December 31, 2004

New Year!

Damn, can you believe it is 2005?

Have a happy and safe new year.

Posted by Edwin at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2004

Doug's Shadow

Since I wasn't having much luck yesterday, I chose to hang out in Doug's cube today and kibitz over his shoulder.

We found a LOT of stuff out, building on what I found yesterday and what he found yesterday morning, but of course no real resolution to the problems.

I'm compiling a test now, though, to see if a meddling monitor thread is foolishly and dangerously resetting something it shouldn't be.

This system was definitely not designed with debugging in mind. I think I see now why the designer of it all was having problems getting it to work right.

Oh, right. I doesn't work right.

We will be burning about two man-weeks of time on this, wasted time I add. It may be work, but it's not work that I feel good about.

But working with Douglas, who is cheerfully whacking away at this thing, does make it more pleasant. It's not just me and my brooding thoughts.

Posted by Edwin at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2004

Creating Life

I have a photo album that my father put together for me many years ago. I should go through it and dredge up the memories... and attach them to the dates on the pictures.

For now, I remember just one image. Me sitting next to a cardboard "robot head". I was what, eleven? twelve?

I've always wanted to create life, in the form of robots or whatever.

When I was little (and probably not so little, too) my grandmother indulged me in mixing junk from the cupboards (e.g. spices) together as "experiments". Yeah, it was stupid, but I was a kid! And my grandma indulged me a lot. She was great.

Anyway, I never said so, but I always imagined that I was creating life doing this. Primordial soup, as it were.

Also when I was little in Long Beach (damn, I don't know when, don't worry about it) I would play with the metal wind-up robot toys that my great-grandmother had. Just a couple, I think.

I recall that, yeah, they were robots, but not *real* robots. They were single purpose. I wanted to make *real* robots, like people, capable of doing anything.

I played with ideas in cardboard, but these came to nothing as might be expected.

The cardboard robot head was a puppet thing, or at least a fun toy, not a serious attempt at robotics. I did puppets briefly, making a few muppet-like critters and even putting on a show or two. Badly, I'm sure, but the grownups gave me encouragement.

In my pre-teens, eleven and twelve, I would slake the horrible boredom of church by doodling out boolean circuits on some paper. The other kids would complain, saying "we know you are smart, you don't have to go on proving it". Whatever. I was bored, I wanted to keep my brain busy. It had nothing to do with them. It was all about me.

I remember I created an adder circuit. If built, it would probably have timing issues, but it was an interesting exercise.

When I was about eleven I started building a robot. I got a couple of powered wheels from god knows where. I got a motorcycle battery, thanks to an influx of cash from my grandmother. I built a platform to hold these. I think I built that in Orange County, but most of the work actually occured in Long Beach, where we lived with my Grandparents, Aunt, and Great Grandparents. I wish someone could come in here and correct my times and places...

In Long Beach, I needed a brain for this beast. I read and re-read my only book on the subject, something like "How to Build your Own Homegrown Robot" by, I dunno, Heiserman or someone.

(I just looked this up. It was probably the "How to Build your own Working Robot" by David L. Heiserman, 1976.)

But that book was just too much for a twelve-year-old. At least me, at that age. I couldn't wrestle all the details into focus. Remember, I was bright but still suffering from amazing stress, which limited me in many ways.

When I was about twelve, my dad helped me buy (by providing most of the cash) my first computer, a Kim-I. The computer came pre-assembled but I had to build the power supply. The first try, I put in the big electrolytic capacitor backwards. Damn, when that blew I just about shit a brick.

The second time worked much better.

I learned to program on that bad boy, hand assembling opcodes into hex and then punching them into memory on the hex keypad. Most of the programs I took from magazines, such as the asteroids game (played on the display, which was six seven-segment LEDs, I kid you not) and wumpus.

A year later we got an Apple II computer. I transfered my learning to that and eventually put all of my robotic aspirations behind me. Robots were expensive and I had no cash flow. Programming, a vital first step towards brains, was cheap and I had computers.

My fascination with creating life and robots has never left me, and in fact was re-kindled when I discovered Robot Wars in the late '90s.

A tour of Amazon.com will show you where THAT has led me.

But I have not yet built that intelligent machine I've always dreamt of, neither raw AI or robot.

I'm not dead yet, so there is still hope.

Posted by Edwin at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)

My Handle on Crap

Okay, today I decided that the way NI handles data visibility during execution is crap. So I'm implementing my own form of dump code, which isn't crap.

I've got a handle on this.

I'm also FINALLY getting a grip (slight as it may be) on some code I'm trying to analyse. And with my crap-free data dumps, I may even learn something today.

So that's not so bad.

Unfortunately, the unfinished code I'm supposed to be improving is all sorts of broken.

So that's not so good.

I'd smack the author, but he is on vacation... which is why I'm mucking about in the stuff.

Maybe if I finally get a grasp of some system here, I'll hate things less.

Posted by Edwin at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2004

Dodgeball


Dodgeball has been banished from the schools these days, which is sad. I really liked that game, probably the only team sport that I played and enjoyed. Actually, it's mostly a solo sport... and I was pretty good at it.

Once, we played dodgeball in a circle, the people in the center dodging balls thrown from the outside. Extreme dodgeball! I was doing pretty good, too, until I zigged and another kid zagged and we knocked heads. Interestingly enough, you really do see stars when knocked on the head. I didn't go unconscious, but everything did go black. With stars.

I think I was good at dodgeball because I had a lot of practice dodging. I was always quick and this, coupled with my brother throwing things at me, honed my skills.

The stuff my brother threw was pretty serious, too. He always wanted to play with me, and I never wanted to play with him. That built up a certain level of resentment from him, I'm sure.

So he would throw things at me. Hard things. Metal things. Small metal cars, for example. Or that one day he throw the garden trowel at me.

Yup, it was dodge or die in my household.

This memory was brought to you from Aberdeen Washington.

Posted by Edwin at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)

Giant Tinkertoys

When we lived in Washington (I'm pretty sure), we had giant plastic tinkertoys. I mean, these thinges were bigger than I was!

I have a couple of disconnected memories linked to these.

Once my brother wanted to play with them/me and I wasn't interested (as usual). Or maybe we were play-fighting. I don't remember the context! Oh well. He hit me on the head with a long stick with a heavy plastic connector on it. Damn that hurt.

This may or may not be related to an incident with my father. There were the tinkertoys all around, and I was having a fit for some reason. I was nine, what do you want?

My dad used to hold me still, restrain me, when I got to be too much to manage. A sensible approach and I usually calmed down eventually.

This time, I didn't want to calm down. I wanted to be free to wreak whatever havoc I was being prevented from. So I head-butted my dad, back of my head to his nose.

I felt bad immediately after that. I think his nose recovered.

Posted by Edwin at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)

Mincemeat Pie

My mom sometimes made mincemeat pies. I loved these! I know, you probably think they are horrid disgusting things. No matter. They were good.

I don't know how old I was, or where this was... but it could have been California before Washington.

I was sick this time my mother made the pies, but she promised to put mine up for me later.

I stayed sick a few days and when I got better... no pie! It was getting stale, or some other lame grown-up excuse, and it was eaten by those more healthy than I.

I was very disappointed. I don't think I ever did get that pie.

I think this was the same house where they tried to ween me. I remember that juice from the bottle was SO much more tasty than juice from a cup. I think it was the aeration it got. I wasn't fully weened until a very late age, but I have no idea what that age was.

It's possible this was in Washington, but I think I was younger than that.

Posted by Edwin at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

New House

We had JUST moved to Aberdeen Washington -- perhaps even that day. For some reason, my parents dropped me and my brother off at the house. To play in the yard, or something.

They then went to a friend's house (Julie, who I named in my own head as "Ghoulie". Or maybe I'm just hallucinating this last part...) and promised to be right back.

The shadows grew long and the air cold as the sun set behind the trees. Still the parents did not return.

My brother and I went onto the enclosed porch, but the door into the house was locked. We stayed there as night fell and yet the parents were still out.

We were scared. It was dark, cold, and we were locked out of our new house.

Eventually the parents returned.

Posted by Edwin at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

Ruby?

So I'm compiling... I hade the makefiles pared down to a minimum, but the stupid things weren't making the kernel file. Poking around, it wasn't obvious why not, even with my expanded targets, so I opened back up to full build and am re-making.

I need to determine what the optimal make configuration is and document it. I had it earlier, but I didn't write the damn thing down.

Of course, there is no pre-existing documentation. That would be too easy.

Compiling my ass numb, I'm also reading up on Ruby. My brother in law, Jhared, pulled a nice book off of my wishlist. Sadly, it's making my eyes cross, too.

At this rate of fun, I'll be looking for a new job (internal or external) to shift to once my two-year committment to MIO ends. Next year I'm going to talk to Michael and see what can be done. I'm not having any fun here. I really should stop complaining, though. I just sound whiney.

There is more news, stuff we are doing, but I'm just too annoyed with work to care.

Posted by Edwin at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2004

Serial Killer

They say that there are three things that distinguish serial killers from other people, plus a fourth common attribute.

Bed wetting, pyromania, animal torture, and a strong sense of isolation.

I hit three of these four. Maybe three and a half.

First, the embarassing one. Yeah, I was a late bed-wetter, and I even had problems during the day because of my fear of the bathrooms at school.

I don't know when I stopped making puddles in my sleep, but it was damned late. We are talking third-grade late, maybe fourth.

When I slept, I slept as if I were dead. I was out. And, as such, muscular control was at a minimum. My parents, in desperation, got one of those rubber sheets with a water alarm in it. The theory was that I would wake up after I made things wet and eventually learn to wake up before the grand event.

Instead, I slept through the process of getting up, getting changed, having sheets reworked, etc. I did the actions and stuff, but I was asleep at the time -- sleep walking.

I remember once, I was going to a sleepover with a bunch of kids... I assume one or more of them were friends even. I was very concerned about the obvious detail of staying dry when sleeping. As it turned out I didn't sleep that deeply away from home and it was all good. A relief!

At school, for roughly the same period of time, I would refuse to go to the bathrooms. They were not safe -- bullies hung out there harassing people, stuffing them into trash cans, and generally making these rooms unacceptably scary for me at the time. So there was more than one time when I leaked in class. Not fun.

Second comes the fascination with fire. Yup, that's me. When I was in California before Washington (recall the sequence, CA for about 7-9 years, WA for about 4, Orange County CA for a brief stint {I started building my first robot then}, Long Beach for another about 4, I moved to Oregon when I was about 17 and moved to Texas in 1999)....

um, CA before WA I had a friend who goaded me into lighting a fire in a garbage can in a back alley. We were in it together up until the point I lit the fire, and then he was all "he did it!" It probably didn't help that the can was plastic. I got a nice tour of the fire station out of THAT one!

But I do love fire, even today. Given a choice of criminal activities, I would choose theft first and arson second. Actually, I would probably combine the two.

The nasty one, animal torture, escaped me entirely. I loved animals far more than people. I could have probably gone for people torture, but my strong sense of isolation (the fourth element) and fear of the world around me prevented this one.

So far as I know, I've only tried to kill three times.

First was in school, I don't know when or where. I was being tormented, as per usual, in some classroom. I'm surrounded by those crappy desk/chair combinations you see in grade school. I decide I've had enough and I launch myself across some desks with the full intention of killing my tormentor. I remember that. I also remember being prevented from doing so by those around me. But I was raving and screaming and kicking... I must have been a mess.

A later time, in Washington, occured on the playground. I was being difficult, I assume, and my friend at the time wrestled me to a standstill. I don't remember the particulars, however I was humiliated...I relented, said I was good, and he let me go. Whereupon I tried to slash his throat out with my fingernails. I figured a sideways slash would work best, using the edge of the fingernails. It almost worked. At least it left a mark.

The third time was when I was nineteen, give or take, in Oregon. I was living in a pleasant apartment, doing programming. I think this was after I quit college and was trying to go it on my own -- before I had to move home for a few months and retry this whole working for a living thing.

However, the angst and frustration and confusion I felt at the world was getting to be too much. I hated it. I didn't want to do it anymore. So I took my giant-ass knife, the one I got in the SCA (I still have it), and set the point between my ribs, pointed at my heart.

I wasn't going to drive it in and I knew I wasn't, but I wanted to see what it felt like, to think about it.

I decided then that I would pretend that I *had* killed myself. To take that moment to make a new start, to kill the concept of who I was and to try to make a better version.

It worked to some extent, but it was not the last time that I would come to hate who I was and try to shift it for the better. I still find myself frustrated with my role in life, and I still try to find ways to make things better.

So, fortunately, my love of animals has saved me from a life of running from the law.

Posted by Edwin at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)

Holidays are now behind us

Ahhh, we are done with the Holidays. I don't count New Year's day. The REAL heavy lifting occurs between Halloween and Christmas. Christmas to New Year is for recuperation, so you can start the new year with a burst of enthusiastic energy.

As per usual, Marla and I went to her parent's house in Lafayette Louisiannanannanaa. The drive is a tedious six hours or so, though on the way in we apparently missed a couple inches of snow in Houston. For that, I am thankful. When we were there, it was just a tiny sprinkling of frozen mist swirling around the roadway.

Marla's parents went a bit overboard on presents this year -- I feel like such a slacker! But now I am the happy owner of a photo printer (so I can make hard copies of valuable pictures, so they won't get lost in the bit bucket) and, amazingly, a digital video camera.

I have a use for that video cam, by the way. I will be doing some test shots for the movie project. Later, as I build new props and stuff, I can use it to document either the process or their operation... videos that will ultimately find their way onto the web.

Right now I'm avoiding work... the usual. I need to find enough footholds in our codebase to do something useful, and as per usual the code is not cooperating.

Posted by Edwin at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2004

Brain Pain

Yesterday afternoon and pretty much most of today finds me with brain pain... stupid headaches. I should go home and sleep.

Instead, I'm waiting for a piece of hardware so I can complete two tests I have scheduled.

Thursday the vacation begins... four days of non-working goodness.

There is so much I need to do. I'm going to let most of it slide until the new year.

Posted by Edwin at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2004

Sleep

Through much of my childhood I had insomnia. I would not sleep, or could not sleep. I mostly remember this for my time in Washington... third through fifth or sixth grade, I believe.

Most of my positive memories of my mother are of me laying in bed with her stroking my back, helping me relax so I could sleep. Sometimes that was the only way I could sleep. Sadly, that is one of the few pleasant memories I have of my mother. Not to say that I have many unpleasant memories, but that I just don't have very many at all.

If I couldn't sleep in bed I could often sleep in the living room or somewhere else. My father would play a record, which in those days was a large black disk made from vinyl with wavy grooves in it. A physical needle would ride in the grooves and the vibrations of this needle were amplified into actual music! Wow. (Hey you kids, get offa my lawn!).

Judy Collins, Moody Blues, Beatles, Joni Mitchell... so many of the artists of the time were my sleeping companions.

I'm listening to the Moody Blues right now, "A Question of Balance".

I don't fall asleep to music anymore, but if I can't sleep in bed I can still nap on the couch.

Hot weather, though, causes insomnia for me. I cure that by the simple expedient of air conditioning and a fan in the bedroom.

Posted by Edwin at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)

Good Memories

I'm sitting here, avoiding testing for a moment as I sip my water and fight my headache, trying to think up an early cheerful holiday memory for this fine holiday season.

Mmm, the Shadow cat under the tree, got that one.

There is the simple image of my Grandparent's christmas tree, every year pretty much the same. A natural tree caked with white artificial snow top and bottom, inside and out, so it is like a tree in a plastic coating. What a bizarre way to treat a tree!

Later, they graduated to white plastic trees, to save the trouble of coating a real tree.

But really, no specific Christmas holiday memories are coming to me. Maybe I'll think of one later.

I have a Halloween memory, though.

My aunt was putting on a Halloween party. I was thirteen and a bunch of adult-type people I didn't know were milling around outside doing adult party-type stuff. Whatever.

The really neat thing, though, was I got the go-ahead to do stuff to spiff up the decor. I had a gearmotor laying around... and a rubber mold of my hand that I had made earlier that year... hmmm.

I combined the gearmotor with the rubber hand, dug a hole in a quiet corner of the yard, and wired it up. The result? The hand clawing at the earth, trying to escape it's musty grave.

Dodi (my aunt) later told me that, for the people who saw the prop, it was a hit! Yay me!

That prop, the first one I ever built, is now documented in my Animatronics book.

Posted by Edwin at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)

Crunchy Hard-Drive Goodness

It's all back up! It took the required ten hours or whatever to do it, but my boot disk is booting, has most of the relevent software on it, and more importantly, has a ghost snapshot on the data RAID. Woo.

Oh, and the new Ghost 9.0? Easy to use, just a snap. I recommend it.

Of course, the RAID isn't protection from catastrophic machine failure (e.g. it burns down or the power supply explodes due to lightning strike, eating all drives simultaneously), but for now that's a risk I need to live with.

Thought Ghost will backup to CD (or DVD, if I had a DVD burner, which I don't) across multiple disks. Woo^2.

Posted by Edwin at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2004

Breathing.

You will find dreams in these notes as well as memories of daytime life. In many cases, my dreams are more vivid, more real, than my daily memories. But this memory is from life. It's a small memory, just a snapshot.

It is the same house where we found Mickey, I think. This was in Pasadena, though possible Covina. No, I think Pasadena.

The house is California stucko, with an arched doorway, perhaps to the porch. There are plants. We owned a basset hound, a lovely, friendly, tenacious beast. I took apart a vaccuum cleaner. I ate books. I was young there, three to six maybe? In this memory I am maybe five or six.

Breathing deeply, the smoggy air hurt my lungs. So I didn't breath deeply. Until I took TaiChi, I continued to barely breath... just enough, not too deeply. Because breathing hurt.

A jolly childhood memory, don't you think?

Posted by Edwin at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

Danger! Danger! Fry's Zone!

Oooh, Fry's.... Mmmmmmmm.....

So my boot disk is completely fried. Gotta get a new boot disk. My data disks are both just fine, so that's a huge relief.

I go to Fry's during lunch to get a nice 40G hard drive. I ask the seemingly innocent question of the sales dude, "Which of the Maxtor, Hitachi, or Western Digital drives will be the most reliable?" He answers "Seagate". Okay, but that's not on my list.

It turns out there is a nice Seagate 120G for $100. A huge pile of them. So I pick one up and head for the checkout.

"You know, it's stupid to use a 120G as my boot drive. I only use 10G or so on that disk, everything lives on the data RAID."

So I did the logical thing and bought two of them! They are now my data RAID, and one of the old 40G data disks is now my boot drive. Whee!

Last night I spent hours and hours installing software and junk. I'm currently (in absentia) copying the data files form the other data drive to the new array. It was giving me some attitude last night, so I actually expect to see it stuck when I get home.

Once everything is settled, I'm going to Ghost the boot drive onto the RAID. Then, when it pukes again in a year or two I can get the base install back easily.

There are still a few programs that refuse to store their data on a drive of my choosing. For example, Firefox and my PDA synchronizer.

I *might* be able to beat Firefox into submission... dunno about the PDA. All applications should, as a matter of principle, allow you to specify your data destinations

Posted by Edwin at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2004

Behind the Hidden Door

In the land of dreams there is a marketplace. Quaint stores front the busy cobble street, people going to and fro in their errands.

One building stands tall amongst them. There are stairs on the outside of the building leading to the second floor. This level is empty, a large square room full of boxes. In it, monsters prowl. Somewhere in this room, there is a small doorway, hidden behind the boxes. The trick is to avoid the monsters and find the door. Behind the door there is another world.

In the land of dreams there is a collapsing building in a large lot or field. The wooden floors are rotted, the space of the garage is unstable and tippy. There are tools in the garage, giant bandsaws and mysterious machines. Somehow it is my grandfather's shop with wood and supplies stacked along the walls. In other ways it is a complete machine shop unlike anything we have ever owned.

In the building proper there are children's rooms, empty, full of litter and toys and clothes. Sometimes this house is collapsing, other times it is home to a family that is currently not there. But I am there, exploring.

In one of the rooms, in the back of the closet there is a small opening, like a vent but covered with wood. Opening it there is a narrow passage, and that passage leads to another world. In that other world there is a is a marketplace. Quaint stores front the busy cobble street, people going to and fro in their errands.

Following the street you find that it leads to an ocean, and in that ocean there is a bridge that soars above the land. Driving to the bridge you climb the slender on-ramp up into the clouds and pass through the gateway onto the bridge itself.

The bridge is narrow and without sides. It sways in the wind, high above the water. But you manage to stay in the center, keeping moving with the other traffic. The traffic is always light.

The bridge dips down into the water, skims under the surface, so you have to keep driving along it without seeing it, surrounded by bottomless ocean.

At the end of the bridge, there is an island. In the island there is a beach and happy people. A fair drive inland, along a dirt logging road that winds along hills and has ruts so deep the threaten to capture your vehicle, you can find a peaceful glenn. A hike across the glenn, through some trees and around some campsites, there are large rocks and a river flowing through them. At one point the river dives over a shallow waterfall and into a deep pool, swirling around before skipping under ground.

This is a place of peace and quiet, a place to relax, a safe place. Sometimes there are other people here quietly playing. Sometimes I am alone with the pool. It is always quietly sunny.

In the land of dreams there is a school with many buildings. I go to this school and I have a locker in one of the buildings.

I have to go to class, but I can't find the room. I have to get my books but I barely find my locker and then I don't remember the combination. I have to go to class but don't remember my room, so I go to the office to ask, so I am late. I find my math class but I don't know the math, it is the wrong class. I have to go to class.

In this school there is a massive room of showers and toilets and lockers, perhaps attached to the gym. I seem to be hunted there, so I stay quiet, stay hidden. The toilets are all broken, the showers are wet but still, the halls are empty of visible people.

Near this locker room is a cavernous theater, with catwalks along the top, or perhaps a hallway that looks over the seats. In this theater there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.

In the land of dreams there is a tall building, broken inside like an abandoned factory. There are machines and offices and rubble. In this building there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.

In the land of dreams there is an apartment building, tall with narrow crowded halls and shabby small rooms. It is full of people, overcrowded and cluttered, people and clothes and toys spilling out of every door. Some of the rooms have friends in them but most of them hold strangers.

In the building there is a child's room, empty, full of litter and toys and clothes. I am there, exploring. In the back of the closet, behind clothes and piles of plush animals, there is a small door. Opening it there is a narrow passage, and that passage leads to another world.

In this apartment building there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.

In the land of dreams there is an opera house, grand and sparkling, with well dressed people crowding the entrance room. Tuxedos and dresses and furs and jewels press together and swirl around under glittering chandeliers. A grand stairway leads up to the higher levels.

Above the theater there is a room that looks down over the seats and the stage. In other rooms on that level there are clean bright offices.

In this theater there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.

I am running from someone, or perhaps I am just exploring, but I need to take the elevator to go up or down. Inside it I push a button and the elevator moves. And stops.

Sometimes it falls, leaving me weightless and wondering how it will feel to be crushed when it hits the ground. I lay down, hoping to survive. There are springs at the bottom that catch it, though, or I think there must be. I never find out, because it eventually stops.

Sometimes the elevator is not a room at all but a platform that shakes and wobbles when you climb onto it. It travels unpredictably, high above the ground. It is unsafe, dangerously unstable.

Sometimes the elevator doesn't have a door but looks out over black emptiness.

But always the elevator frightens me. And always I must take it to get where I am going.

In all the buildings there are elevators, and these elevators are dangerously broken.

But still I survive, and escape. I try to find my way to the city with the market, so I can take the high road to the island, to the rocks and the pool.

Sometimes I can swim and I do so, easily avoiding the whirlpool in the center that would drag me to my death. Other times I simply sit in the trees nearby and listen to the quiet. There is always a way to the island, through the doors and building and elevators and lockers. I don't always find it, but I know it's there.

If death were to release me into this land of dreams I would not fear it, because at least in that land I have the promise of the peaceful island.

Posted by Edwin at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

Fall down go Boom

Last night I was cleaning up my computer's boot drive because, well, it had accumulated a smattering of spyware and other rogue shit. Hey! If you want to run those key generators to crack software, you gotta pay the price.

Umm, not that I would do such a thing. I pay for my software. Yeah.

Sometimes, though, my paid-for software ends up getting re-installed. Normally I keep all of my keys in my e-mail archives, but for some older packages I didn't do that. You know, before my habits got ingrained. Yeah. That's right.

Anyway, I run Spybot Search and Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/), which is a great package, and cleaned most of it up.

But there was still a damaged system file, mshta.exe or somesuch. Technically, I suppose I could have deleted it (it is non-essential, from what I could tell). But, being a good computer user, I decided to follow Microsofts instructions and use the system file cleaner to make it all good.

Big mistake.

The sfc POS ran for a while and then stoppped... at about halfway. Nothing.

I wander downstairs and futz around a bit. Upstairs, no progress. Check the task manager and it's not using any CPU or anything.

Screw this. I turned off the computer (second big mistake).

Power up and, zowie! Can't read the HD! Damaged. Something (e.g. sfc) ate my drive format. Bastards.

This isn't the first time that some MS utility, in conjunction with my impatience, has destroyed my system.

So I guess I finally put on XP. I've been meaning to do that for months now, anyway, but didn't want to go through the hassle of re-installing all of my software.

At least all of my data is kept on the RAID-1 array. I learned my lesson the LAST time.

Oh, except for the one DRM license key I have. Because Microshit doesn't let me specify the location of my keys. Theoretically, though, I have a backup of it on my data drive... so we'll see if MS can cope.

Bastards.

Posted by Edwin at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2004

Fat Rat, Dirty Rat

For a variety of reasons that will probably come to light later, I was a passive child. I didn't fight, I didn't even stand up for myself. All I wanted to do was disappear, to not be seen, to be invisible.

This, as you can imagine, painted a bullseye on me, achieveing the opposite of my intent. But that's neither here nor there.

There was one horrible little child, this rat-faced little prat, that I interacted with once. I still hate him, as stupid and useless as it may be to store that dislike even today, some thirty years later.

My grandmother and my aunt were antique dealers, so they often went around to find old things to buy. We were at one of their friend's or associate's homes this afternoon, a pleasant cluttered place, looking at god only knows what.

At some point I'm standing in the driveway outside and there is this smaller kid there too. All he can do is recite "fat rat, dirty rat" at me, using the words as some demented verbal assault. Following me, harassing, over and over, "fat rat, dirty rat, fat rat, dirty rat, fat rat dirty rat..."

I try to ignore home. So he increases his harassment, if I recall correctly, pushing at me while chanting "fat rat, dirty rat" over and over. I assume this did not go on forever, nor even for long. But it touched a nerve. I couldn't, or wouldn't, pound him into silence, though that is what I wanted to do. And I couldn't really endure the little shit, either. I don't know what I did... but whatever it was didn't work. I still carry this bit of anger inside, because of this brat... "fat rat, dirty rat".

At one point growing up I realized that this kid probably had a shitty childhood, too, and took his response to it in a different direction than I did. I realized that instead of hating him, I should probably feel sorry for him and his circumstances.

This realization did nothing for me. He was still an obnoxious little shit. If I had been someone else, I would have hit him. I probably should have.

I would now, given the chance. I don't put up with crap anymore. I don't have any more room to store it.

Posted by Edwin at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

Aggravation

Work continues to be aggravating and tedious... not painfully frustrating like it was at the start, but still numbing and boring. I still don't feel like I'm being useful on this stupid project. I suppose I am, but damn...

The tedium makes me hungry, which makes me fat. Well, it will eventually.

The tedium also drains me, leaves me un-enthused for other activities.

And the tedium makes me cranky. I like to be doing, to have my brain chugging along at a fair clip. This slow crawl stuff bugs me.

Posted by Edwin at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2004

Heavy

For a while, during the Halloween season and beyond, I was losing weight. My naked weight fell under 170lbs!

Now it's crawling upwards, so I'm checking in at 176.5 with my hair wet. I need to stop this movement at or before 180, I think.

Time to spend more time practicing TaiChi, eat a bit less, and try to occupy my brain during work. Maybe I'll be able to crank up the architecture project again as this horrid thing I'm working on now fades away.

In theory, I registered for classes at ACCIS on Thursday, but I haven't heard from them nor has the money been withdrawn. I'm not looking forward to doing schoolwork, but it needs doing I guess. Maybe it will help me stabilize my weight...

Posted by Edwin at 07:39 AM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2004

Shadow

There are only three cats that I remember from my childhood. Mickey, shadow, and some siamese that fell off the roof and died. Stupid cat. Oh, and there was an insane persian that we had for a few months when I was sixteen or so.

Shadow was our second great cat, entirely black as his name would suggest. As far as I remember, he was a Christmas cat, appearing under the tree in a box Christmas morning. Or maybe I simply dreamed that part. I have a problem with my older memories in that my dreams have often been as vivid as, if not more vivid, than my "real" sensory memories. So some of my memories are memories of dreams and some of them are memories of events. It's hard to tell which is which.

Shadow was a great hunter. He would bring in mouse and bird guts and leave them as offerings in the house. Ahhh, the joyous sound of my father bellowing as he squished some new cat-created detritus between his toes. Good times.

One day in Washington... I was probably in the fifth grade, but who knows? ... Shadow got run over. Not so much squished by the tires of the steel monsters, but he collided with the spinning wheel of one. The impact broke his face.

I believe a neighbor clued us in, and my dad went and put him in a box. The whole family then travelled to the vet, frightened for the cat as he lay in his box and howled in pain and fear.

I was sick with it all, sitting in the back with the box, unable to do anything except listen. There was no comfort to give, none to receive. Just the sitting and the screaming from the cat.

The vet was able to fix him up, I don't know how or what, but the cat healed.

Shadow was a Burmese, I think -- or so I thought at the time. But instead of the proud nose of the breed, after the accident he had a fairly stubby proboscis. I always figured his face was reshaped by the accident, but it's entirely possible he was simply a mut and had a short face.

I'll probably never know.

Posted by Edwin at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

Another darned title

Okay, so I get tired of naming these posts!

The plans for a jewelry-making party are firming up nicely -- a get together with maybe a dozen people all told, to play with precious metal clay, glass, and beading. Schedule for the 1st and 2nd of January.

I re-arranged and re-structured the front page a bit. Reduced the icon size, condensed the animatronics and robotics pages into one, the new machines page. Added the "link of the day" type list for the Mad Science links.

Not much going on right now. Did a bunch of cleaning on Saturday, tidied places that haven't seen tidying for ages.

Posted by Edwin at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2004

Sanctuary

My childhood was a time of fear and stress. But there was one place I could go, someplace magical.

The fairy wood.

I didn't call it that at the time. I didn't call it anything. We were living in Aberdeen, Washington at the time. I think we were there from about third to seventh grade, give or take.

We lived in a big house, with a big yard, with big weeds, and my parents had big dreams. Much of my time, sadly, was spent in nightmare. But isn't that often the way of childhood? So many people I meet today say the same thing, that their childhood was a time of horror rather than carefree play. Clearly we are doing something wrong.

Somewhere near our house was a little wood... a patch of trees, perhaps there was a creek there, too. I don't rememeber.

Like everything in Washington, it was soft and green.

Inside of this tree-filled space were fluid wooden shapes, stumps and limbs and benches of mossy wood, sculpted by fire and softened with time.

It was art, created by nature. It was a magic place outside of the rules of daily suffering.

I would go there and sit on one of the forms and just sit. To sit and be alone and away from everyone was the purest joy. To be just me, by myself.

It was a magic space, a capsule of beauty and peace outside of the ordinary world. I miss it.

Posted by Edwin at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

Three Steps Forward

Three steps forward and two steps back...

Damn it all. I got the accursed system I've been working on to behave itself on Thursday. But then, the codebase shifted and I spent pretty much all of today getting that built, adjusting it for my needs, fixing new bugs relating to my use of the system (which is different than Chris, the other developer), and so forth.

So now I'm back to errors I fixed days ago -- reborn! Woo! Something regressed, or got changed, or whatever.

So now I dredge through the crap again and see why.

Can I break something yet?

Ahhh, I see the problem. Okay, so I can fix that one.

Posted by Edwin at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2004

Dinosaurs and Flaming Death

When I was a kid, I had nightmares. I don't mean sometimes. These are frequent occurances, a constant companion. For years, these nightmares would cause the usual irrational terror, but after years of this torment I took control of the dreams. I turned them into adventures... frightening adventures, mind you, including my phobias and the usual psychological detritus. I mean, how calm can it be running through the underbrush trying to escape the T-Rex that is intent on eating you? But I was able to remove most of the terror.

Eventually, they went away. Sometimes I miss my vivid dreams. Sometimes they come back in various forms.

I had consistent dream worlds that I could visit and re-visit. I learned their layout, their rules, their notable features. It was great, for example, to visit the island, even if it meant the long drive (or worse, walk) across the impossible long, narrow, sometimes underwater bridge.

Did I mention that I like neither heights nor large bodies of water?

But this note is not about these dreams. I had one dream exactly once, but it was so vivid, so real, that it stuck forever in my mind.

In it, I was young. Four or five maybe. I don't know my age when I dreamed it.

We are in front of a large grocery store. It is night and the large glass windows spill light out onto the sidewalk. It is bright inside, glaring. Next to the curb is our VW bug. I think it is green. I'm standing outside of it on the sidewalk.

My mother is coming out of the store. She probably has a bag of groceries. It was a store, after all.

She approaches and we are both standing next to the car. She is opening the door.

I look up and see a meteor, huge, bright, moving at supersonic speed, like a freight train barreling through sky, like looking up the barrel of a gun. That is the last thing I see.

And then we are dead. I wake up.

Posted by Edwin at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)

School

Procrastination was the magic word for November and, apparently, December.

I need to enroll in classes today. That means giving them money, committing to a program of study and testing, and generally making my life difficult for the next two years.

Whee.

But I gotta.

TaiChi went nicely yesterday... not as beautifully as last week, but not as badly as Monday. So it was okay. I made an effort to relax, drink water during the day, and all that.

I've also made progress at work. Instead of trudging blindly through a morass of fiddling, almost pointless, work... I see a light at the end of the tunnel! My moral has improved measurably.

I've found that I can't do diddly after work on Monday through Wednesday, so the Balloon twisting reference is languishing. I added a few more figures today at lunch, and I'm almost done with the first pass at the one-balloon figures.

Then I hope to get back to UnDead. Dammit.

I think I'll ask Marla to help me practice magic tricks. I'll be stealing the magic from her by telling the secrets, but I bet she will give good feedback. The mirror is a pain, since it's hard to watch the trick AND the mirror at the same time. I'm not adroit enough to do it blind yet.

If I could just settle on ONE hobby my life would be so much simpler. At this point, I'm setting up projects for the kiln and precious metal clay, working on magic tricks (a little bit), working on balloon twisting to revamp my skills there, working on the twisting reference (which I'm doing using the twister font I put together last week), learning TaiChi, and learning Ballroom dancing. Oh, and working during the day. I sleep too.

This doesn't include the hobbies I'm neglecting. Such as UnDead, the animatronics, the robotic AI, and others.

I must be insane.

Posted by Edwin at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2004

Mickey

I don't remember much from my childhood. Or maybe I do, but I just don't know how to access them.

I think that one of my first memories is of finding a cat.

We were living in California at the time... probably Pasadena? If that is the case, I was pretty darned young. I was born in Covina and we lived in Pasadena for... five years there? We lived in Long Beach with my Grandparents after then, I think. We moved to Washington when I was in fourth or fifth grade I think, so I had to be younger than eight or nine? If we were in Pasadena, I had to have been something like four or five. I don't know. I was young.

The image I have is of an empty lot with something in it. I remember it as a broken frame of a car, but it could have been anything. There was a cat there. I entice it out and bring it home. "Mom, I found this, can I keep it?" A classic case. We kept it.

The trouble is -- I don't know if this memory is real, a dream, or a patching together of unrelated memory snippets. But I know the cat. The cat was real.

We called him Mickey and he was the best cat ever. Big and fluffy with bold black and white patterns. He would lay on you and kneed you senseless. If you had a fuzzy blanket he would suckle it and get it all damp, I think... I don't know.

It was always a great honor to have Mickey sit on you and kneed you. I loved that cat.

Eventually, as all things do, he died. Kidney stones, found too late.

Posted by Edwin at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

Tense

Yesterday I was sleepy so I drank extra coffee. Then I was tense and "alert"... which made it easier to wade through the day, but sucked for TaiChi and dance lesson.

Doing push hands you must be relaxed, loose. Especially in the waist. Any resistance and you go over. So while I did reasonably well, I was too tense to be really on like I was last week. Bleh.

And then my brain wasn't getting into the groove for dancing after. All in all, the night was a bit annoying.

Today I have some muscles that aren't happy with me. It's their own damn fault for being tense. If they would relax when I ASK them to, the little bastards would be fine today. Stupid body.

Posted by Edwin at 07:32 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2004

Deeper Meaning

I keep thinking that I should give my little posts some kind of deeper thought... some philosophical bent or a point or something.

Nah. This is a simple ego-dump where I just chat at the computer. I pretend it is my friend, or maybe a relative, that I'm catching up on my days.

Hi! Good to see you. Have a good weekend? I did. Busy, though, and there were several chores that I avoided.

I've been really distracted by balloon figures the last few days or so. I'm going through my reference book and transfering the figures into the new twister font I built... argh! I did, at least, find a nice font-building tool that's free for 30 days, at www.high-logic.com.

Oooh, and I fired Marla's thingy this weekend. It fired nicely and polished to a bright sheen.

It doesn't look like my target -- I was going for smooth, shiny, almost liquid silver. What I got was something that looks sculpted. But I'm happy overall with the shape and feel.

I may try to do more like it, or maybe I'll just play with the materials now.

I'm also looking to have a fun Jewelry Party, maybe even a sleepover so we can sculpt one day and fire and finish the next. I'm thinking at Sofia's, but Michelle has offered up space, too.

It's funny how I am either reading, writing, or making stuff. These activities are WAY more fun and enriching than, say, cleaning, tidying, washing dishes, folding laundry. Marla is the same -- though reading is higher on her list than mine, and I write and make more stuff than she does.

So, as you would expect, my house and office spaces are untidy at best.

I get frustrated with the clutter sometimes. I really do like a clean house.

But it's about priorities and where I want to put my energy.

Posted by Edwin at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2004

What's Next?

I'm between serious projects.

Schoolwork will be starting up again soon, I expect. Those gears are in motion. Ugh.

However, I'm not writing any books (under contract -- UnDead gets sporadic activity).

I'm dabbling in jewelry again with my nifty kiln. I have a notebook with a number of designs I may finally be able to try. Of couse, now I want a vacuum chamber and a spin caster... crazy.

But without a focus for my energies, and with the slow pace of work at work, I find myself casting around for ideas.

I'm doing more balloon animal work -- and may even have a silly gig on the 11th of Febuary. But more annoying, reading the Penn&Tell site (www.pennandteller.com) has me interested in magic again. It's one of my recurring interests. I've got a nice stack of books, but I've never gotten good at anything. I have a hard time settling down to practice just one trick until it's good. I can't decide!

That's pretty much my theme song. So much I want to do, so little time to do it. I'm restless. I want to do *everything*.

Oooh, I've really been neglecting my drums. TaiChi and ballroom just take up so much time.

Maybe I can eBay the drumset and get a spin caster...

Posted by Edwin at 07:36 AM | Comments (0)