Just realized this: Today I hit a total of 1000 hits, with 306 individual visitors. Maybe I do have more than just 7 or 8 readers (heh) I doubt it, but it’s fun to hope. You guys have a great weekend!
More later,
S
Archive for February, 2004
Alright, a quick entry before I have to go into work. Got off from work a little early yesterday at 5:30 (Anytime before midnight on Saturday’s a little early). And came home and played Halo online for about an hour and a half, then had some friends come in from out of town and we spent the evening just sitting around, drinking coffee and having intelligent conversation. Sometimes I really miss the intelligent conversation. Not that all my other friends who live in Valdosta are iditios, by no means, but Jeremy and Megan are by far the two smartest people I know, and Jeremy’s little brother Sean is right up there. J is at UGA, working on his PHD in Genetics. That’s right, my best friend is a research genetecist. Be very careful or he will make a monkey with four asses! *laughs* So anyways, they were here until about 1:00 am and I thoroughly enjoyed their company. Maybe now that we’ve got a couple of vehicle that we can actually depend on, we can make a trip or two to Athens to see them. God I hope so. Only problem now is getting a weekend off to actually be able to spend some time with them. Anyways, it’s now a quarter after 12, and I have to be in at 1, so I’m going to let you guys go do your thing. Be sure to click some link’ed goodness over there on the right. Especially Geek Grrls Rule. She’s a new Swiftocrat and has some good content on her page.
More Later,
S
Oh look at how she listens
She says nothing of what she thinks
She just goes stumbling through her memories
Starring out onto grey street
She thinks “Hey!
How did I come to this?
I dreamed myself a thousand times around the world
But I can’t get out of this place”
And there’s an emptiness inside her
And she’d do anything to fill it in
But all the colors mix together
To grey
And it breaks her heart
How she wishes it was different
She prays to god most every night
And though she swears he doesn’t listen
There’s still a hope in her he might
She says “I pray
Oh but they fall on deaf ears
Am I supposed to take it all mmyself
To get out of this place?”
Oh there’s a lonileness inside her
And she’d do anything to fill it in
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now
It feels like cold blue ice in her heart
When all the colors mix together
To grey
And it breaks her heart
There’s a stranger speaks outside the door
Says: “Take what you can from your dreams
Make them as real as anything”
Oh it’ll take the work out of the courage
But she says “Please!
There’s a crazy man creeping outside my door
I live on the corner of grey street
And the end of the world”
Ohh there’s an emptiness inside her
And she’d do anything to fill it in
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now
It’s more like cold blue ice in her heart
She feels like kicking out all the windows
And setting fire to this life
She could change everything about her
Using colors bold and bright
But all the colors mix together
To grey
And it breaks her heart
Ohh it breaks her heart
To grey
Dave Matthew’s Band, Grey Street. If you get a chance to listen to this one, take it.
More later,
S
Ahhhh….it’s been a long week and I’m just about to start my second day off of my ‘Weekend’ and I must say that having a day of work separating your two days off is the shitting pits. That’s okay though, it’s not the first time in my life that I’ve ever had to do it, and won’t be the last, I’m sure. So now onto the other stuff. There is some news:
- Angie’s got her Car
- I know absolutely dick about servers
- Roomie’s getting married next week
So, for the items, here we go.
Angie’s car isn’t a looker, but it runs great so far, and let me tell you, I enjoy the extra 30-45 minutes of sleep I get each morning immensely – puts me in a right good mood first thing in the morning, it does.
Had to go out on a service call today to a business that’s having problems with their server. I realized when I got there that I truly know nothing about servers and have only the vaguest idea how they work. Fortunately for me, I was able to determine that the tower’s just a piece of shit and needs a new harddrive, so I didn’t end up looking like an idiot.
Our roommate is marrying his fiance next week in a civil cerimony, though they’re going to continue to live where they’re at currently. The baby’s due in april and we’re all looking forward to the event with somewhat mixed feelings, but I’m glad they decided to get married. They belong together, I think, and I know that they’ll be happy if they can continue to talk and have fun.
Other than that I don’t have much news other than that I hope work settles down some and I can get some rest, though I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon. Factors outside of my control and that I don’t want to talk about just now dictate that it’s probably going to get a hell of a lot darker before it gets any lighter.
More later,
S
This weekend was pretty rough. I ended up working 15 hours on saturday and 18 hours on monday. Monday night I just came home and fell in bed and lay comatose for almost 10 hours. As far as the internet goes, I’ve done very little, though I did get to play around with MS Office 2003 Pro. Corporate edition, and I must say that it’s impressive. It’s taken Microsoft a long time to make something that actually impresses me, but they’ve finally done it. The speech recognition software that’s included in the office package is outstanding, however I wish it’d remember a profile so that you don’t have to train the fucking thing every time you restart your system. Figures.
I did get the chance to build a system that I’ve decided I want for myself. It’s an AMD 64 FX 5100 processor on MSI’s K8T Mainboard, a gig of pc3200 ram, DVD burner, with all the extras thrown in. Let me tell you, this is the fastest computer I’ve ever put my hands on. Fast enough to suck the paint off your house. Ferex: After I got the thing built and setup running MS XPHome, I installed the Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo and started doing the windows updates. Well, one of guys I work with, Neil, started playing the demo of the game, and any of you out there that know URT 2004, know that it’s like Quake and Doom on crack. The AMD 64 system ran the demo better (no lag, no jumps, no bumps, nothing) than the P4 2.66 machine on the other end of the bench while it was downloading and installing the updates, while the P4 machine was only running the Demo. It kept crashing. So now you know, the Proc to have is AMD 64 3200+. That’s right, I’m saving up. Maybe by next year I’ll be able to get one.
More Later,
S
WIL WHEATON DOT NET: breath of life
It does my heart good to see a famous person that actually plays DND. I love the game (as many of you know) and run the mush Winter’s Edge which is based on 3rd Edition DND rules (as many of you also know). Wil just summed up the entire reason why I spend so much time creating, building, and maintaining a game with the help of several other very devoted and hardworking staffmembers when I could be doing something else like playing a video game or reading a book. I do it because it’s fun, and I get to share part of my imagination and my life with other people, people who I don’t know beyond the game, but who may just take a part of me back with them when they return to reality and know that we’ve done something enjoyable and touching together. I would hope that everyone out there could be as lucky.
More Later,
S
Alright, the response to the Logo was completely underwhelming! *laughs* That’s alright, 3 posts out of 7 readers isn’t bad I guess, even if two of the posts are from the same reader. Anyway, I won’t dwell on you guys’ lack of communication skills. I’m not bitter, not one bit.
So what’s been happening with me? Well, work, as usual, but last night I had a little adventure in PC repair that wasn’t related to work at all. That’s right, the Swiffer’s Hard drive (HDD) crashed and had to be formatted and reinstalled. What a wonderful little experience, I tell you. You know you’re a geek when you have to show up at a friend’s house (Steve-o) dressed in a big hat and a leather duster to recieve a win98 bootdisk at 12 am like it’s a $1,000.00 vial of crack. That’s right, I’m proclaiming my geekiness, but that’s okay, you guys mostly knew that already. So as I’m furitively looking around for the Cyber-Police and recieving the disk from my source, Steve-o mentions that his car still runs (which is a good thing because we might be buying it off of him) even if it’s a little rough. Now my only hope is that it’s running rough because of the fuel filter, and not because the fuel injectors are going bad in it.
So anyways, good news in hand, as well as a bootdisk, I return to Casa de Swift and proceed to force the surly beast that is my desktop PC to cooperate with me and format and reinstall Winblows. It eventually succumbed. Ahhhh, victory. So I spent the evening (until 3am) redownloading various programs and utilities. I finally knocked off about 3:30ish and went to bed.
Got back into it this morning when I woke up as it’s my other day off of the week and started playing with Winamp 5…and let me tell you, this little program is fucking /AWESOME/. I’ve used winamp for years, but I never realized how versatile the program is. Load your list of mp3’s into it and you have a fully searchable database of songs to search, enqueue and play, just at the end of a couple of keystrokes! Not to mention the streaming radio stations that I’d already fallen in love with. If you have mp3’s and are using anything else, convert yourself heathen! It’s free, powerful, and easy to use, why would you not use it?
More later,
S
You guys can thank Steve-O for the kickass logo…I know I do. He designed it while waiting on some paperwork to go through on a loan, and here’s hoping he gets what he needs. Steve-O is the bomb of the week.
I know I haven’t written anything in a bit, and nothing of true substance in a while. Kick me if you like but work’s been hellacious (but I’m so damn lucky to have a good job that needs me, and pays fairly well, so I won’t bitch too hard). I’m stealing bandwith from my ISP’s “Personal Homepage” thingie to host the logo, but since I pay for it every month I figure I’d rather get something out of it than letting it sit there unused. Maybe you 7 readers won’t use up too much of the alloted bandwidth 
. I haven’t had any time to keep up with my usual blogs, and I know Vanessa and Mark are probably about ready to write me off as a lost cause. Well Ha! Joke’s on you! I’ve been thinking about you guys and wanting to get back to you, the therapeutic value of this thing is too great for me to abandon for long, but since I don’t really want to talk about just work here, as that’s a drag, I’ll instead say that I’m a lucky man indeed.
No matter how much debt I have, I have a lovely wife who adores me and whom I love more than life itself, I have good friends who are pursuing their goals in life and aren’t afraid to grasp the brass ring and hold on tight. I have an excellent job doing something that I love, and I have a small but dedicated readership who (though the surly bastiches don’t comment nearly enough) listen to me through the good times and the bad. My vehicle is running again, and I’m enjoying being alive and well. I can’t say that too much. I’m just happy to be alive today.
As far as current goings on, you guys ought to know me well enough that I’m not going to comment on the Politiking that’s going on currently with this being an election year here in the USA, I’m sure even my overseas readers are sick of hearing about the posturing and piffle that’s going on with the candidates and it’s only the second month of the year, God help us. I can only imagine how ludicrous this popularity contest we call an election is going to get before someone reigns it in. If it ever does happen. Doubtful.
As winter turns to spring, I find my soul often turning to a more poetic bent, and while I know some of you could give a shit less about that, it helps me, it pulls some of the dying soul out of me and replaces it with lively, loving soul, and I can’t say that there’s too much of that going around. Sometimes I just want to sit and write, putting my thoughts down on paper, (or bits and bytes for the more technically minded), just let it flow down from my mind to the keyboard. I know however that there’s nothing worse than having to read somebody’s bad poetry, so I think I’ll restrain myself. Hopefully the restraints and the prozac will work for a while 
.
As you can probably tell, this is my flow of concious going on here, as I unwind from another 12 hour day at work, and wait for my feet to stop throbbing enough that I can go lay down and sleep the sleep of the just, or at least the justly tired. When I came in from work tonight, Angie was sitting on the couch, looking cute, but tired. She’s still dealing with a sinus infection, and the antibiotics that she got for it on monday don’t seem to be turning the trick as fast as we’d hoped they would. I’m sure she’ll get better, and I surely hope she gets to feeling better so that she dosen’t have to deal with this along with 600 students at the same time. I know it just drains her, and I worry about her. When I’d finally got all my stuff set down and settled, she showed me a watercolour that she’s been working on today, and I swear to God, she should be able to sell her Artwork for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. She’s finally resigned herself to painting flowers because “That’s what the little blue-haired rich ladies like to buy”, and I know that it kills her creative spirit somewhat. I swear, she can put so much feeling and depth into a painting, or a sculpture, or a piece of jewelry….anything she puts her talented hands to, and it kills me that we live in such a culture dead society, not only here in the south, but in America overall that someone as talented as she can’t do what she loves as a career, and is instead relegated to teaching something the schools are pushing out to kids who are thirsting for it more and more every day. Her art is her outlet, and she’s started doing more and more of it as we go through this crazy life together, and while I’m glad to see that she’s doing it, I know that it’s the way she expresses her tears over a society turning away from its Arts. I think her being unable to sell her artwork is why I turned away from music, and while I don’t think I’d ever be able to come out and tell her that, I see how much it kills her heart when the school approves a $1,000,000.00 stadium to be built for football, and she can only get $1,000.00 to buy art supplies for over 600 students at two schools. I know it just hurts her to see people turning away from the things that make us human, that tie us together in this world, but I love her all the more for continuing on, for doing what she loves, no matter the cost, no matter the consequence, no matter the fact that no one but her high-school educated husband loves her work and thinks she’s the greatest at what she does. Maybe it’s that line from John Travolta’s movie, “Phenomenon”. You have to find out what her chairs are and buy them. Buy them all. And that’s what I do. I never complain about her wanting to hang another one of her paintings on the wall or have her ceramics or photos all over the house, because I love them….I love them all and I love her. I only hope that I’m a good enough man to build her up and make her understand that to at least one person in this world, she is the greatest artist that ever lived. Hopefully she understands. Hopefully she knows. I hope.
More later.
S
A quiz I took, saw it on Ace’s blog. Yes. I’m a fairy of Darkness. Who’dve thought.
The seducer of the night. You are the Faerie of
Darkness. You do things your own way. People
are toys to you, and you like to mold them to
do what you want. You have a lot of friends, or
a lot of people who consider you a friend(or a
lover). People are drawn to that wild smile of
yours, and your promise to allow them to enjoy
life. Ignoring the consequences… You live for
risks. Even if the risk is breaking someones
heart.
What’s your inner Faerie?
brought to you by Quizilla
More Later,
S
Bet you thought I forgot about you guys, didn’t you? Nope, I didn’t, just had a continuation of last week. Finally got everything done and kind of settled in now, though I’m still getting used to my new schedule. I’ll get the hang of it though….I always do. Hell, I haven’t even had time to go and read all the blogs that I normally do. Big things happening on Mush just now too, so most of my free computer time gets spent on there, fixing things up, and making things better, so that’s where I’ve been. Right now just chilling, listening to some Creedence and winding down towards bed. Hope this finds everyone doing well and hanging in there. More later.
S
This ends up being the point where I do most of my rambling. Sometimes it's good, most times it's not. As far as I go, I'm a 30-something husband, father, friend, geek...everything else you want to know about me and everything else you don't is contained right here in these pages.
~Swift