brianbot

( A todo list )

Jordan had a fantastic wedding on a boat. I'm very glad for him.

Katy and I are on better terms and have came to terms with our non committiveness of our relationship. We're staying friends, and only friends, which should mean the drama goes elsewhere and we can enjoy our company without any stress or obligations to eachother. Which is what it should have been at the beginning of our relationship.

Lan party on friday - I hope it turns out well.

I just read this article:

http://io9.com/5039185/why-we-deserve-better-villains-++-and-how-to-get-them

It was a good read, and I agree with alot of the authors points. Basically, he asks, why does everyone love the Joker, but they don't get excited about other villains? His main points are that we see too much of their world, they are defeated too much, or they don't contrast the hero enough.

He mentions a few villains and how they became dulled down. I sympathize most with the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica and the Borg of Star Trek, and I think the author puts it best:

Cylons:

James Callis, who plays Gaius Baltar, said recently that he thought bleak space-opera Battlestar Galactica made a mistake by letting us inside the Cylons' Baseships and showing us their internecine bickering and weird internal decor sense. We stopped thinking of them as the implacable masterminds of human genocide, and started thinking of them more as The Real World: Baseship

It was at this point in Season 3 for me that the main antagonizing force no longer was an ambiguous group of bloodthirsty death (like Skynet of the Terminator series) but rather just a confused group of kids with big guns. The plot also stopped moving for much of this season, because the writers made it clear that the machines were not infinitely powerful and will show up just to ruin everyones day at the worst moment. To the series credit, though, Season 4 redeemed itself with a Cylon Civil war, reinstating half of the Cylons as bloodthirsty killing machines again.

Borg:

This is one of the things that went wrong with the Borg. (The other one being the ridiculous "Borg Queen" which I think comes under the heading of "seeing too much of their world.") When we first meet the Borg, they're so unbeatable, Captain Picard basically has to beg Q to get the Enterprise away from them. And then the good guys defeat the Borg once, against tremendous odds. After that, every victory gets easier and easier, until finally Captain Janeway is reducing the entire Borg collective to rubble with a few well-placed kicks.

Star wars had this problem too. When the audience first sees the Jedi, they are as good as wizards or supermen or ninjas or whatever strong individual hero you could think of. There was nothing that wasn't a Jedi that could defeat a Jedi. However, the prequils dumbed down the heros to the point where fields of them can be killed by simple infantrymen, and it stopped being as amazing. The bad guys didn't seem as bad at this point either.

The author goes on to show that a good villian has unknown origions, unknown motivations, and is exceptionally good at what he does. He shows no remorse, and no sympathy, and the audience feels the hero's hopelessness.

I think I should make a directory on my computer and fill it with "Exceptional Villain" Fantasy/Scifi content. The list is shorter than you would expect, because most Scifi Plots revolve around either a government or a technology as the antagonizing force. However, what I can come up with so far is:
- The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Sauron will f* you up)
- Star Trek (Borg) - Q Who?, The Best of Both Worlds, First Contact
- Star Trek (Kahn) - Star trek II
- Babylon 5 (The Shadows) - Select Episodes, because their plot is lightly woven into alot of episodes in Season 3 and Season 4.
- Battlestar Galactica (Cylons) - First 4 episodes of Season 3
- X-men 2 - (Magneto)
- The Matrix - (Agents)
- The Terminator 2 (T-1000)
- Doctor Who (The Master) - Series 3 finale episodes
- Doctor Who (Weeping Angels) - Blink
- Doctor Who (Clockwork Droids) - Girl in the Fireplace
- Batman Begins - (Scarecrow, Raz A'gul) (and the Dark Night when Avaliable)
- Star Wars - A New Hope (Darth Vader)
- Transformers (Megatron)
- Imhotep (The Mummy)
- The Fifth Element (Zorg, Evil Planet)
- The Thing (The Thing - I hear the 1982 version is better)
- 24 Season 1 - (Nina Myers)
- Goldfinger (Auric Goldfinger)
- Fight Club (Tyler Durden)

Honorable Mentions:
- The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy (The Mice)
- 2001: A Space Oddesy (HAL 9000)
- Heroes Season 1 (Sylar - Select Episodes)

Sorry, Daleks may be cool, but do not make interesting villains. They are just a cheesy immovable force.

Any I am forgetting?

:D Satalite tv is working, 601 channels. Too bad like half of them are sports and infomercials.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/2008/08/19/how-to-win-a-fight-against-twenty-children/

We hired one of the lead developers for the Apple IIe Oregon Trail at work. Today, once again, we had a discussion with him about the game during lunch. He tells us that there was a painstaking amount of research that went into the game to recreate the weather and river conditions of the time, and ultimately caulking your wagon was always your best bet.

He says that the tombstones that other kids left with profanities caused the most tech support calls from angry teachers. As it turns out, you can enter a teacher menu on the main screen with control A and erase and edit tombstones.

Now, we're getting an emulator to do just that :P

Blogs are really great. Its nice that some of my friends are still chronicling their life, so I know whats going on.

Katy and myself went to New York, which kicked ass. We left a Wednesday night with Andy, and drove our ass off until we arrived at Murdoc's Place at 2 AM Friday. We stopped at a Fry's electronics and took a 45 minute detour for Del Taco on the way.

Of course, the trip was fantastic. HOPE was pretty cool, while not as gothy and partyish as Defcon, was a nice refreshment from the normal day to day activities. Also, Murd0c was a blast to be around, as was everyone else. On the minus side, the city was very hot (100 degree weather), severely limiting the sightseeing we could accomplish.

Andy was not satisfied with his limited duration in the city, and stayed behind for 4 more days. I just recently got in touch with him during Jordan's Bachlor Party again, and we caught up on the trip.

Speaking of, Jordan Griffin gets married in a few weeks. Who'da thunk.

You can see the pictures from new york here: http://picasaweb.google.com/labythan/NewYork?authkey=yOP3hLpodKM&pli=1&gsessionid=p5CGFCu-VHTRoLWZMImQOg

We moved locations at work, because our old landlord was a dick I guess, and we needed more space for newer employees. The company is growing fast - they had to add a new level of management hierarchy in order to cope with the new size of the company. Its kind of nice working at a large company, where the company's bottom line isn't necessarily dependent on my actions. Right now, they have me working on a Virtual Printer application (I am eyeing an open source project called PDFCreator for the base project, which I think is written in VB6, that while old I know just as strongly as PHP). I just finished a picture message manipulation program. Try it out if you want - send pic AT zink.mobi a picture with the subject "Fail" and check your mail in about 30 seconds.

Our work is awesome because we have a good amount of the walls covered in whiteboard dry erase paint. So we can draw on the walls without any consequence. And of course, we are nerds, so this is the kind of crap we draw:





I've been having a streak of finishing projects that have been piling up over time. I had an Modified XBOX to make for 1 person, a Twitter Application to make for another person (who won't leave me alone on little modifications to it), a Internet Explorer Toolbar to make for Asim (which is still a work in progress), and then I also have my own projects, such as the Media Center and Home Improvement.

I have updated my Sprint Mogul to the latest firmware version, which includes such sweetness as GPS functionality (there was a GPSr in there that was dormant until the latest software), and the I have been pimping it out with all the cool Windows Mobile software. I still need to install TomTom, and pimp out the look so it has iPhoneish functionality (I think its funny how much of my time I have devoted over the last 6 or 7 years to making my PC look more like its mac counterparts).

Catherine found the last phone I lost, which I can't ever activate again with sprint (it has been marked as lost/stolen). I think I will turn it into a makeshift tomtom.

Speaking of Catherine, she wrote something interesting on her blog a few weeks ago: "Have you ever thought about how many people you think about every day, and how many people think about you? Makes me think of humans who are thought of, and loved by nobody at all :-(. "

I've been rearanging the upstairs of the house to make room for a potential short term roommate (6 months or so?) that will help pay off debt so I will be more cappable of paying for the mortgage (since my part of the house bill is close to $700 a month, but I pay about $900 a month or so right now because I am repaying debt from Emily - that, plus car payments and about $4000 of debt is alot of bills to tackle at once) The office is now empty, and all my equipment is in my room. While tyler has the entire basement to the house, I don't really have any extra workbench area, so the fact that my room is larger than the rest is pretty spiffy.

I am really proud of my Ethernet Installation into the top two rooms in the house. After about half an hour of thinking of how I am going to get the cable to go from the garage to my room (which has a room inbetween it), I came to the conclusion I should thread the ethernet cable underneath the guest/office room carpet between the area between the carpet staples at the edge of the carpet, and the foam carpet padding below the carpet. From there, the cable exposes itself in the guest closet, and then 1 punch of a hole later, the ethernet is in my room. I installed a walljack, wired the thing up, and bam! The cable works, I did it right, and now I can browse the NAS/Torrent computer named Yogurt with a ton of bandwith and extreme snappyness. And now, games will have good ping and won't lag out due to radio interference, either. Finally, I also have the laser printer on the network again, without the questionable reliability of an wireless to ethernet bridge.

I am on a house tech improvement binge. First, I want to get a new thermostat installed. The thermostat's thermometer must be broken - we turned off the air conditioner because it was cool (yet muggy) outside last night, and when I woke up in the morning, it said the temprature in the hallway was 90 degrees, which it clearly wasn't (I would have been dying). I want to get the satellite dish working next. Then, perhaps the security /home monitoring system, followed by home automation. I also need to get a decent sound system in my room, and some nice earphones for me to properly enjoy movies until I have the theater room done.

With the pending loss of the office/guest room/my relaxing room to a renter, I am forced to improve other areas of the house for our friends to hang out in. I want to get the theater done soon. Also, I want to try to keep the kitchen maintained. Tyler has the basement looking pretty snazy right now, and we also plan on a complete redo of the garage - right now the garage is a place to put crap and our cars, which accidently became a hang out place because it can be messy and people can smoke in it, but what we really want is a place for people to hang out in that also happens to be a garage. Basically a party room that also happens to have our tools and some storage in it, and we can drive our cars in as needed. The garage needs astroturf and posters. And a computer to play music.

I should talk to ty to see what he thinks about replacing a couch in the basement with the futon, and putting the couch somewhere else in the mean time. I think it would be nice to have a room in the house where 1 person (or a couple, as so many of our friends are) could stay with relative privacy, and I think that the basement is the best candidate.

I'm glad that tech jobs are overall recession proof. Its a good time for me to be in the situation I am. However, I miss retail work, where I can clearly see when I make someone happy, or when I can have random conversations about stuff. I am thinking about possibly doing volunteer work at somewhere rewarding when I start getting more of my life / living space in order. Incedently, I read somewhere Minnesota has more volunteer work done per person than any other part of the country (30% of Minnesotans do volunteering, it says - I wish I knew who these people are, because I know alot of people and certainly I can't say 1 in 3 do volunteering).

Finally... and this is a sad note... I broke up with Katy and am moving on. It was a fantastic relationship and she was a great friend and I am sorry it had to end this way. I don't have as much recorded about our friendship on LJ as I would have liked too, but it was great, and I will remember it forever. Now, its time to continue with life.

Forgive me, here is some videos of some dogs:

Brian & Katy
January 5th 2008 - August 11 2008

To Jason K (via Facebook):

For the record, I am and always have been a follower of the Catholic Religion. I believe in a higher power and a meaning to life. But my entire basis for that falls under the simple question of why am I here, inside this body? I know I have a soul. I am using it, it is watching what is coming in through my eyes. I exist inside this body and if there was a device such as a teleporter that could instantly rebuild my body somewhere and destroy my existing body, I believe my soul would be lost - because what would continue is simply a result of "chemical reactions" and I have no idea how my soul, the part of me that puts me in this body would find the new body.

Furthermore, there is no scientific explanation why my soul exists or how I ended up in this body. Science fiction has some ideas (The Golden Compass series, for example, describes bodies as a sort of sinkhole for elementary particles that cause conscious thought) but we in reality have no idea what defines a soul, other than our own experiences in having one.

So, that aside, I would like to put some holes in your logic for the sake of arguing:

My major point is disputing "How do you explain how it all began?" Alot of my thoughts against people who think other things start with the realization that other methods of belief could just be as valid as my own. Lets say I was an athiest, there are a logical series of events and conclusions that make me come to my decision based on my views of the world. (we are ignoring the sheep that just follow an idea because other people do it and not because they believe it). If I was a Mormon, there is a logical series of conclusions or life events that make me that person. Those logical events are sometimes (especially in religion) the realization that you do not know it all (for example, my idea of a soul). Us Christians don't know how the universe was created any more than an Athiest does, and what makes our view any more valid than their view? We can believe in god, but logically what makes our view correct? Maybe its not. Maybe they are right. From their point of view, they are. They don't have divine text showing what the cause of creation was like we do - but think about this:

Everything has a dependancy to exist . Waves in a pond depend on water in the pond and a critter causing the wave. The water depends on the earths gravitational field to exist in the pond. The people on the planet depend on the earth for food and shelter. The planet depends on the gravitational pull of the sun. The sun depends on the galaxy. The galaxy depends on the existence of the universe. But where does the universe come from, what does it rely on? Christians would call this god, and say god has no origionation. But does that make sense? By that model, everything has a dependancy... yet god doesn't?

I have 2 conclusions that arrise from this:
1. Not everything has to have a point of origin. Perhaps our logical view of the universe is wrong. Perhaps outside of the universe the laws of physics and laws of logic don't necessarily apply and everything that makes sense to us really is a very limited way of looking at the universe. Maybe we aren't even smart enough to comprehend how things possibly work.

The fact that we possibly aren't smart enough to understand how creation really works makes an Athiest's point of view possible, at least as possible as our point of view on the method of creation.

But, this also applies to us:
2. Lets assume that evolution was correct, and Genesis was a metaphor for the process of evolution. Perhaps when God told us genesis we didn't have enough scientific knowledge to describe the process of evolution, and thats why we have Genesis. So, on the topic of dependancy, things go from complicated to simple. People and animals are complicated, but evolved from simpler creatures. We could still be an accident of chemical reactions that have been guided by a greater being to quickly come into existence. After all, we don't grow a tree with a tree, we grow it with a seed, and over time that seed becomes a tree. Maybe on a more grand scale, bacterial life was the seed with the end intended result being our ecosystem and ourselves. What does the tree depend on? Simpler stuff, like rocks. Rocks depend on the planet, which depends on the universe, which depends on god. Simpler and simpler entities. What if God is extremely simple? What if God is in fact just a expression of different laws of the universe, God has no size or limit (he is infinite) but he is also extremely simple, outside of the way we can understand things? If god is infinite, and also infinitly powerful, god could have no intentions and accidently have created us as one of the many infinite possibilities for the world.

I don't have an answer for anything. I think that my thought process gives good doubt that god is not humanoid but is so immense and amazing physics can't describe it and we can't understand it. But its possible god has no consciousness, or at least nothing that cares for us individually, and we are just a side effect of an action of this logically inconceivable god.

What this comes down to is that we don't know how it all began anymore than they do. We have a theory of creation which we hold as fact, just as Athiests do. So logic puts enough doubt in place that that is a reason to not be Athiest. Christianity gives an answer, but that doesn't make the answer any more correct than the lack of an answer.



Finally (and this point is much smaller) many people like having the idea that they are not accountable to anybody but themselves and they make their own decisions on right and wrong. They may feel that religion is like constantly being accountable to your father for everything you do. I guess this makes immoral actions much easier, yes, but then again I know many people who consider themselves Christian who are even more immoral because they believe they are infallible and whatever they do is in the name of god, rather than thinking hard about the actions they do and what they really mean to other people.

You know one person I am talking about (I won't say names) - but this person claims to be doing everything in the name of god while selfishly looking out for only theirself and causing mischief and very hurtful drama (I use those 2 words lightly - there is alot of suffering people have gone through by this persons unfettered actions) with the empowerment that they are justified and can do no wrong (as their morals, as they understand it are pure). They take no criticisms from their peers because they believe that their way of thinking is based off of gods word, and everyone else is less knowledgeable and less godly and therefore their criticisms on the things they do to hurt people are invalid.

The point I am trying to make here follows the same point of depressed individuals - depressed people are usually more capable of analyzing their faults correctly than non depressed people who think they are great and ignore their faults. I think we can think of Athiesm as a religious depression - maybe Athiests are more capable of understanding why something is right or why something is wrong based on societys views than a religious person who hears the words right and wrong but never really spends time reflecting inward on how they are right or wrong.

So, what it comes down to is I think I could also make an argument that Athiests are just as capable of determing right from wrong.

I don't say any of this to destroy your way of thinking (far from it), but I love making logical arguments and love Philosophy. We are trying to determine a conclusive reason why Atheism is incorrect, and to do that the arguments have to be infallible. To do this, we have to entertain the possibility that Athiesm may in fact be correct, in order to think like an Athiest, and then we can come to unbiased and true conclusions. We can only hope that Christianity comes out being the right way of thinking - there is no point to blindly follow Christianity or to ignore non christian ideas for fear that they may taint us. But thats a whole different discussion.

I don't believe anything can defeat my question of "Why are we here" or in another persons words "I think, therefore I am" to show me the lack of a higher power or at least a world undefinable by our understanding of the universe and science.

This ripped my face off:

To begin, this is a tale of how my very existence was twisted and transformed in a most peculiar way. Please have a seat, for I wish to take a moment to relate to you the fascinating odyssey which ultimately led to my reign as the Prince of Bel-Air. I was sired and reared in West Philadelphia. As a lad, most of my time was spent at the neighborhood recreation center where I would laze about and relax in a most charming manner - that is, when I was not engaging my chums in a friendly game of basketball at the schoolhouse. Around this time, two young hooligans had begun to stage a campaign of vandalism and intimidation in my neighborhood. When my mother discovered I had had a bit of an altercation with the ruffians, she insisted I leave town at once and take up lodgings with my aunt and uncle in Bel-Air. As the taxi approached, heeding my beckoning whistle, I could discern the word "FRESH" emblazoned upon its license plate, and took particular note of the pair of plush novelty dice which hung from the rear-view mirror. I was a bit taken aback by these strange omens, but quickly put them out of my mind as I cheerfully called to the driver: "To Bel-Air, my good man!" We arrived safely in Bel-Air at dusk, and as the driver came to a stop in front of the house where I was to live, I left him with the words: "Farewell, sir. Perhaps my nostrils shall delight in your aroma once more!" To be sure, it was a long journey, and as I gazed upon my estate in all its splendor, I knew once and for all that my rightful place was on the throne - as the young scion of the great and mighty kingdom of Bel-Air!

( New user profile under the cut )

( I'm retiring my old LJ profile, which is under the cut. )

I think I should do more writing about things that don't necessairly cover my daily activities.

Todays entry is my dad.

Robert, who was born in September of 63, is one of the people I respect in the world.

While growing up, I always simply assumed that people did what was right and that parents did what they could to raise their kids. As I grow older, I realize that this isn't necessarily the case - most woman are the mother figures in the family, while the dad works jobs and acts like an asshole at home and does the bare minimum that is necessary to keep his family together and keep himself entertained. As it turns out, most men are simply in it for themselves - they buy things for themselves, they do things for their own benefit above any other (which is why men cheat - not saying woman don't cheat too), and overall do the bare minimum required to be a father figure. A good example of a terrible father is a friend of mine, who when asked to watch his own son, absent minded refers to it as his girlfriends son. While I like this person a ton and think he is a great friend, and doesn't have any personality traits that I have a problem with as far as our friendship goes (he doesn't steal our stuff or draw the attention of the law, or cause stress) he isn't exactly a model father. My dad is.

My dad, despite having a relatively large paycheck (25 or so years in Computer Programming does that too you) lives a modest and frugal life. He drives a 98 Chevy Prism that I put a dent in when I was first learning how to drive that makes it look cosmetically like a damaged beater car. He doesn't care. It just needs to drive. He could care less what people think of him, what he has, the type of entertainment equipment he has, or anything - he spends all his time raising his family. He goes to incredible lengths just to make sure my mother and us siblings live in a world without drama where we can thrive on our own. And this whole time while being raised, he never gave into spoiling us - we all paved our own way to get to our goals.

There was one time when the Worldcom corporation went bankrupt, which put alot of people at my dads company out of a job (worldcom suddenly didn't owe them their primary source of income) and my dad to part time. I have never seen him more depressed or worried in his life. I'm sure there has been other rough spots in his life, but not like this. It broke my heart to see him apply at a Video Rental store for $6 an hour just to make ends meet - and he didn't get the job, because the nervousness bled right through his personality.

My dad may not be the most socially versatile person. He may not have all the fancy gadgets. I know for a fact I always didn't get along with him (he didn't give me anything I couldn't figure out a way to get on my own - from a video game when I was little to a college loan when I was older) But he knows where his priorities lie and how to raise his family, and I credit him more than anyone else for me being the person I am. My morals, my vow to always tell the truth to everyone (except for figures of authority) (and not do anything that I would want to cover up), my work ethic, my entrepreneurial personality, and my intelligence / creativity I all owe to my dad.

So, if he died tomorrow, I know what I would say about him. He is a great person and a great dad, and I wouldn't be the person I am today without him. I just hope he is happy too.

RIP Monte Cristo, your greasy heart attack inducing sandwich was delicious.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121734771456393641.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

(To be fair we live next to the only Bennegains in the Twin Cities that didn't close because it is franchise owned)

HOPE was awesome.

So is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk

New York trip post coming soon!

If only just for today, everything is perfect.

:)

Newest awesome discovery for the server computer:

mhddfs (http://svn.uvw.ru/mhddfs/trunk/README)

It takes multiple directories on a linux box and merges them together as if they were a single file system, and then distributes files onto them based on free space available. So, each time I get a new hard drive, it directly equates to extra space available in one mountpoint on my linux box, without having to worry about RAID or anything else shady.

spider_kitten showed this to me as a comment on the Dilbert Comic Strip Community I run:



Its her TARDIS wedding cake.

*nerdgasm*