The What Planet Are You From? quiz says that I’m a…
“Child of Mercury… Your soul is thoughtful and in constant motion. Children of Mercury are driven to communicate. Equipped with charm and intellect, they are ready to face a situation with a view that sees all sides. — Being so occupied with the mind tends to cause you to distance yourself from others. As a member of the race who makes everything definable, remember to create deep relationships with others. Keep aware for your dark and light side, they are exactly that – in extreme. — Learning to use the mind as a tool and not your master is your key in this life. You can make anything happen if you really want it to. Remember, your beauty as a being goes beyond your mind. You are a beautiful expression of balance.”
Musings on a game of Mechwarrior: Dark Age
The simple fact of the matter is, as much as I enjoy all kinds of games, I am a rotten loser. It’s just something built into my personality, and I’ve never been able to overcome it. I honestly don’t know how to be casual and cheerful about losing a game; I envy those who have mastered that. I sympathized greatly with Jim Kirk in The Wrath of Khan when he stated flatly, “I don’t like to lose.”
Still, I want to be a good sport. Win or lose, I’ll want to play again, and throwing a fit can make it hard to find repeat opponents. So, when the burning feelings of anger and embarrassment hit, all I know how to do is to try to keep them hidden inside, let them sear through me quickly, and be calm and normal by the time I’m asked if I’d like to play again.
Well, I have to face facts… that’s not working very well any more. Shutting down my feelings fails completely around friends who know me and can see right through my mask. Besides, I can tell that my spirit is beginning to rebel against the decades of attempted stoicism; the mask is getting thinner and more transparent with every use.
I just have to figure out how not to let it bother me when I lose. Or give up all forms of competitive gaming; but that’s not exactly the answer I’m looking for.
Today is the fourth anniversary of my marriage to the wonderful, beautiful, raininva. I love you forever and a day, sweetie!
They just played Madonna’s “Vogue” on the radio, and I had a flashback to a VTSFFC party where we all tried to Vogue, but we just couldn’t manage it, so we fell back on something we were familiar with. We all started summoning Zords instead.
“Power Ranger Vogueing,” while odd-looking, doesn’t look any odder than actual Vogueing.
Wonder if my old SE is eligible?
Talk about long-lived hardware… here’s a link to a honest picture of a 1989 Macintosh SE/30 (16MHz, 1 Meg RAM) running Apple’s 21st century OS X operating system on a 9-inch black & white screen!
… okay, so it’s actually an iMac motherboard jammed into an old SE/30 case and hooked to its monitor by some crazy Japanese person. Still kinda cool… like when we were going to hook an LCD screen and battery pack to Ed Philibin’s otherwise self-contained Amiga and make a bulky Amiga “laptop”.
Technology marches on
Thanks to Jaguar, QuickTime 6, and DivX for Mac 5.0 Alpha 3, I can finally watch DivX .avi files now. Time to catch up on those “Chobits” episodes I was loaned!
Build-your-own panic attack
Had to install some printer drivers today at work during our big production day, and the installer dropped a directory full of useless documentation at the root level of the drive. So I went to move it, but said installer had placed it there as the root user. So I fired up a terminal and told the machine to “sudo rm -r” the directory (in non geek-speak, pretend I am the master user and delete this directory and its contents). As always after doing that kind of thing, I double-check what I’ve done by getting a fresh directory listing.
The terminal reports that the disk is completely empty. Completely. Not a single file.
Well, to say I was freaking out was one way of putting things. Now, the GUI insisted the files were all still there, and my running apps were all still functioning, but the terminal insisted on showing a blank listing. So, finally, I logged out of the whole shebang and logged right back in.
The GUI still says everything is where it should be. Check the terminal… which has recovered from its amnesia and confirms that all is well. *heavy sigh*
I think I need a cookie.
Such a Deal!
Just found this in our paper while doing a spell check:
“IBM PS-1 Desktop Computer. Works Good. $250”
Line forms to the left, folks 🙂
In the spirit of holiday greed, I began my online wishlist today. I’m not posting the address here, ’cause I don’t want it to look like I’m trolling – if you actually do want it, ask me or raininva and we’ll hook you up.
Also, I didn’t put in any of the kinky stuff. You’ll have to convince me you really wanna buy it for me first. 🙂
Very Personal Stuff
Well, we all have a face, that we hide away forever
And we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone
Some are satin, some are steel, some are silk, and some are leather
They’re the faces of the stranger, but we love to try them on
— Billy Joel, “The Stranger”
So often, I want to bring my stranger out into the open, and just openly be that facet of myself. I repress him and keep him locked away, but he won’t stay there, and I can always feel him rattling the bars of his cage. Sometimes, he gets loose for a bit and expresses himself – in fact most of my self-expression comes from my stranger.
I dream of just breaking the lock, showing everyone I care about my bare naked self, and being free of the pressure. In my fantasy, this makes everything in my life okay, and we all live happily ever after. I rather doubt that reality would work that way.
Over the years, thanks to my friends and the semi-anonymous means of expression that is the Web, I’ve been able to let the stranger roam farther and for longer periods of time before he’s locked away again, and I’m thankful for that. Half a loaf really is better than none, and I can accept him a little easier than I once could. Rain, of course, has had a great deal to do with this.
My stranger is, of course, mainly responsible for this post. It make my heart race and my body tense simply to write these words, but I hope he’ll be satisfied for a while.
