mentat 612

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Albert Einstein

It’s pretty hard for me to imagine that it’s been about two weeks since the last time I’ve sat down and written a journal entry. I know that I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this earlier in the week, but ended up finishing up with the reviews that I had in the queue from the mini-gaming marathon that I’ve had going on. Then there was that debacle with Sony and PSN that caused me to stop in the middle of things and do more than a little bit of research on Anonymous given that Sony decided on blaming that group for their recent set of woes. After that, it was simply a matter of being distracted with a million other niggling things that I realized that writing would be next to impossible to do until I got everything straightened out first. Now that it’s Sunday — Mother’s Day for some people — with it being quite around the homestead (though not lazy as it’s Laundry Day); I finally have the time to sit down and write something a bit more personal and something a bit less editorial or review.

Spring has finally sprung here in the Tundras of New England. While there have been a handful of nights since my last journal entry that had dropped to the chilly 40s F (4s C), the majority of the days and early evenings have been between 50s – 70s F (10s – 21s C). Looking out the window from the living room here, I can see that the trees are well on their way to being green once again. Everything is also flowering, giving me a case of allergies that I haven’t experienced in some years. I still haven’t been able to determine what it is that’s blooming that’s causing it, but suffice it to say, it’s been a serious pain in the ass when in the middle of eating something or simply having my morning coffee I find myself in the middle of a hell of a sneezing fit. While it doesn’t last long — 2 – 4 minutes at most — it’s the most annoying 2 – 4 minutes of my day. It might be Ash or Poplar as those two trees are more common on this side of the city, but allergy reports indicate a predominance of other trees and plants being high for those days as well. Trees and plants I’ve otherwise not experienced allergic reactions to. Of course the strange thing is that when I’m out for my every-other-day 12.5 – 13 mi (20 km) ride I never seem to suffer from anything… Hmmm… Mentioning that here, it’s possible that I might be allergic to something around the house. Great. Just what I need. To be allergic to the house. I’ll probably continue to prod about the place to figure out what’s causing the sneezing/allergy fits.

The rides have been particularly good when I’ve been able to actually have them. Which haven’t been half as much as I had wanted. Either it had been raining (or pouring) and for some days last week and for the others it’s been colder than I thought possible. Of course I’ve been trying to find a good time to getting on the bus and biking from Lincoln Mall home through the back roads. 2 – 3 PM is too early in the afternoon and here in the Tundras of New England that time is considered the hottest time of the day. Going a bit later (like say 4 – 5:30 PM) is the time the bus that normally heads to Providence and stops at the Mall is also the times when it takes the long routes through North Smithfield and Lincoln putting me another ½ hour or so out of my way before actually hitting my stop. I might have to go a bit later in the afternoon once the “rush hour” buses have moved along and the schedule route is back to normal. I would be doing the morning route, but the problem is that over on Douglas Pike near to where Bryant College is located is also where Fidelity Investments is, and the employees that go into work there are out-of-their-mind crazy trying to get into work before the start of their work day. Hell, in the just over two years I had been working in Smithfield and riding home from work — I can’t even count how many times they’ve tried hitting me at the Essex Road and Salem Street entrances to the Fidelity campus. Heh, it’s definitely not the sort of thing that I want to be dealing with again — not for a long time anyway. I don’t like the thought of being a human hood ornament; least of all to women that seem to be putting on makeup while taking a right turn at 40 MPH (64 KPH) or my personal favorite… taking that same turn while they have a cellphone plastered to their ear.

Oh, not that I said I would ever talk about software in my personal blog again now that I have a blog dedicated to the geekier side of my personality, but there’s a tool that I can’t help but boast about given that it sort of ties in with the sort of ire that I’ve been experiencing when visiting Deviant Art and seeing scene kids (read: scene whores) that have continue to turn a place for potential artists to show off their handiwork into nothing more than an extension of Photobucket, Picasa, MySpace and the worst of the bunch: Facebook.

The tool is called TinEye. It’s a happy little plug-in that I’ve tested on IE, Firefox and Chrome that when you right click on the image in question, will search a 1 billion+ database looking for similar images. Not only does it seem to find exact images (including dimensions and file size), but it also seems to allow for variance in images when cropped, resized and even re-colored or photoshopped. About the only downside that I’ve been able to experience is that the “free” version has a limit of queries you can do in a day (according to the FAQ, it’s 50 searches a day to a maximum of 150 per week), though even that’s more than enough for me to do the sort of hobby policing I do when dealing with plagiarism on Deviant Art.

I’ve even been willing to donate, but the problem is that the company that put out TinEye only seems to accept PayPal as a means of accepting money — a sore spot with me given that it was determined that PayPal was the source of the data breach that causes people in the Middle East and Germany to charge to my credit card about $130 from my bank account back last year. Although looking at their API for commercial-like use — I believe their pricing is more than a little steep for the product. Maybe if they think against actually performing highway robbery (5,000 searches for $300 USD, 30,000 searches for $1,500 USD) against business for the commercial package, I might consider going that route. Until then though, as the saying goes, “if it’s free, it’s me!”

Because honestly, some of these kids have seriously been pissing me off once again with the outright plagiarism that has been going on with the work that I’ve caught on DA’s main page. Sometimes I get the impression that they’re not even trying to make art. They’re just taking something they saw somewhere and going “Oh my god! Want!!!” and then posting it into their deviations folder trying to pass it off like something to be admired and get views and favorites for. Particularly when you have FAQs that cover it here and here. And further, it’s gotten to the point where I’m tired of trying to be polite about it, the last couple of times I’ve tried, I’ve ended up with shrieking, shrill and spoiled teenagers saying, “don’t be hatin'” or some other childish response when it’s explained to him the rules of Deviant Art. So.. It’s just report the work, wait patiently some months while the @operators that clean up the forums remove the work and then maybe stop back to see if someone’s crying about the deleted work (when I remember to check back anyway).

All I know is that the administrative staff at Deviant Art seriously need to streamline their process. From what I’ve been seeing in the last year, unless something being reported as pornography according to the rules and removed near instantaneously, everything else seems to take between 3 and 5 months to be removed. Sure it’s better than last year where it took 8 months, but still.. Even as a paying member, this seems to be rather poor customer service for the volunteer work that I do when I can.

That’s about all of it for the time being. Off to fold some of my laundry and then head out for a bit for the ride that I haven’t been able to do the last week or so. Until the next time.

Entry 04/12/2011 09:55:16 AM – Mentat 609

“Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.” – Victoria Holt

While I don’t want to jinx my luck with saying this as my luck is oftentimes insufferably annoying, but I think that Spring has finally arrived here in the Tundras of New England. The temperatures have been glorious for the last week being anywhere between 52 – 66 F (11 – 18.8 C), with temperatures being just warm enough for me to leave the windows open while I was sleeping. Sure it was more than a little bit chilly when I woke up this morning, though I didn’t really care all that much given that I still have all the winter blankets on the bed, and the Hellbeast was cradled near to my neck. Pain in the butt that she’s been since the windows have been opened the last couple of days as she’s constantly looking out through them because of some imagined noise that she hears on the other side of them. Sure, most of the week has been filled with the next door neighbor as he’s been renovating his house (it looks as though he might be selling it and moving out of the neighborhood), but most of the time after 4 PM it’s been nothing more than the kids up the street and the occasional gust of wind as it pushed through the screen.

Since it’s been this warm, I’ve taken the immediate opportunity for getting the bike tuned up and dusted off and riding through the back parts of the rooftop of the state to getting myself back into shape. Which after the first week of biking up and down some of the hillier parts of the city and neighboring town, reminds me all too keenly just out of shape I actually am. Of course, one of the roads that I decided on taking (Woonsocket Hill Rd, North Smithfield) is certainly not for the faint of heart as some of the inclines closer to Wright’s Dairy Farm are around the 25 – 28 degree incline. Heh, even when pushing the 45 pound (16.7 kg) bike, and about 20 pounds (7.4 kg) in my backpack; I found myself completely winded and barely able to continue on without taking a 5 minute break. Still is a good riding for the week with the last day before taking a weekend break I had gotten up to 9.4 miles (15.1 km) on my last day of riding (Sunday).

Tomorrow (hopefully), when the rain that’s currently drizzling outside has passed, I’m going to need to work on further tuning up the old Schwinn. Seems that the brakes are about worn down (and getting to the point where it’s getting difficult to come to a complete stop quickly), as well as work on finding where the leak is on the back tire. Seems that sometime toward the end of my stint at CBS I had developed a slow leak that I didn’t realize until I had filled the tire on the first day of my escape to the back roads around here that it was there. It’s not so bad for a single day’s ride — but it seems that the tired goes completely flat in about 2 days. I’m sure that it’s only a matter of time before the tire goes completely blow-out flat on me… Better to be safe than sorry.

As for the rest…

Well things are going pretty well for the most part. Drama on dAmn has been kept relatively low mostly because I’ve pretty much kept a low profile thought most of it. And when I do get involved, it’s only for a short burst of comments and then leaving whatever situation is going on at the time to burn out on its own accord. I still find it relatively funny (in the most ironic sort of way) watching these teenagers and twenty-somethings quite literally reinventing the wheel when it comes to the issues, and life choices they are currently going through. And no matter how much common sense, experience, and even guidance through those issues I might be able to give them — they will completely disregard it and make precisely the same mistakes people my age have made when we were their ages. It leaves me wondering sometimes whether we’ll advance at all.

Glenn’s recommended a game to me that was free through Steam called Alien Swarm, which I find to be a bit easier to work with than Modern Warfare 2. I’ve been trying to get used to the game as Glenn wants to grab Stuart and me for a co-op game of it over the weekend, and while the map , personnel selection, and various special function keys; the movement keys are a bit wonky to get used to. I mean sure, W, A, S, D are the standard keys for movement but the problem with them is that when you change direction, the keys also change their orientation. It’s a bit disorienting but about three minutes in, it gets a bit easier to navigate. Still it’s a surprisingly fun game for free through Steam and a heck of a lot less difficult than some of the games that I’ve picked up and played along the way. More on that when I get used to playing it.

This is going to be a short entry (which I’m sure a certain someone is going to be ecstatic about given how long my entries can be… And yes, you know I’m talking about you Glenn). The rest of the chatter’s going to be over here as it’s going to be about the beast of a desktop and some of the insanity that I’ve had going with it.

Until the next time.

Entry 04/04/2011 10:17:53 AM – Mentat 608

“Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde

April Fool’s Day this year can be marked by as one of the worst days that I had gone through in a long time.  My good friend Glenn said something to the extent when he said, “…worst days ever…”  While that might in fact be true in his life for me, well having died once and come back, I think when looking back at four days ago, this is rather light when compared to it.   And of course, when ranked by the multitude of other events in my life…  Well, let’s just say this one ranks somewhere between the acutely annoying to the sort of thing that would make the Drama Faerie proud.  Though I digress from my usual indulgence and should get right into the meat of things.

April 1st.  It had been marked on my calendar as just one of those sort of days I had an extra chore that I needed to do:  clean the cat fur and dust out of the desktop computer.  Even with the HEPA filters, I could see through the plastic window on the detachable panel that there had been some that had collected in there.  Couple this with looking at the back of the computer and seeing it collecting against the ducts, I knew it was something that just has to be done.  Sow when I woke up I shut down the Main PC, headed to the bathroom for a shower and prep myself for the choking feeling many people get when they see dust bunnies that seem to have the size of a Muskrat with the sentience one would expect from something left in the Fridge since Thanksgiving 2008.

Honestly, it went well.  At least at first.  Mini-vacuum in hand, with a can of compressed air, I was able to get most of it off the radiator on the CPU fan, out of the Video Card Fans, and even from the back and power supply fans that had collected there.  Leaving the unit open, I had booted the thing up and to my amazement it went through POST without so much as a hiccup. And as it was sitting there on the desktop, I accidentally took off the front panel of my Tower and to my wondering eyes and annoyed impatience realized that I had forgotten to clean those fans and filters out.  So off the computer went, and that’s when my problems began.

After cleaning out the intake fans and the dust from the filters there, I had attempted to power up the unit to get back to the desktop and the BIOS simply wouldn’t get into the BIOS and POST.  It was powering up, but I  was getting the impression that the unit simply wasn’t given any errors and it wasn’t booting up.

At least, I thought to myself, I could reset the BIOS to factory default settings and fix the occasional problem between the IDE Drives initialization and warm up and the video card power consumption issues that had been causing the system to intermittently crash since I had replaced the video card.

Cracking open the case, I went looking for the jumper and given the location of this BIOS jumper — it’s in one of the more difficult places I’ve experienced in my time working with x86 computers:  right near the SATA plugs for the HDD and DVD drives.  And while I do have a rather good set of tweezers for accessing and pulling the jumper — it’s still quite a bit of work trying to get the jumper pulled, set in the reset position and put back into the normal position so that the system will boot up properly.   And that’s when I drop the jumper and can’t see where it had dropped to.

So, unplugging all the cables in the vicinity of where this jumper is and not seeing it; it then becomes the frustration of moving the tower about in such a way as to confirm that the jumper isn’t lodged into something, and hopefully comes out somewhere on the anti-static mat so that it can be put back in place.

Ninety minutes later, the jumper’s found:  lodged in the section of the tower that is even more difficult to access by both finger and tweezers.  Thirty minutes after that the jumper’s reacquired, reset and put back into the default position, wires plugged in everywhere they belong,  Low and behold, the BIOS is accessible, changes are made to the IDE controller of the board (causing the IDE drives to go into a state of self-diagnosis during POST), and eventually the system comes back up…

By this time three hours had passed and I had a right good amount of rage and anger going on because of the amount of work that I had gone through that should’ve only taken forty minutes.   I was frustrated and more than a little sore because of the amount of delicate work I needed to do finding the jumper, getting the BIOS reset and getting the system back up to operating conditions.  There was a small amount of me that was relieved, but the rage at the moment was winning out.

Glenn finally comes online and asked me about what had been going on.  At the time I hadn’t been in voice/video chat so he couldn’t tell how raging I was.  He could see that I as mad by the amount of swearing I had been doing, but he’s never seen me rage in frustration.  His answer is to get in a little FPS competition in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2.

I agreed as a little competitiveness and bloodshed would help my rather sour mood of the moment; and loading up Steam ended up trying to do a little Spec-Ops Scenarios.

Bad move and I didn’t realize just how bad a move it was until well afterward.  We ended up doing a mission that introduced me to a creature that up until Friday — I had never experienced within the game:  the Juggernaut.  I was expecting to be fighting mere mortals like I am in the mission and when I shot at this creature and it kept charging, my raging only got worse.    It was made worse by three other missions that we had played where I was off-game and easily mad about everything that was going on.  During one mission that I’ve been relatively successful with found the lag to be noticeable.  It was noticeable in that when I shot at one of the soldiers that was charging down on us, he would go through the kill animation and then a full second and a half later the blood from the hit would be spurting out in the air.

By this point, I was a monster in voice-chat on Steam.  Swearing like a trooper, and simply not calming down the way I normally do even from gaming.  Glenn had let me alone, which was the worse thing to do, as I had no outlet and the rage was still just sitting there in the front of my head.

So signing off of everything, knowing that cheater gaming would be the best solution for me (as I could kill to my heart’s content in god mode and generally be the superhero of whatever game I chose to play) , I grabbed the DVD for Fallout 3 and loaded it up.  It was going relatively well as I was at the part of the game that didn’t involve any sort of tedious adventuring (like Moira Brown’s Wasteland Survival Guide) and played for a short time getting a bit of my frustration out, even though I could still feel more than a bit of rage still crawling about the back of my mind.

I forgot why I got out of the game by this point…  I think it was because it was time for lunch and I didn’t want to pause the game; instead wanting to check mail and Usenet posts.  Getting out, I had a bite to eat, checked a little e-mail and then decided on getting back into the game.

Now the thing is with Fallout 3, it’s far easier to just open up Windows Explorer and double click on the icon set on the DVD drive.  Even with the icon in the Start Menu, I’ve noticed that the game tends to crash more than using the Launcher associated on the DVD.   I’m still angry, impatient and frustrated and the last thing I wanted to deal with is crashes annoying me all the more.

That’s when I saw that the drives were backwards.  I had set the drives up in such a way that the bootable drive is supposed to be the upper DVD drive.  It was actually in the lower setting.  Now don’t get me wrong, with Windows Systems since 2000 Server — it’s an easy enough fix.  You go into the Computer Management Console and under the Disk Management simply swap out the drive letters so that they read the way you want them to read.   The problem with this is that while this would be fine for the system booting into Windows, there would be a good chance I’d forget the drives are swapped out and that if I had to ever reformat and reimage the drive, I wouldn’t remember that the drive cables were switched; thereby thinking that the bootable DVD drive had simply stopped working.

So instead of swapping drive letters within Windows, I shut down the system again, I cracked open the case one more time and sorted out the SATA cables so that they would be in the correct order.   And once again, the system refused to get by POST once the power was re-applied.

I attempted a BIOS reset once more.  Nothing

I tried to pull the CMOS Battery.  Nothing.

I tried one more time to reset the BIOS; and lost the jumper once again.  And after almost two and a half hours and literally taking apart the tower piece by piece, the jumper was completely lost.  But that’s not without further calamity.  As it turns out between the frustration, the on-going raging, and the desperation of trying to find the jumper as I didn’t have any extras lying about the house (for a first in a long time), I had inadvertently put down the tower on top of a pair of my glasses crushing them.

Funny thing that…  For all the ranging and frustration and desperation and anger I had been going through at about this time, it was literally the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Instead of becoming completely incendiary, with a huff all my anger and my frustration and my rage was completely spent.  I wasn’t calm by a long shot, but at the same time I wasn’t a raving lunatic anymore.  I simply gave up and decided that it was time to simply take a break as it was accomplishing nothing in getting the problem fixed.

I sat there on the couch and powering up the laptop, I had counted my blessing in that I had maintained synch ups for this sort of thing as well as knew that Friday early morning (2 – 4 AM), I had been able to successfully run a complete backup on the system so it’s not as though I had suffered a Great Hard drive Crash like the time it happened to me back in 1996.  And going over to my favorite and fast online hardware vendor — New Egg — I decided it was time for an upgrade.  The new Motherboard, Processor and because of the layout the new RAM — 6 GB of it to be exact.  Further, because of the processor, I decided on getting the 64-bit version of Windows 7.  I had to also look into a PATA to SATA Converter as this particular motherboard does not have an IDE/PATA slot like the current/previous motherboard had.

So all in all — I should have the shipments to me here by Tuesday, Wednesday latest and another 18 or so hours later, I should have the system back up and running by the end of the week *fingers crossed*.

The next day (Saturday), I decided on heading out to look into getting replacement glasses for the ones that I crushed during the debacle with my tower.

Now in the South, all I have to do is provide an intact pair of lenses to the optometrist on duty at any glasses-making place, they will take a read of them and make them usually with no questions asked.  In one instance the Optometrist on duty didn’t believe me on whether I had my eye exam within the last two years and after calibrating the device they use to determine corrective lenses, had me perform a quick eye exam to ensure that I had 20/20 vision with the corrected lenses.  And within an hour in one place, and a couple of days at another I had a replacement pair of glasses, no questions asked.

I hit three different places up here in the north.  The first place gave a quick look at the frames and when they determined the frame hinge was destroyed said that the glasses frame was useless.  They refused to fill the prescription without my going through their Optometrist Office, and couldn’t schedule anything until Tuesday.

The next two places were pretty much the same — without a written prescription to fill — they refused to make replacement glasses.  Of which the last two places did have the microscope device used to determine what the prescription of the lens was.  When asked why they refused to fill the prescription the remaining two gave pretty vague reasoning behind it.  One even went so far as to say it’s policy with the company (which is untrue because the one place that routinely refilled glasses no questions asked as part of the same franchise in the South).

So, while spare glasses currently on, it would look as though I’m going to need to make an Optometrist appointment later this week and see if I can’t get myself some replacement glasses for the pair that are broken — as the current pair while working rather well — are a bit snug on my face and cause some discomfort when wearing them for long periods of time.

After coming home from all this disappointment and annoyances of what felt like the Medical Insurance Agencies dictating policy for eyeglass replacement — I decided to tidy up the room a bit and get ready for having to put together a processor to motherboard and then to the tower when what do I stumble across that I thought I had lost?  The BIOS jumper that I thought that I had lost.  It was sitting on the other panel of the tower stuck in the guide rail used to lock the panel in place.

Great, just great!  I think.  But too late to try to put the unit back together and give it one more go.   Not that I want to at this point, I believed that the BIOS got bricked.

So that was my April Fool’s in a nutshell big enough to hide the Death Star in.

Then Sunday was a sight to behold.  After I started my routine chores of laundry, I had stepped out briefly to confirm whether the meteorologists in the area had been completely charlatans about their forecast for the day or whether they had just gotten lucky about it (after all, as it’s said — Meteorologists: where they can be wrong 80% of the time and still keep their job).  As it turns out, they had been lucky and the weather was beautiful!

So after dumping the first load into the dryer and starting the second, I went about pulling the bicycle out of storage and checking to make sure the tires were pressurized, brakes were working, and all the appropriate, gears, pulleys and working parts were greased and working properly,  And with everything back in working order,

Half hour later, I decide to take a spin and make sure that I did do all the fixing I should have done.  4 Miles (6.4 KM) later, while I’m feeling accomplished and a bit shaky, I realize that I’m grossly out of shape.  I would’ve loved to give it another go today, but unfortunately for me — it’s raining and much cooler than I’d want to ride with a pair of shorts.  So I’m going to have to hold off ’til tomorrow and see whether I can have another go at it, or whether it’s gotten colder again.  *crossing fingers again*  If it is warmer, I plan on adding a couple of more miles to the journey.

[Last Edited: 04/04/2011 05:18:37 PM]

This morning as I was sitting here and putting my thoughts together while reading my morning news sources and feeds, I had been struck with an interesting sort of inspiration, but before I go into it, I’m going to take a brief step back and explain a bit of the conundrum that caused me to have this flash from one of the muses.  For the last 5 or so months, I’ve found myself sort of floundering when it comes to writing.  Some weeks I’m able to talk about the things going on in my life with no problem…  Other weeks, I find myself drawn not entirely unlike a deer to oncoming headlights of a Mac Truck to writing about tech stuff as a means of getting out of writing some journal entry that I feel I’m going to be excessively maudlin or insipidly whiny in.

So the inspiration was to split that out.  Because let’s face it, when it comes to IT Tech — hardware, software, and what have you — I assuredly have an opinion on it.  People often come to me for various sorts of advice, or to help them clean up their systems, or even finding the right sort of software for whatever it is that people want to work with.  I can’t see why I can’t put it to good use somehow.  While I’m no authority of anything tech by any stretch of the imagination, and not remotely published…  I think it’s only natural to take a passion and keeping it a sort of hobby instead of getting it confused with my journal, which has been (and should always be) about my interaction with the world — both online and outside the door of my house.

Now the only thing is — to come up with a name for it…

Well that’s about it for the time being.  Until the next time.