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| Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 | | 3:39 pm |
Random question:
Does anyone know of a decent, free benchmarking utility for graphics cards in windows XP? | | 1:13 am |
There comes a point where even I recognize that I am maintaining a mask purely because it is what I have always done. That I continue to dodge and obfuscate because such has become second nature. All the pat responses, the feigned anger, the clever quips are pointless, protecting nothing but a worthless illusion. And yet, I still can't bring myself to discard it. Current Mood:  drained | | Monday, July 3rd, 2006 | | 12:09 pm |
Picture for you  | | Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 | | 5:44 pm |
| | Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 | | 11:24 pm |
Singing to the void I've got a poem screaming around the edges of my mind, a half-formed story that wants to be free... And I seem to lack the words or the will to craft it. I tried to write for Rayle, and he laughed at me. Of course he did - he meant no harm by it. That's his nature. But the words had no substance. They did not tell any story we didn't both already know. So I left that story behind. It wasn't the one. I wrote to a child of the Sun, adrift and without purpose. But I had no purpose to give him. No answers to offer. So I left that story behind. It wasn't the one. I sang to a wolf, but his eyes were turned elsewhere. Forever forward, hunting his past. I understand - the past could make us whole. But it's gone, dead and buried. So now I write to LJ - that vast bottomless pit that absorbs all teenage angst, feeds it upon itself. I'm a teenager no longer, or so I'm told. This is not the story I need to tell, or so I'm told. But I'm not sure what else to write. Current Mood:  depressed | | Monday, February 13th, 2006 | | 5:05 am |
Ugh... Another one of those dreams... Least I managed to break it before the waters closed. I'd like to know what the fuck the premonition was... All I remember was that I had it... I'm sure the memory will return to me once it's too late to do anything. Current Mood:  blah | | Friday, February 10th, 2006 | | 11:25 pm |
Where were the outraged Imams when the Buddhas of Bamiyan came crashing down? Where were the calls for the expulsion of the Taliban? Where were the flag burnings? Where was the fury? There was no outcry from Saudi Arabia when Theo van Gogh was murdered. And when the Towers came down, there were jubilant crowds singing in the streets in Gaza, in Cairo, in Riyadh, and even in muslim neighborhoods in New York City itself. And of course, no one would bat an eye if an Islamic paper published vile and insulting caricatures of Jews, as they regularly do. But the Danes publish a handful of lame cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed, with the express intent of causing controversy. Now that's a sin worth condemnation... The cartoons ranged from silly to insulting, from pointless to perceptive. I understand that their religious beliefs say that depicting their prophet is a crime. But guess what? The cartoonists weren't muslim (so far as I know). Shariah doesn't - or at least, shouldn't - apply to them. Judaism says you're not allowed to eat pork, but not even the most orthodox Jews burn buildings over the opening of a barbecue shop. Even if the cartoons *had* been insulting and degrading - and on the whole, they were really rather weak - that wouldn't justify the response. I have real problems with people forcibly imposing their religious beliefs upon the media, the government, and others. And I have real problems with clerics that encourage violence in their followers. I by no means mean this post solely as a tirade against muslims - Jews and Christians have their extremists, too. But Islam is the only modern religion whose extremists are largely in control, not only of the religion, but of a number of influential governments, and a decent amount of military force. Of course, the argument could be made that Christianity now boasts a nut-case leader at the helm of a nuclear superpower, but... The US hasn't quite fallen that far, yet. Yet. (btw, you can find all twelve cartoons here. I think the thing that has annoyed me most is how the American media consistently and largely inaccurately refers to them as 'insulting', and refuses to publish them.) Current Mood:  irritated | | Sunday, February 5th, 2006 | | 9:56 am |
A quote... I'll let this speak for itself... From the NYT (hidden behind subscription firewall, you can find excerpts of the article here), about a Bush-appointed NASA Public Affairs officer: In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”
[Deutsch’s email] continued: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.”Iraq isn't the only nation to have aquired an elected theocracy in the past several years. Current Mood:  gloomy | | Friday, December 30th, 2005 | | 2:31 pm |
| | Saturday, December 24th, 2005 | | 9:21 pm |
Pretty sure I've asked this before, but...
Can anyone reccommend a good program for repartitioning a windows computer?
My situation is this:
I got a new HD a year or two ago, and partitioned it with several partitions: 3 primary partitions, and three extended. 4 of them were linux partitions, 1 was an NTFS windows partition, and one was a swap drive (FAT, iirc, accesible by both). I've given up on Linux, having never gotten internet working in it, and no real need for it (I'm a gamer, and 'nix is still pretty barren for gaming). I'd like to salvage the 30 or so gigs I devoted to Linux for ripping ISO's of my game CD collection (no more hunting for lost CDs!). Using Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management, I was able to pretty easily delete the 'nix partitions. This left me with about 8 gigs of unallocated space, 26 gigs of free space in the Extended Partition, before my 80 gig H: drive, and another gig of free space in the Extended Partition after my H: drive. Is there any way to combine all of these into one massive H: drive, or, barring that, combine all that free space into 1 drive? The Windows Disk Management tool doesn't seem to be able to (and I'm very hesistant to experiment)... | | 6:34 pm |
America should really stop depending on radioactive power sources, and switch to something safer. | | Monday, December 5th, 2005 | | 8:35 pm |
George Washington Inverse The president who cannot tell the truth. It's really pretty sad. Current Mood:  impressed | | Thursday, December 1st, 2005 | | 8:10 pm |
Wow... For the Raleigh crew: I just ate at an absolutely incredible all-you-can-eat chinese/japanese buffet, Royal China Buffet on the corner of Millbrook and Atlantic. They had a huge variety of food and over a dozen different kinds of sushi. All of it was pretty exotic (only one variety of vegetable roll, all the rest of the sushi were various types of fish). And it was all excellent. I got stuffed just trying all the things that looked interesting. It was really a pretty remarkable culinary experience. It's also worth noting that over half of the patrons were oriental, hardly suprising given how authentic the food was. It was a very reasonable 10$/person, which suprised dad and I both, considering that we each ate about 20$ of sushi alone. Current Mood:  content | | 3:07 am |
..... This has to be one of the wrongest things I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of very wrong things. Current Mood:  amused | | Monday, November 21st, 2005 | | 12:58 pm |
Small victories
I'll be flying home on November 29th.
My computer will be staying here, I suspect.
(you can tell I'm desperate to escape - I'm leaving my PC behind...) | | 1:26 am |
Sunday Night Movie... Just gone down watching " Category 7: The End of the World". It was roughly the meteorological equivalent of The Core. It was hilariously bad. Had some decent special effects, though. The tornado taking down the eiffel tower was cool. Washington's face falling off of Mt. Rushmore was amusing. But the bit with the pyramids blowing away? I just kept thinking of those damn sediment transport equations of Dr. Leithold's. I'm not too sure that you could find a strong enough wind to pick up a 1-ton block of sandstone. On Jupiter. Their psuedo-science-babble explanation was amusing. Chunks of falling mesosphere were encountering rising hot air from cities and combining with global warming strengthened thunderstorms to create superstorms. I'm no meteorologist, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. Furthermore, their solution - cutting off the cities electricity - would not cause the storm to instantly vanish. And finally - there would be no power grid to cut off, anyhow, in the eye of a category five hurricane in downtown DC. Naturally, buildings were flying apart, (exploding) cars were airborne, etc... And through it all, the over-sized cast of heroes was out and about fighting religious nuts and oil moguls in the streets of the city. One thing I did appreciate: the movies message was very liberal. The storms were proven to have human causes, big oil had the white house in its pocket and was covering it up (to the point were the white house had the homeland security chief fired to prevent him from ordering the power shut down), and one of the more charismatic (read: nutso and hearing voices) rapturists was kidnapping children because he thought if he reenacted the pharoah's plagues, the Lord would be happy. (the other rapturists were just trying to make as much money as possible off of the paniced populace) All in all, it was worth watching, just for the sheer corniness value. And for watching a rapturist get hit by lightning. That was an awesome scene. Current Mood: amused | | Monday, November 14th, 2005 | | 7:06 pm |
Not good... Kitten keeps urinating on the furniture. If he keeps this up, Mom says he's either going to have to become an outdoor cat or be put down. Current Mood: depressed | | Saturday, November 12th, 2005 | | 8:42 pm |
I have tasted freedom, - it is terrifying and enticing. I keep remembering how good it felt to be free. I was free on the boat, down in the carribean. No responsibilities but survival, no expectations beyond following the wind. That was freedom of mind. Nothing holding me in place. That was freedom of motion. In Raleigh, and even more, here in Florida, I feel trapped. I'm trapped by friends, family, expectations... Most of all, I think, I'm trapped by my own fear. I *know* I have the ability to escape. To escape my long vigil at the computer, and go *do* something. Again and again, I fail to find the strength to do so. I could get up tommorrow, hitch a ride down to Marathon, and find a ship looking for crew. I could be on my way south, once again free upon the waves, come Monday. But the thought of that terrifies me. To leave behind my chains... It's frightening. I want to. But I'm afraid to. I'm afraid of the loneliness that would come of leaving it all behind. I'm afraid of change. And I'm afraid of failure. Current Mood:  listless | | Monday, November 7th, 2005 | | 3:22 pm |
Sirens call... We want to head south. Current Mood:  restless | | Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 | | 12:54 pm |
In other game news... Looks like Oblivion is going to be delayed. That's probably a good thing. It will give me more time to get together funds for the inebitable neccessary hardware upgrades. And it will give Bethesda more time to finish the game - something I still wish they'd go back and do with Daggerfall. Of course, I'll probably not purchase the game until the expansions are out, and buy the three-pack or collectors edition or whatever. Until then, there are a couple of good mods for Morrowind due to be released soon, so that'll satiate my first person hack-and-slash desires. Current Mood:  thoughtful |
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