Just spent some time re-reading old posts here.  So strange that my life has changed wildly over the last few years, but internally I'm really not all that different.  You'd think I would learn something, or not have the same recurring problems year after year, but apparently you'd be wrong about that.

Hi

So this "Occupy Wall Street" thing has been going on for close to a month now, and has spread to other cities, including my own.  It's a curious thing, and I am watching it with interest.

I'm feeling rather lethargic lately, but that seems to be a long term problem of mine.  A theme running through my life.  Undirected, unfocused.  Disappointed, even.

Yeah, that's a good word for what I feel a lot - disappointment.  In myself, a lot of the time, but also in other people.  We should all be better than we are.  I believe we can be, but for whatever reason, we fall short.

What is this place

What has this place become?  The naked, unabashed, unapologetic power grab going on at the state level in the US is terrifying.  The open torture of one of our own soldiers, with no end in sight.  The absolute acceptance that corporations can do no wrong, and that workers are the enemy.

How is this America?

There's no "hope" here.  There's no striving for a better tomorrow.  There is no equality, or fairness, or even virtue in this.  This is the strong crushing the weak, the rich dominating the poor, the few enslaving the many.

Why is the government not putting work programs into place?  Why do banks get giant bailouts, only to see executives get massive bonuses?  Why are chain of ownership laws in real estate being blatantly ignored?  Why do giant companies pay less in taxes than I do?

There's no attempt to build a brighter future going on.  Only "shared sacrifice" - where "shared" means "not the rich".  It's a bleak, depressing future we're being presented with, one where a life in chains of debt is somehow better than any other possible alternative.

I don't like this empty future.  I don't want my kids to have a future this dark.  I need to figure out what to do to make the world a better place for them.

No real reason

I don't really have much to say at the moment, save that I notice I have been neglecting this, and perhaps should consider writing here again.  It might do me some good to express myself every now and then.  Feeling very tired lately, and unmotivated - but that does seem to be a recurring theme in my life.

Startup Weekend

It's been a long time since I've posted anything here, almost a year and a half.  I'm not going to go into why right now, but instead I want to talk about this past weekend, which was really cool.  I participated in a "Startup Weekend" event.  The basic idea was to pitch ideas, form teams, and create a functional business - all in one weekend.  Sounds insane?  It is.

And a hell of a lot of fun.

So here are some of my thoughts on the experience.

Day 1:

Arrived at about 5:30 with a friend in tow.  Lots of pizza there, and lots of pizza.  Saw a couple familiar faces.  Mixed and mingled, heard a good speaker, and about 20 people pitched ideas, including me.  (An idea I had over a year ago.)  My idea was similar enough to 2 other ideas that we merged teams.  Then people voted for ideas, with the idea that the team with the most votes would stand up and pitch again, and people would join that team.  Ours went first and wound up with about 14 people, a lot for an event like this.  A couple other ideas I really liked, but I stayed with mine.

We all then split into our groups and began working on the projects, staying until midnight.


Day 2:

Arrive at 8:30, the doors open at 9.  Go in, have breakfast, get to work.  There are updates given, but each team is working like crazy.  A few people vanish from our team.  I am the only back end dev, and I am scrambling with server problems, and DNS isn't helping.  Finally I give up on Rails 3 ever working on my server and restart with Rails 2.  Shortly before midnight I get FB Login working, returning some values.

Early in the day we settled on a name - Likedity - and got the domain name.

Day 3:

Arrive at 10 and work.  The team is down to 6.  A speaker at one point, an update somewhere in the day, final pitches at 5:30.  I'm working to get the front end design pulled in.  It takes a while, but I finally realize that FB isn't sending me location information in any way.  I give up and quickly set up GeoIP with Maxmind, which is a snap.  A very short while later I get event information from Eventful working, using the GeoIP.  This is at about 4.  The business people in the team are working to get a presentation put together.  We wrap up at 5:30, and pitches are actually at 6.  We go second.

We didn't win the overall contest to go on to the next round, but there's quite a bit of interest in the app, and encouragement to keep moving.  The top 2 apps - eatdrink.it and statssquared - really, honestly, kick ass.  Statssquared wins, and deservedly so.  They have something really cool.

Below is a list of the final companies that came out of this, roughly in the same order as the final pitches, although I am a bit fuzzy on the middle ones.

1. Scigle
2. Likedity
3. Eatdrink.it
4. Gnomaddesk
5. Notesee
6. Waitmate
7. Statssquared

Go check them all out.

Day 9

Just finished working out again. Day 3 for each of the appropriate workout weeks. Man, this kicks my ass, but I guess I need it.

Day 8 (A day late)

Nothing really to report except, once again, headaches and sleepiness are subsiding. Very sure it's the result of adapting to the vitamins. Still the occasional fishy burp from the fish oil, though.

Day 7

Today was the second day of the exercises, and I got through them as listed. Man, those are hard. I know they are supposed to be, otherwise no progress is made, but damn.

Headaches and sleepiness are definitely diminishing, but still not completely gone.

I'm trying to think of some topics to write some articles on that people would be interested in reading. I suppose I just need to pick a few, and then check on some keyword combinations and see how they stack up in various tools designed for that. Nothing like actual data.

Day 6

No exercise today. The weird headaches and bouts of sleepiness seem to be fading somewhat. Perhaps my body is adjusting to the vitamins I am pushing through it, figuring out what to do with all this stuff it's not used to getting.

I've been doing some thinking about life, and the world, and I'm not happy with a lot of it. Maybe I'll post here about it later, but right now I just need to deal with it myself.

Day 5 (A day late)

Forgot to post this yesterday, but in the morning I started day one of exercise. Pushups I did Week 1, Day 1 at the highest of the 3 intensities, situps I did Week 3, Day 1 and the second level of intensity, and squats I did Week 3, Day 1 at the highest level. Pushups, then squats, then situps. Repeat, over and over.

It was hard, but I got through it, and was surprisingly not very sore for long afterward.


Other than that, it was a pretty crappy day for a variety of reasons that I won't go into here, but at least I had my mom over and she and I and the kids had pizza together, and that was good.

Day 4

It's Father's Day.

Ben just lost another tooth. The third one on top, fifth overall. It came out really easily, apparently he was just poking at it with his tongue and out it came.

Napping a lot today, but I usually sleep a lot on Sundays. A little bit of the achy sinuses thing, but not as much. Maybe it'll clear up soon.

Not much else to say.

Day 3

Partially because I stayed up too late last night, my body/brain *demanded* a lot of sleep this morning. Curiously, it's been very quiet inside my head for most of the day today. For me, this is a big deal, because usually my mind is going at a million miles an hour, and often I can't get things done. Also, interestingly, I was able to make myself *not* think about things. Often I get stuck in a loop over something, and today I could break out of it, change the subject.

Sinus headaches today, too. It's really pretty out, after yesterday's storms. Not sure if it's pressure changes or the vitamins.

I plan on beginning the exercise routines on Monday.

Day 2

My legs are really sore today. I was extremely tired around noon, and have had some headaches across the middle of my head, side to side over the top. It's possible that the weather changes have been playing havoc with my sinuses, so I can't really attribute that to the vitamins. My stomach has been a bit queasy, which is likely the fish oil, I think.

Obviously it's too early to see any real effects from any of this.

Day 1

So I got tired of it and decided to do something. I went and found a few web pages for some simple exercise programs: two hundred squats, one hundred push ups, and two hundred sit-ups. I also signed up at push ups logger to track my progress. This is me. It's sort of weird how that site uses the same pages for push ups as well as sit-ups.

I also just bought some vitamins today:

Fish Oil 1760 mg
Lecithin 400 mg
DHEA 25 mg
Acetyl L-Carnitine 400 mg with Alpha Lipoic Acid 200 mg

The fish oil I took 2 of (already having fishy burps, oh well), the others I am taking 1 of. The fish oil is for the Omega 3 fatty acids, and the others are either acetylcholine precursors or aid in its production. Acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that tells your muscles what to do, and is a primary factor in the executive function of the brain.

I have no idea what the effect of this will be. I intend on sticking with this, modifying it as needed to get better effects.

Lost

It's been a while since I posted last. I don't even remember what it was about, and I'm not inclined to go and check right now.

I'm in a serious funk right now, and extremely stressed. I have a few bright spots, some hope, but what I need are a serious large scale goal to work toward, a hobby or two, and a girlfriend. It's been long enough since I've had any of those that I am past not even remembering what it was like, and starting to want them again.

I need to move forward with my life. This stagnation is killing my soul.

What I am learning

I've been wondering a few things about my life, why things don't work the way I want, and I'm coming to a few fairly unpleasant conclusions:

• It's ok to torture people. Don't worry, you won't get in trouble for it. Why?
• If you're just a grunt, you were just following orders, so it's ok.
• If you were in charge, you can keep it under wraps until the next administration comes along, and they'll sweep it under the rug for you.
• It's ok to ruin people's lives financially by taking inherently stupid risks. Why?
  • The government will just give you more money to play with, and make future generations pay the bill.

It seems to me that people actively try to not think for themselves, and they like getting screwed. I was raised to think that being aggressive was wrong, that I should play nice, but it seems to be that's wrong. That being aggressive is how to get what you want, and the bigger the dick you are, the more you get away with it.

I was raised to think for myself, which means I don't tend to like being told what to do, and I was raised to be nice, which means I tend to think that telling other people what to do isn't right. This combination leads to one very, very frustrated man.

Johnny

This past Sunday a friend of mine passed away. I hadn't seen him in several years, but in my circle of friends he was very well liked. The viewing was yesterday, and I saw several people I hadn't seen, well, since the last time I saw Johnny.

The funeral itself is today, and I will almost certainly go to it.

Johnny was a good guy, very funny. It's unfortunate to say that my life really won't be all that different with him gone, because I hadn't seen him in so long, but he was the first person in that circle of friends to go that I am aware of. He was only 49 or 50, and this really brings to mind my own mortality.

Very soon

About a week ago I was chatting with a friend of mine online, and he gave me an idea for a project for a new website. I've been working on it quite a bit since then, with much feedback from him on it, and I'm hoping to get it live today, tomorrow at the latest. It's pretty cool.

I'll post a link to it once it's live.

I'm tired

Stayed up late watching "The Terminator", and my stupid brain wouldn't let me sleep.

Meh

I have no energy for dating right now. No real interest. I see an attractive woman and can appreciate the view, and then the thought pops into my head, "I'd have to clean out my car."

Yup.

The potential benefits are outweighed by the minimal effort it would take to clean my car. In short, I'm telling any prospective girlfriend, "You're not worth it."

And that's not far from the truth. I'm tired of other people's crap. I can comfort people with a quick email, or something like that, but right now I just don't want to deal with baggage, and we all have baggage. Lord knows I have a ton of it, myself. I don't want anyone helping me with mine, either.

I'm not slamming any of the people I know. If you're reading this, and you think I mean you, I don't. I mean *everyone*. I only have patience for my kids right now. I'll talk with you over email...but dating? No. Sorry.

Life is just...weird.

So this morning I was driving to work, and as I was driving through my apartment complex I saw this gigantic piece of metal mostly off to the side of the road. It looked sort of like a bathtub, or huge sink, but with wires. Naturally I stopped my car to get out and look. From every angle I'm looking this thing over, and it turns out that it's the firewall of a car. You know, that part of the car between your dashboard and the engine. There's no frame of the car, no outside part...just this...firewall. I look at the ground, and there's no sign of a wreck - besides, that'd be one hell of a wreck to knock one of those loose, and there'd be more stuff. Nope. There are some pieces of broken plastic on the ground and a white arc on the ground leading up to it.

So what happened is that this huge thing fell off...something...and someone dragged it to the side of the road.

What that hell?



But that's not all. I get back into my car and drive, and as I get to the exit from my complex, I happen to glance into my mirror and see that there's something odd about the mouth of the woman driving the car behind me. It's too big, and green, with a yellow circle hanging off it. Huh?

She's got a pacifier in her mouth.

No, seriously.

I think maybe it's one of those candy rings, you know, with a big sugar "gem", but...I don't think so, actually. The "ring" part is something like an inch and a half in diameter, and sort of hinged, I'm pretty sure. So...she's got a pacifier. And even if it is one of those candy rings, that's still just strange to see at 8 in the morning. In a grown woman's mouth. She's not a teenager, she's close to my age.

So...yeah. Life is just weird.

Snoo

Late Tuesday or early Wednesday, Snoo died. He was a ball python that I had for about 16 years. He made the trip out to Walla Walla with me, and back. He had to be rescued from my car one time out there when I found out the hard way that I couldn't take him on the plane with me, despite what the airline's website said.

He was a good snake, very even tempered, and never bit me.

He'll be missed.

Oh, crap

I'm 40.

It's about time

I must admit to being disappointed that Bush was never impeached. It is a failure of the American people to not have demanded it.

But at least he's out today.

Waiting

In 8 days we have a new President, and that's a very good thing. It's hard to imagine a worse one than what we have been saddled with for the last 8 years. Nearly and entire decade of economic potential growth, gone. An enormous loss of worldwide prestige. Massive violations of privacy and civil rights. Skyrocketing debt, and now walking a narrow tightrope between deflation and hyperinflation, either of which could happen in short order.

Mr. Obama, you have your work cut out for you.

Christmas Eve

So it's a bit after 10 pm of Xmas Eve 2008. My kids are quietly excited in their room, unable to get to sleep. I'm patiently waiting for them to do so, as the last presents have yet to be wrapped. The year is almost over, and I'm thinking about next year and what it might hold, and what this last one has been.

I'm coming to terms with the idea of being friends with my ex without us being active participants in each other's lives.

I'm thinking that dating is a good thing.

I am really enjoying the company I work for. The company as a whole, and my team in particular. I've never had the good fortune to work with a more professional and competent group of people.

I'm just as much in debt now as I was a year ago, and two years ago. It will take a drastic, ridiculously drastic, improvement in my income to alter that. I make better money now than I ever have in my life, and even if I spent no money on anything but rent and child support, it would take years upon years to dig myself out.

I somehow have a much worse social life now, in my home town, than I did in Walla Walla, surrounded by strangers.

I haven't exercised in about a year.

This time last year, I had begun talks with the recruiter for my current employer. I have no regrets about having worked for the fine folks in Walla Walla, nor do I have any about leaving them for here. I miss some of my friends from there, though.

All this change, and yet I feel stagnant. I've made little progress on things I'd like to accomplish.

So what does 2009 hold?

So this is my life

I work. I take care of my kids. I do my laundry. I go to the grocery store. I read. I spend time online. I tutor a student in precalc and physics.

That's it.

I lead an utterly uninteresting life.

Marking Time

I guess it's been two years now, according to what I wrote last year. There's really not much to say about it. My income is much better than it was, but my debt is still there. I've dated a small number of women. My kids are growing up. I drove across the country solo twice. I've gotten some good stories out of this time.

So why does it feel sometimes like nothing's changed?

Faith based economics

I'm pretty sure the economy is a religion. When you have values of things based on what people believe they are worth, and when their fear of the future can radically alter the economic terrain...that's just not science. That's faith. That's religion.

The people throwing money at this mess have no idea what they are doing. None at all. If they knew how to fix it, they should have done so a long time ago.


The stock market didn't begin to recover from the 1929 crash until 1932. That's when it bottomed out. Think about that for a little bit. Quick fixes? At this point, I'd suggest just doing what it takes to keep your job, although companies that start right now will probably do frighteningly well if they can make sales and avoid needing external funding.

Last Sunday

I meant to write about this sooner, but forgot. Last Sunday, the 7th, I was setting up the TV for the kids. First day of football, you know, and there was a brief delay between turning on the TV and the DVD player. Next thing you know, Zoe is saying something really fast, and it takes me a second to decipher it:

"Football season!"
"Wabbit season!"
"Football season!"
"Wabbit season!"
"Football season!"
"Wabbit season!"
"Baseball season!"

Good lord, she's funny.

So I've been thinking

I've been thinking a lot lately about the upcoming election, and about some people that I consider to be my friends, and about how people live their lives, and I'm undergoing some cognitive dissonance.

Let me preface some of this by just coming out and saying, up front, that I'm not a Christian.

What I mean by that is that I don't believe that Christ came back from the dead, and I don't believe that he worked miracles. I am completely uncertain about the existence of an afterlife, and my concept of "God" is wholly unlike what pretty much all the Christians I ever talked to seem to believe. I also really don't care for organized religion as a whole.

What I do get is the message on how to live your life, though. Peace, hope, love, charity. These are things common to pretty much all major religions. What's interesting about Christianity is the concept that the message and the messenger are one and the same, but that's tangential to where I'm going with this.

See, the cognitive dissonance I'm running into here are my friends who are Christian Republicans. I live in Indiana, a really conservative state. Despite that, I see a lot more Obama bumper stickers than I do McCain. A lot of the time when I see a McCain sticker, I also see a Christ-fish thingy as well. These people are devout, deep Christians.

But what does that mean to them?

One of the things that people like about the Republican party is that it offers moral clarity. Things are simple - right or wrong, black or white. They don't like the apparent wishy washy nature of the Democrats. I can see how that would have some appeal.

Christ, too, had such moral clarity. Incisive. Things were very clearly right or wrong for this man.

But Christ was the ultimate liberal.

By today's standards, he'd be considered a wacko hippie freak commie. Help the weak, feed the poor, shelter the homeless. End war. Love thy neighbor.

Christ's intolerance was toward hypocrites. To people who placed monetary wealth over their souls and the souls of others. He accepted the outcasts, the people that you and I would walk past without a second thought as they sit on the sidewalk without hope.

I am reminded of a great post over at Waiter Rant that talks about God's economics, explaining the parable of Legion. Go read it, it's worth thinking about.

Both parties consist of people who believe they have America's best interests at heart. But one of them seems far more willing to kill to protect those interests, and those same people are more likely to turn their backs on our own people who need the most help. And those are the ones more likely to strongly identify themselves as Christian.

So that's my cognitive dissonance in a nutshell.

To the people who read this who consider themselves Christians, I ask you: Are you a Christian only one day a week?

Sad day for local gaming

My favorite local game shop, The Boardroom, closes its doors yesterday, forever.

I'm going to miss the place, and Jerry, and his daughter Alaine.

Sucks.

Working

So I'm sitting here at work, wondering how to test some of this code, and my coworker says to me, "You've got a Blogger account? Make a post!"

So here it is.

4e

So I got a copy of Fourth Edition D&D in the mail from Amazon yesterday. (Sorry, Jerry, I know it's stuff like that that's making you close up shop. I'll come buy some stuff soon.) It's...different. I can't tell yet if I'm going to like playing it or not. It's going to be ridiculously easy for someone, anyone, to convert that to a computer game. A character generator, monster generator, hell even a class generator - all those would be so simple to code up it's absurd.

I don't think WotC has put the license up (GSL) for this just yet, but I strongly suspect it will ban software implementations of the game.

Ow, poor Ben

Seems that Ben fell down while jumping rope yesterday and took a divot out of his chin. Chris tells me that she doesn't see how it can't leave a scar, as it's chewed up pretty badly. She's making sure it doesn't get infected and all of that, and I'm sure he'll be fine.

Still, I feel bad for the guy. I know stuff like this is part of being a kid, but I don't like him being hurt.

I'm ok

Seriously. Several people have emailed me to make sure I'm fine after the last couple postings about being ill. So...I'm ok.

Sleepy, but not sick.

(Waiting for email expressing concern that I'm not getting enough sleep...)

Better, sort of

Well, I'm not violently ill like I was, but I'm certainly not completely better. There's this sick spot in my stomach that makes me hungry/not-hungry. Schroedinger's Appetite.

I was up too late last night.

I feel sick

I stayed home from work yesterday. I pretty much never do that, but when you're violently expelling fluids from your body, it's pretty much a given that you don't go to work.

At least I'm not doing that today, but I do still have a terrible headache. Not much fun. Also feeling rather weak. I thought about not coming in today, either, but here I am.

Can Aaron hear me?

That's right, I'm referring to the other Aaron Stanton, the more famous one.

I've gone and created a Facebook group for our namesakes. Let's see if he joins.

Love

I was just thinking about my kids, and how I look forward to seeing them fall in love, and then it hit me - my own father never got to see that. He left the country before I ever fell in love. I never got to talk to him about it.

It makes me sad.

Springtime

Spring is officially here, but the weather is fluctuating a lot. Warm one day, cold the next. We're supposed to get snow here soon. I want clear blue skies and no jacket. I want to eat lunch outside and watch pretty women walk by. I want fresh air.

Not much going on right now with me. Getting ready for Easter with the kids. I hope they like it. I don't care much for holidays any more, myself, but if it makes them happy, I'll go for it. I haven't thought about whether or not we'll do anything special. Maybe we'll go over to my mom's house.

Anyway, I'm a bit lonely. A girlfriend would be nice.

Ugh

Yes, I arrived in Indiana just fine. I've been busy getting an apartment, moving into it, taking care of my kids, figuring out my new job, and all the mundane crap associated with all of the above.

It's all extremely stressful.

Day 4

I am here right now.

So what happened to days 2 and 3? Well, day 2 should have ended with me in Evanston, WY. It turns out that Evanston is a crappy little town, very poorly laid out, impossible to even see the hotel signs until after you've passed the exit you'd have to take to easily get to them - at least, when you're coming from the west. I got there shortly before midnight, and the hotel manager wanted $100 for the room. I asked if there was a AAA discount, and he said that actually the AAA rate was *higher* than that. wtf? So I drove about 40 more miles to the east, pulled over at a rest stop, and slept with the engine running for warmth.

Wyoming, by the way, sucks. I would say that it's a total waste of space, except that it's a great example of space. Lots of it. Lots of useless space.

So day 3 I crossed it and about half of Nebraska. Also mostly space. Somebody really ought to consider colonizing those states and doing something with them. Anyway, at about 10 last night I decided I was tired enough to stop, and since there's nothing within a whole lot of miles of anything out there, I found another rest stop and, well, rested. From 10 til 2. Woke up, thought maybe I could drive some more, made it to the next rest stop about 37 miles down the road, and decided I was wrong. So I pulled over again and slept another 2.5 hours. 4:30 this morning I woke up and started driving.

And kept driving. For 18 hours I drove, stopping only to get gas, buy snacks, and use the bathroom. Oh, and to clean my frickin' windshield, because apparently even though I filled the wiper fluid, it has decided to not spray anything. Whether it's clogged, frozen, or just stupid I can't tell and don't really care.

So I've stopped in Danville, Illinois, less than 100 miles of Indianapolis, why? I mean, what's another 100 miles after the 1000 I drove today? Nothing! Except that the weather has turned to crap. I've finally hit active snowfall and icy roads. Icy as in I slid in a straight line right across 2 bridges. You know how signs say "Caution, bridges may be icy", or some such? Well, this is the first time in memory that has actually mattered. It seems that towing a trailer with a small car is a very tricky thing to control on ice. So, given those conditions, my fatigue, and the aforementioned lack of working wiper fluid (which makes driving in these conditions even more interesting, let me tell you), I decided that the better part of valor would be to stop in Danville, IL.

So here's the amusing part: The annoying hotel in Evanston was a Best Western. Why? Monday's Best Western was good. But that's not the amusing part. The amusing part is that here in Danville, a Triple A discount actually means you pay less for the room. Which is a big part of why I am not sleeping in my car tonight, and why I did Tuesday.

Day 1

I made it to here today.

I have a splitting headache, and will be taking a nice hot bath soon. Ahhhh...

Leaving soon

I plan on leaving Walla Walla in 9 days. I got a job in Indy that I am pretty excited about, and I finally get to be back with my kids.

I am really not looking forward to the move itself, though. I do not trust the weather here right now, and am going to have to leave the vast majority of my stuff here and come back for it later. I'll probably just load up my car and drive back.

I'm going to miss the people here.

Meh.

Kids

Yesterday Ben lost his first tooth, and, taking after his mom, he accidentally ate it. Seems it came out while he was enjoying a Rice Krispy Treat, and gulp, gone.

Sigh...one more milestone I've missed by being out here.

While visiting with the kids Zoe apparently decided she's afraid of spiders. Not that she actually is, mind you, she just decided she is. A conversation:

"A spider!"
"Did it bite you?"
"It bit my booty!"
"Is it gonna eat you?"
"Yeah."
"Is it gonna eat me?"
"Yeah."
"Is it gonna eat the world?"
"Yeah."
"Is it gonna eat the sun?"
"Yeah."
"Is it gonna eat space?"
"Yeah."
"Is it gonna eat itself?"
"Yeah."
"What's gonna be left?"
"Its booty."
(laugh) "And then is it gonna eat its booty?"
"Yeah."
"And then what's left?"
"Just biting."

That last response gave me pause. Ah...that's my girl.

Talking to Ben last night

Ben was asking about grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents, and so on. He asked about my grandparents, most of whom are still alive, and my great grandparents, none of whom are. Then 3 greats, 4, 5...so I had to cut him off and tell him that they're all gone. So he asked about my zero great grandparents, and I said that would be my grandparents. Then my negative one grandparents, so I said that would be my parents. And my negative 2? That would be me (and my sister). And my -3? That would be him and Zoe. And -4? That would be his kids. "But I don't *have* any children!" "Well, someday you might." And -5? His grand kids. -6? His great grandkids. -7? His great great grandkids, but around there I lost track, and just started laughing.

But then he tied it all back together. He realized all his great great grandparents are gone, and asked if he "will be died" when he has great great grandkids. Wow. How do you even respond to that? I said I don't know. I heard my ex in the background tell him he will live a long time, so I said that, too. "A hundred?" I don't know, Ben. I hope so.

Off by a day

I was wrong - Thursday marks a year.

Sigh.

Molecular Nanotechnology

I don't know where to start, so forgive me, but I am going to ramble.

MNT is going to happen. It's a matter of time. Not if, but when. For it to be successful and useful, there are going to have to be some very significant advances in several sorts of fields. Some of them are advancing by leaps and bounds already, but there is plenty of room to grow.

Chemistry. Synthetic chemistry cannot currently create the kinds of things needed to make MNT feasible. It may be that it will used to create the first gen of it and then bootstrap from there. Computational chemistry, the quantum side in particular, must also be advanced a great deal. Unless there have been major advancements over the last 8 years that I am unaware of, the level of precision in computing chemical structures is prohibitively computationally expensive - the magnitude of error tends to be on the order of the strength of a chemical bond, which while it is very close in absolute terms, it renders the computation almost useless.

Algorithms in math and computer science. Serious improvements in algorithms could greatly reduce the time required for predicting chemical structures. My own PhD work represented a good advancement in optimization of functions, but that does not decrease the time required to compute the energy of a single structure.

Parallel computation. The use of this is twofold. Parallel computers are really starting to take hold in mainstream systems, and properly using them would greatly enhance the speed of predicting structures. Later on down the road, fault tolerant systems will be needed to handle truly massive parallel architectures - imagine a personal computer with trillions of processors and you're starting to get the picture. Processors would be continuously added and removed from the system, error checking and redundancy would be needed, and so on.

Programming languages. Again, parallelization. There are advancements being made in this arena to handle multiple processors, but I have no idea if they handle dynamic addition and removal of cores, along with fault tolerance. Such a language must be easy to use or people will not be able to adequately deal with the scope of the problems to be dealt with.

Artificial intelligence. In particular, the ability to partition problems and solve subproblems. This goes back to parallelization and programming, among other things.

Encryption and security. The homegrown encryption routines used by corporations in their efforts to enforce DRM are woefully inadequate, and there must be active safety protocols in place from the very beginning. A small imbalance of power, a minor error, or a deliberate attack or sabotage could yield a catastrophe beyond anything seen before. Additionally, there must be a way to enforce end user rights as well, or people will be left with no ability to be self sufficient and/or choose to opt out of this system.

Database technology. I do not know the limitations of current database systems, but I suspect they will be far from adequate for the volume of data coming down the pipeline for projects involving MNT designs. Even breaking down systems into a fractal-like heirarchy, there are still vast numbers of atoms to be accounted for in even the simplest of MNT systems, along with the instruction set coded for the assembly of the system in question.

Intellectual property and economic theory. This ties into encryption and security. Energy, rare elements, structural designs, and items of sentimental value will be the only things of monetary value - in fact, one could argue that that's true today, as well. The most useful elements for MNT are typically going to be the ones most commonly found on the planet - carbon, silicon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen. Trace elements will be useful as limiting reagents. There will almost certainly be certain "open source" designs that will be carefully evaluated as safe for general use.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. All of these things have been thought of before by people involved in MNT, and are just what I can think of off the top of my head. Each and every one of these represents a potential business opportunity with profits to be made along every step of the way, not just after the fruition of MNT.

And I don't know where to start. I just know I am once again really starting to get the itch to walk down this path once more.

I think that in 2 days

I will have been divorced for a year.

I'm not too sure exactly how I feel about that.

Life

Posting for no real reason. Just thinking about how the last year and a half or so has gone. I'm still confused. I'm isolated from pretty much everyone I care about, and kinda numb about that. I'd like to be more motivated, enough so to get something done for a change...but that's how I've been most of my life, I guess.

Life

So it's about 2 AM here, and I'm tired. I have bought plane tickets to go back to Indy in about a week. I'll be working when I can there, spending time with my kids, and hanging out with friends and family. I haven't seen them in over a month, so it will be good. It's also good that August is a 3 check month. It makes it easier. It's not cheap to fly to Indy, less so on such short notice. With proper planning, I can get tickets about a month ahead of time for around $400.

I'm less enchanted with Rails lately. Looking into the guts of it, some things annoy me. The most obvious is not properly escaping table names. If I want to name a class "Line", ActiveRecord pukes out because it wants to find a table named "lines", which should be fine, except that the SQL generated doesn't escape the table name, which means it is garbage SQL. This is a simply retarded mistake to make. So, given that, what else is broken that I haven't noticed yet?

I still like comic books. The Dark Tower just ended, and it was good. There is a new Buffy series that picks up where the TV show left off, and it's already on issue 5, dammit. Maybe I'll try to dig up the back issues while I am in Indy, as the local place doesn't have them all in stock.

I need to start creating again.

Walla Walla

Things have changed.

June 21 I got into a truck and drove. For 5 days. I wound up in Walla Walla, WA, the location of my new employer. Lived in a hotel until I got an apartment on July 1.

Wow.

I know almost nobody here outside of work and a few people who works at shops near here, and really have only hung out with my boss socially. I need to find a D&D group here, or create one, especially since my D&D stuff was among the first stuff I unpacked, for some reason. I have several empty bookshelves in my apartment, and lots of stuff in storage.

It's a RoR job, which is cool. The people here are mostly green, but have some good talent. There's potential for some really cool stuff to happen here, so I am excited about that.

The downside is that I miss my kids. I talk to them every night at bedtime, but have not seen them since I left. I'm not financially in a situation yet to begin contemplating flying back to Indy, but I should be soon. We get paid biweekly, and the check I get on the 20th will mostly go to rent, but we get paid 3 times in August, so that's good.

So...that's life right now.

Paralyzed from the neck up

Everything inside the skull, that is.

I seem unable to think, or take action, or do much at all, lately.

I think maybe I'm broken.

Sigh

Out of morbid curiosity, I checked my schedule from about a year ago. Wednesday, May 10, 2006, was when my ex and I had our first therapy session. This means that Monday, May 8, 2006, was the last time I slept in that house.

:/

I don't know what that means, really. Our divorce was final October 2006, but the marriage really ended May 9.

This might explain some of the mood I've been in. Wondering when it's been a year. Now I know. Is it any better, knowing?

I don't know.

IQ

I've had my IQ formally tested only once in my life to the best of my knowledge. It was in grade school, and it was one of those tests that's great at the center of the distribution but sucks at the edges. I found out that a perfect score on it would have correlated to a 150 - it just couldn't go higher than that, so at that end, it wasn't accurate at all.

I missed one.

What a year...

Wow. A while since I posted.

So, what happened? Ok, when I moved out, I left my Zoloft and Clarinex at the house by mistake. Picked them up after about a week, but haven't taken them since. Why is that relevant? Well, there were no ill effects of going off the Zoloft, and I was in fact in a better mood. Seems that being depressed was more about not getting what I want in life than about some chemical imbalance. Also, it turned out I wasn't sneezing as much. Remember the sleep study? Yeah, that ties into the Clarinex - turns out I am allergic to cats. It's not sleep apnea that caused the snoring, it was the damn cats. I don't snore any more, and I don't need Clarinex, either.

I worked like crazy for a client, and missed deadlines, and it turns out to have been good that the site didn't go live because as written, the site was almost certainly illegal. So that's months of work down the tubes. Trying to figure out how to recover that, but it might be unsalvageable.

We have a couple other clients that are generating a small amount of revenue, which is a start.

The divorce became final in mid-October, and I got a small settlement check. I own one of the cars now, signed a quitclaim on the house, and didn't touch her 401k, though I could have taken half.

Which brings me to the impending bankruptcy. I've avoided it so far, but it might be inevitable. Things are starting to go into collection, and there's really no way I can think of to generate that much money that fast, and there's only so much kindness of others I can ask for.

I've been dating a little, and it's nice, but unsatisfying. Women younger than I am don't seem interested, and it's hard to find women my age or older that are either not bitter or dying to get married right now. So...not sure what will happen with that. I just want to go out and have fun and not feel like if I don't propose by the third date that it's just a waste of her time.

Strangest Year Yet

Ok, so there was my birthday post, and then the hot chick post, and there's been a lot going on since my birthday than just snapping pics of one hot chick.

So.

Ok, most importantly, I'm in the process of getting divorced. Long story made crazy short: I want her to be happy, she wants me to be happy, we both want the kids to be happy, and none of that was happening. So in the interest of preserving sanity, we're splitting up. There's a lot less stress now, the kids are happier, and she and I are talking more than we have been in months. We decided to split and be friends than stay together and hate each other.

Also, I got fired from my old job. That's also ok, as I wasn't very happy there, either. I misunderstood the root cause of that for a while, but the real reason is pretty irrelevant.

So, I've started PanEther. We're doing custom work short term, building web based applications for ourselves long term. I have two part time employees, and we're a couple months away from going live with at least one client site.

And I'm dating. I've gone on a couple lunch dates recently, having a lot of fun. Not a great success rate in asking women out, but it helps to be fearless, or at least act like it.

So, the whole getting divorced thing is why I could guiltlessly post pics of a hot chick in Starbucks, and the whole PanEther thing is why I was in the Starbucks, waiting for a business meeting.

Hot chick at Starbucks

A prime year

Six years ago my age was a prime number, it is again now, and it won't be for another four years after this.

Ok, since a year is not a slice of time that's not strictly true, but you get the idea.

I'd like to talk about work, but I won't.

Saturday we had a joint birthday party. Food, folks, fun.

Zoloft has side effects. The most annoying one is drowsiness. Nausea wears off, and I'm not nearly narcoleptic any more, but I am still drowsy. Of course, there's a good chance that's also due to getting crappy sleep lately.

That reminds me. I have a sleep study tonight. On my frickin' birthday. I have to be at the hospital at 8:30 tonight. How is that fun? Feh.

So maybe you think that I'm not in a good mood right now. You'd be right.

Frustration

I have decided that the opposite of happiness is not sadness, but frustration, because you can be happy and sad at the same time, but not happy and frustrated.

wtf???

I swear to God this is an honest screenshot of part of my "recommended" list at Amazon. Look at item 56, and, more importantly, *why* it was recommended.

Wow.

Chunky bacon

I found a book in the Half Price Bookstore a couple weeks ago on Ruby on Rails. Wow. Having worked on a web project a while back, it's really nice to see someone else having built a useful framework like this. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there, but this is the first one I've seen that seems so bloody easy to use. (Yeah, yeah, accuse me of drinking the Cool-Aid if you like.) We were working on a framework in PHP, and actually had some decent functionality built, but we didn't grok templating yet, and the project went South. But this stuff looks like we were going in the right direction, and I like it.

As a result, I've been Googling for useful articles on Ruby and Rails and reading them. (Is this curiosity? I dunno, as I have a specific use in mind for it.) I want to use this for a little project on the side sometime soon. The hard part is finding the time. Hah.

Time.

As always, no rest for the wicked.

I'm not curious

It dawned on me yesterday that I've lost my curiousity. I no longer really care why things work, nor how, except just enough to get them to do what I want. In the code I write, I just get it to work. I don't especially care if it's elegant, just that it does what it's supposed to. Some of the time I don't even care enough about how something works to bother finding out for myself to do it, I'll just gladly pay someone else to take care of it for me.

An implication of this is that I don't think I can think of myself as a scientist. I'm just not interested any more in how or why things do what they do.

It's kind of sad, I suppose, and I suppose maybe I'll try to get that back at some point, but maybe now I can focus on getting what I want in life instead of bumbling about asking irrelevant questions.

I'm going about this all wrong

I am tired of not having money. I just posted on my other site an essay on finding the easiest way to do something, and I'm not doing that with regards to making money. I'm in the wrong job, it's obvious. I think having a passive revenue stream is very key, multiple streams in fact. Selling your time only once is insane.

I also need to start exercising again. I got sick, and then it got cold outside, and now I need to exercise indoors and I'm not doing it. There's a decent exercise facility here, so I need to just bring a change of clothes, a towel, and some shampoo to clean up after exercising.

I'm also thinking that having a job, as in working for someone else, is also insane. It's nuts for the same reason that service based contracting is nuts - you can only sell your time once with it. It's much better to do one thing and have a lot of people incrementally pay you for it.

Buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, annuities - those are all fine and dandy passive revenue streams, but they also have a really pitiful rate of return when you really think about it. Very few businesses have as their plan, "We'll take our investor's money and put in the bank, and as the interest comes in, we'll pay out dividends." That's just stupid. Investors require a much higher ROI than that, as they can just put money in the bank themselves.

Of course, a higher ROI means greater risk, but that's the business of playing the law of large numbers. If the ROI wasn't high enough, people simply wouldn't start new businesses, or anything like that.

So I need a much, much higer ROI on my time.

Frustration

It seems like my entire life people have not been listening to me. Sure, they hear the sounds that come out of my mouth, but they completely disregard them. It happened to me when I was a kid, it happened growing up, it happens now.

I tell people my understanding of how something works, or how to do something, or what I want, and they ignore what I have to say. They have to hear it from somebody else before they believe it, if it's an explanation. If it's a statement of what I want, I don't get it. What part is unclear? I don't mumble, I don't leave out words, I say exactly what I mean.

Christ, there's a damn good reason some people prefer writing code to talking to people. At least in writing code, you are guaranteed to get exactly what you asked for, and being precise in your statements is what works.

Maybe bluntness isn't what works with people. Maybe people don't want direct answers. Maybe they want their prose wrapped in poetry. Maybe I'm not conveying my message in the right manner. Who knows? It just seems to me that wrapping it in flowery words increases the chance of misinterpretation.

I'm more than willing to help people. If they want my advice, they should take it when it's offered. If not, why ask for it? If I'm not going to get what I want, why bother asking?

I like buying what I want. I hand over money, I get what I want. Period.

This isn't just about me getting what I want, though that's a big part of it. Many times I have tried to help people and gotten blown off. Explanations of why a car got so hot when I was seven, or for a friend to get a business line of credit rather than a loan a few years ago, or ideas for a product very recently. There are other examples, but right there are a few. I want to help.

But don't bother acting like you give a damn if it actually doesn't matter what I say.

Finding my way out of a paper bag

It's just obvious what I have to do. I have to write a simple game, make it crazy addictive, punch the hell out of marketing for it, and get paid. And repeat the process. Over and over and over again.

It's making me nuts not doing it.

Bigger games can come later. I want to get paid right now.

Owww

So I've had to stop jogging. I've pulled ligaments in my knees, I am pretty darn certain of it. The impact of hitting the ground is not a problem, but the negative impact of rapidly lifting my legs just hurts too much to run. Still doing situps and pushups, but had to switch to walking.

Walking won't be as good for me cardio-wise as jogging, but until my knees heal, I can't do it.

I hate being out of shape. This is why I am getting back into shape.

Life lately

It's been a while since I said anything about what's going on, so here ya go.

Ben is talking a lot more lately. This is a huge relief. It's like something clicked with him and he finally sees the value of communicating with us. His pronunciation isn't always great, but he's got the idea of what words are for. Finally.

Zoe can sit up on her own, and crawl short distances, and just yesterday pulled herself to standing. She is a really happy baby - everything is funny, and she smiles all the time.

I've started exercising in the mornings. Situps, pushups, and jogging. Wow, I am out of shape. What would have been a mere warmup half my life ago beats the hell out of me now. The pain I am in tells me I really need to do this.

Good things are also happening in the home front, but I'm not ready to put forth details. No, not another baby. I do expect not everyone will understand or approve. That's ok with me.

Work is work. I'd be lying if I said it was perfect, but I won't be talking about anything here that bothers me with it.

I'm trying to find a product arena that I can get into solo and make decent money at. I still want to make games. I know it's hard work, but so is everything else. I figure I have some domain knowledge there, so it'll be easier to do than many other fields.

Oh, and my cat just took a dump.

Not really. I just wanted to throw that in to see if anyone was paying attention.

Holy crap

What the hell is going on in this country? Have we totally lost our way? Read this, and then tell me if you think this is a safe place to live.

I personally think it's insane. It's a short step from this to SS Homeland Security enforcers.

This is really, really bad.

GenCon

I kinda went to GenCon this year. I live in Indy, and lately it's been here, so it makes it easy to go, in theory. The problem is that I have some deadlines at work this week, and so couldn't really get away with taking a chunk of time off work to go spend money and play games. So I just took (slightly more than) half a day off, Thursday morning. I wanted to get there early enough so that I could get some stuff before it ran out, and I did, but some other stuff I wanted had some problems with shipping and hadn't yet made it to the Con.

Very annoying.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. It was a breath of fresh air. Not just the unhealthy high of spending scads of money, but a confirmation that these are my people, and this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I am supposed to be making games, and playing them. It reminded me of how cool it was to have my own booth there four years ago, and how much I want to do it again. Nevermind that it was a financial failure - I know what I did wrong, and how to avoid those mistakes. I'm sure there are other mistakes I'll make, but I'll be doing well if I don't repeat my old ones.

So I need to get back into it. I need to create a piece of software and get that selling. I need to restart writing so I can sell some pdf's. I need to figure out what it takes to get board games and card games not only into production but into stores. I need to get marketing figured out - that perhaps most of all. Creating books, that I know how to do. But getting them into stores, that'll be new. There's a lot to do, and a lot to learn, but I am going nuts not doing it.

This sucks

I am always tired. I know I don't get enough sleep, but this is ridiculous. I can nap off and on nearly all day, and I'm still tired. I wake up tired, and my limbs are sore when I get up.

I'm starting to wonder if I've broken something in my energy storage/replenishmnet system. If my batteries have capped out at a new low or something.

I know I'm not exercising enough - i.e. at all. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe some exercise would help me be able to store more energy. I don't know.

I'm just tired.

All. The. Time.

50 First Dates

My wife checked this out from the library yesterday and we watched it. Adam Sandler is in a wide range of films, from good to bad, and I liked this one. One thing I liked a lot about this was that it didn't go for the obvious unlikely thing and still managed to make things work out alright in the end. It was a nice surprise. It took a couple unexpected detours en route, too. Nice to see those bits not given away in the previews I saw, which is pretty rare lately.

Aaron's Mind

is now open.

Aaron's Mind

There will be some changes and tweaks, but feel free to play around on the site. Let me know what you think.

Almost Ready

This new project of mine is almost ready to go live. I have been keeping up on an article a day for about two and a half weeks now, which is just about enough to keep it interesting, and several pieces are in place...but...forums and FAQ's seem to be broken. Also, I want to tweak how the url's come out to make them more friendly. And I need links in my articles.

Ok, there's a chunk left to do. Feh. I told some people it would probably go online yesterday. Sorry, guys. Sometime this week, soon. I hope.

It's all about the content

So I'm starting yet another project on the web. I'm slowly but surely building a content based site. It's not a blog - I write here when I feel like it, when events call for it. That's what a blog is to me. This is a more disciplined approach. It's not set up in chronological order, it's arranged by topic. It's not about recent events, though sometimes events will inspire a new essay. I plan on writing a new page a day, every day. I got the site running over the last few days, and got the first essay written last night. One thing that I didn't do that I need to make myself do is some keyword analysis on the essays before publishing, and hyperlink not only to external sites that are relevant but also within the site itself.

I will not bring the site online for at least a week or two. If I put it up now, you'd go there, take one look, and never go back. I want there to be enough substance there for it to be somewhat sticky and make you want to check in to see what I've written every single day. That's why I'm not posting a link to it just yet. When it's ready, you'll get a link to it.

Now, I'm not abandoning Grinning Gecko, nor giving up on lore. This is something I want to build a habit of so I can almost autopilot my fingers to write the essay, fire off keyword analysis, edit, Google for relevant sites, and link to them. You'll get enough of my attention in the essays to get insight into my mind, but believe me, it's not the same as writing code. Code is a different part of my mind that is really really energy consuming. I've been able to write essays easily for years, much as I can ad lib on almost any topic that I've heard of. This is something that should be easy for me. It's just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

So what else will the site have? Well, a forum, for starters. I have SimpleBoard working now for this site - I need to get it running for Grinning Gecko, too. I got Google ads to work. They're unobtrusive, sitting in the right hand margin. Adding new sections and categories within the sections is pretty easy, too. As I come up with new things to write about, I'll add new sections/categories, and you'll be able to find what I write with relative ease, especially once I start crosslinking. I still love Mambo. That reminds me...I need to figure out how to easily make links within the site from one article to another - a decent cms should not need the absolute url, you should be able to specify the article somehow. Hmmm...

I'm going to try to avoid ranting and raving on the new site, but what I say will come from my point of view, and few if any apologies will be made for that. I'll try not to say anything that will get me sued.

Anyway, I'll post here with a link once it is online. If you stumble across it before then, you'll see that it's down for maintenance, which I figured was better than a horribly incomplete site.

Rumbling Musings

So I'm thinking about creating a website that is a collection of essays covering my point of view on the world. Not another blog, since a blog really should be time sequential as far as I can tell. This would be more of opinion pieces that aren't really specific to events in my life. Some people have told me they like my writing style, and I have to wonder how much traffic a big bunch of pages covering how I see the world would generate. I don't think many people read this one much, but maybe longer pieces that were more static would gradually build a set of readers.

Oh, no! Another fanboy wannabe site creating a cult of personality to feed my already oversized ego! Hey, if you feel that way about it, tell me. I can take criticism. If, on the other hand, you think it would be cool, also let me know.

Basically, let me know what you think of this idea. If you care enough to have an actual opinion one way or the other, that is.

Oscar

I buried Oscar yesterday. Oscar was my iguana that I had for nearly 14 years, the longest I've had any pet in my life.

I guess that's about all I have to say about that.

Juggling Fire

I've played Dungeons and Dragons off and on since 1979. This should come as no surprise to you if you've read my blog before - I'm a big geek. I've found that overall I wind up being the Dungeon Master a heck of a lot more than a player. There are a variety of reasons for this, one of which is that not many people want to DM, another being that a lot really aren't very good at it, and the last is that I really enjoy doing it. I like how focusing my attention on multiple events at once really keeps me on my toes.

In the last couple weeks we've been working on some web development for a new client. It's fun stuff, and a lot of it is stuff that we're learning as we go. Well...I started out as Lead Developer on this, and suddenly got made Project Manager on it. Two hats. That's ok. I'm bucking to move into management anyway, and this a good chance for me to prove I'm capable of it. Last week I worked very closely with the two primary other people to get the first milestone delivered to the client on time. The next step required the skills of multiple people not normally involved with the project...so I annexed them yesterday and today. Yesterday at one point I had everyone in the office who wasn't management, sales, or support staff all doing my bidding at once...and I knew what they were all doing at the same time. Perhaps it was a bit of micromanagement, which I want to avoid (I want to just hand tasks to people and trust they they will get done), but this is a pretty time sensitive thing - it's due Monday. We were doing several things that nobody in the office except the owner had done before, so I was trying to get it all done. There was a false start or two thanks to a misunderstanding on my part, but everything got rectified and we are very nearly good to go. I'll be in tomorrow to resolve issues with Tomcat - I hate Tomcat, thanks to last weekend - but I'm confident they will be pleased when they see it in place.

The last couple days in the office have been a lot of fun, and I figured out why. It's the same reason I like being a DM. It's juggling fire.

Long Term

In replying to a comment a moment ago, I had a bit of an epiphany on the fundamental difference between short term and long term thinking. If it's less than one human lifetime, it's short term. People who are fundamentally selfish cannot think outside the scope of their own lifespan, and thus are incapable of true long term planning.

Having humanity's best interests at heart means thinking beyond your own lifetime. That's where the long term begins.

Uncertainties

Now, there are some caveats to the previous post, of course, some assumptions that are being made - that getting off the planet is best for humanity, that very highly aware people would agree on goals, even that what's best for humanity is what's best in general. I have absolutely no doubt on the first assumption - for us to survive we simply must get off the planet. I have some slight doubt on the second one - Given the same information, they should come to the same conclusions, and a very aware person would attempt very strongly to avoid deception, but no two people have the same set of experiences, so maybe different goals might emerge - but I believe that they would agree on some of the more major things. The last thing is the strangest one to consider - what if what's truly best for the universe as a whole, long term, is not the survival of the human race? I hope that's not the case, but I don't know for certain.

Transcendence

So I have been reading Steve Pavlina's blog lately, and thinking about one particular entry on levels of consciousness. I was also thinking about humanity's long term survival prospects, and how it would be nice to see us establish a permanent colony on another planet, as I think that is absolutely necessary for us to survive. I strongly doubt I'll live long enough to see that happen, though. The conditions needed for that just take too long.

So I thought about it some more and decided I would probably be ok with knowing that as a direct result of my actions, a colony would be established at some point in the future, even after my death. It's like remote control - you know it works, even though you don't see it with the naked eye. Then I realized I didn't know how to do that, but - here's the kicker- that someone smarter than I am probably could. (This is where we tie things back to the first sentence of the entry.) They would not only have the ability, they'd have enough confidence in their ability and the impact it would have on others to make it stick. (I may actually have the ability, but I don't *know* that I do, nor do I know what actions I'd have to take to make it work.)

It occurred to me that someone at the highest level of consciousness would not only want to ensure humanity's long term survival, but probably could. They would want what was good for humanity, even if they didn't know exactly what that was, and they would act to make sure that it happened at some point in time in the future. Someone who lived several hundred years ago may not have even thought of the possibility of colonizing another planet, but they'd want humanity to survive.

So here's the punchline - Because someone at the highest level of consciousness would want what was best for humanity, and they would be able to ensure that it would happen, they already have. People smarter than I am (or at least more aware) have already done things that ensure our survival.

That's a really comforting thought.

It was an interesting experience to realize that even though I couldn't figure out what specific actions someone beyond my capabilities would take, I could deduce the generalities well enough to determine the outcome, hence the title for this post.

Rattlesnake Pasta

I was hungry for lunch, but wasn't sure of what to have. I went to Uno's, since I know I like most of their stuff, and just had the waiter pick for me. I briefly spelled out a few things I didn't like, but let him do the rest. He brought back something called "Rattlesnake Pasta" which is penne pasta with chicken in a cream sauce, a little bit of cheese, and a bunch of jalapenos. Very interesting, and something I would have overlooked had I picked for myself.

The easiest way to try something new is to have someone else pick it for you.

I've been doing a little thought on Grinning Gecko, and I'm starting to think that maybe in the long run - like once it starts making money - it should be a nonprofit organization. Now, nonprofit organizations certainly can pay people a decent salary. It's just that I think that even though I want to make games, the real purpose is to shape people's behaviour. It's an educational venture, really. The goal is to improve society by changing people's behaviour on a long term basis, and the means is games. This adds to some power and freedom of Grinning Gecko - it won't have to listen to people who are purely driven by profit.

Understand that I don't object to profits or making money, but that I think that it can frequently blind people to positive goals. Money itself is a neutral entity, a tool that lets you get what you really want. It's a mistake to want it for its own sake.

REALbasic

As MS ends support for VB6 a lot of people are left wondering what to do with their millions of lines of code. One solution that some have come to is .Net, but there are some major changes to the language that a lot of people don't like.

Another solution is to switch to REALbasic. It has a syntax very similar to VB6, and the standard edition is free for VB6 users until April 15. Go here to check it out, and if you get it from here you enter me into a contest. So...if you like me, get it!

:)

Grinning Gecko

Ok, so I really should post some links to what the hell I'm trying to accomplish. First is Grinning Gecko itself. That's the home site of where I'll be releasing games of many types. The first releases will probably be pdf's at RPGNow, and here's the RPGNow Grinning Gecko store. Everyone needs merchandise, and Grinning Gecko is no exception, so there's a CafePress store, too. Once the pdf's start to do ok, I'll put a little effort into getting them done Print on Demand at two shops, both through Lulu, but slightly different - RPGNow has one and so does Grinning Gecko. Lastly (for now) are the Open Source projects I plan on: First there's lore-gcc, a front end to gcc for Lore. (Lore is my name for a programming language I want to write - I've written about it earlier.) Then there's lore, which is a Lore compiler written in Lore. Third is lore-lib, which will be the standard Lore library - but to clarify, it will be a collection of components, each partitioned out as cleanly as I can manage. The first bits to show up there will be whatever is necessary to make the compiler bootstrap. Fourth is lore-misc, which is things like bindings to various IDEs and any tools that emerge - actual apps as opposed to libraries. Lastly is legends, a game all this ties together - the goal is to make something similar to Neverwinter Nights.

So anyway, that's an outline of the plan, with all the links in one place so you can poke around and see how little I've done and watch my progress if you want. I need put all those links onto Grinning Gecko, don't I?

Radical Conservatives

I've come to the conclusion that there are two uses of the term "conservative" with very different meanings. One is in the "liberal/conservative" spectrum, where "liberal" is "pro-liberty" and "conservative" is "pro-security". The other is in the "radical/conservative" spectrum, where "radical" is "pro rapid, major change" and "conservative" is "pro status quo".

Historically, most people amd groups who were "conservative" in the first sense were also "conservative" in the second sense, so it made some sense to equate "liberal" with "radical" - since in the 60's, 70's and 80's the people who wanted to enact sweeping changes were the ones pro-liberty.

We've seen a change, however, recently. The people who are attempting to enact the rapid major changes are the ones in favor of security over liberty, and are willing to sacrifice many rights to do it. This mind set is difficult for many to encapsulate, as it might be termed "radical conservative" which sounds like a contradiction in terms unless you realize the two distinct ways in which "conservative" is used.

It is very difficult to concretely identify a problem when the language does not lend itself easily to describing it. This is one of the advantages that these people have. Since they are difficult to classify, it is hard to identify them as a threat. Their rhetoric defies description, literally. As a result, they have rapidly gained power.

Empower

So I went ahead and bit the bullet. I just applied for the Empower program with Microsoft. One thing that they wanted to know was a planned name and description of a product, so I decided to call it "Geckomania" and describe it as a set of puzzle games designed to promote creativity and cooperation. Planned release date of 3/1/2006.

Let's see how it goes.

Zoe Elizabeth Stanton

was born 5:16 PM Indiana time, March 2nd, weighing 6 lbs 9 oz., and measuring 20 inches long. A quick labor and pretty easy delivery overall. We're all home now, healthy and happy. Ben (her big brother) seems to like her well enough for now, but he hasn't had major changes to his life just yet, so we'll see how that goes over time. She's beautiful (yes, I'm biased, but I'm a dad and I damn well better be biased), sleeps peacefully a lot, and eats pretty well.

Thanks, everyone! By the way, I'll be posting pics as soon as we have some handy digital to post. Yeah, I should get with the 21st century and buy a decent digital camera someday.

Back to small diapers

My wife, Chris, is in labor right now. We won't be leaving for the hospital for a few hours, but then we'll be there for a couple days.

We both seem really relaxed about this whole thing this time, as opposed to with Ben. We're getting things done between contractions, where last time we just waited for the next one.

Wish us luck!

:)

Mambo Rocks

Ok, so I'm in the process of setting up the Grinning Gecko website, and I decided to try Mambo. Wow, it's really cool. There's a lot that can be done with it with little to no effort. Now, I'm a big fan of Joel on Software, and I like what he has to say on a lot of things, but I'm sorry, Joel. I don't think I'll be buying CityDesk any time soon.

By the way, if you go to the Grinning Gecko site just now, it's going to look an awful lot like a default Mambo site with very little tweaking. Hell, it even says Mambo on it all over the place. I really need to get that figured out sometime soon.

But I also need to write an adventure or six to sell on RPGNow. This whole thing is a spare time kind of project, and I don't want to throw any more money at it than I need to.

But even before that I need to log off, take out the trash, and go to bed. I've stayed up way too late too many times this week already, and I don't need to be doing it tonight.

Steal Your Own Identity

So I was just kicking around JoS and saw a thread on identity theft and someone (Simon Lucy) commented on how ironic it is that people who steal identities usually have more fun with them than their original owners did. I just had the weird thought of "Man, that could be fun!" and then I wondered on why that is and how it works.

Identity theft is about being somebody else without consequences, but it's also about being who you'd like to be. The illegal kind of identity theft is irresponsible. It damages the original owner of the identity.

What I'm talking about here is to dare to be who you want to be. Take a chance. I'm not saying throw away your credit rating on stupid crap. I'm saying to ask yourself if you were a total stranger stealing your identity, what would you do with it to create a life you'd want to live?

Then ask yourself why you aren't doing that.

Ch-ch-changes

Last week our older Honda died, so Saturday we bought a new one. It's nice. Yeah, there's the extra cost for the "new car smell", and there are benefits to leasing rather than buying, but you know what? I'm real big on owning my stuff. That car will keep on working for 7-10 years after we're done paying for it, and maintenance on Hondas tends to be pretty low. They go for 200,000 miles and then they die The Death.

In other news, we finally got around to getting broadband. I have no clue why we took so long to do it, but it's hooked up, and the cool part is I got it to work with my wireless router with almost no problems at all. 802.11g is handy to have when you've been crawling along over dialup for years. Again, don't ask why we took so long to do this - I don't have a good answer.

Footnote

Just so you know, I'm well aware of the irony that I, in fact, did own a company, and that the only products it ever released were gaming material. I made many mistakes with that company that I won't be repeating, and it was best to dissolve it.

One of the mistakes made was that the company was made with no specific goals in mind - games, no wait pharmaceutical software, no wait software development tools, no wait games - and then when I settled on games I focused on just hardcopy role-playing games. (Even then I still bounced from games to other stuff and back.) Both the lack of focus and the overfocus were mistakes. My desire is games - only games, but many kinds of games. Board games, card games, role playing games, computer games. (I'll still tinker with writing that language, Lore, but it's a tool to achieve the end of computer games, not an end to itself. That's why I'm open sourcing it.)

There were many other mistakes I made in my company, but I won't go into them here, or at least not now.

I want to create games

I had a good weekend. Today is my birthday (read the previous post) and over the weekend we met with a friend. She gave me two books - The Art of the Start and A Theory of Fun for Game Design. The first one was really good - one to go back to over and over - but the second one made me all verklempt at the end.

I have been a teacher at various times in my life, and it's usually a pretty positive experience, mostly with the kids that "get it". That happens more often with the brighter kids than average (or slow) ones, but sometimes you see that spark in an otherwise dull face, and that's really cool. That's the best part of doing it. Grading papers, on the other hand, sucks.

I really like being a dad. I'm looking forward to the next one quite a bit. I like seeing Ben grow, and it's so neat seeing him learn. I think that there are plenty of cool things I can teach him.

I really like Steve Pavlina's website and I think that he has great potential to help a lot of people with his new speaking career. That said, I do disagree with his decision to move away from his game company. I mean, he's free to do as he wants, obviously, and I wish him the best. But it's not what I would do in his shoes. I'd change what kind of games I make and sell, if I were in his shoes - if I already had a game company established.

I think that games are great way to teach people things. I also think that there are far too many games that focus on skills that are outdated in modern society. Spending time and energy on those skills will, in the long run, hold us back. We don't need violence. If you want to learn how to fight, go join the armed forces. Otherwise, it's a skill you learn for the sense of accomplishment and to stay in shape, and I don't have any problem with that. The key is to just not be in a situation where you need to fight.

I digress. My point is that in modern society knowledge of exponential growth is much more important than how to aim a gun, as one concrete example. A game is a learning experience in a low stress environment with little true penalty for failure. School does carry substantial penalties for failure, so either people don't learn, or only learn enough to pass the next test and forget it. A fun game that people play over and over will teach something deeply enough to ingrain it deeply into the brain. There are tests on the difference between men and women on spatial perception. Apparently men tend to do better on a pen and paper test than women. (Tend to, not always.) However, if the test is an interactive game that teaches as you go, the skew mostly goes away. The most interesting part is that if the pen and paper test is done after the interactive one, the skew stays gone. There is a permenent rewiring that takes place that shows that true learning took place. (I'll go look up the study and provide links if need be.)

I am in favor of win/win solutions. Cooperation will get our species a lot farther than competition will in the long run. Money spent on guns is money not spent on education or beautiful architecture or curing AIDS or colonizing other planets.

I want to write games that deeply ingrain constructive values in people. I think that I can help more people to live better in modern society this way than I can by teaching 20-100 kids at a time, or by doing public speaking, or most other things. Games are very subtle. Make them fun and people don't even realize what they are learning. This subtle manipulation of people's minds and value systems represents a pretty big deviation from my normal doctrine of non-interference in other people's lives, but I think it's perhaps my best shot at doing some good for large numbers of people.

Six-squared years

So a week from today I turn 36. It's not a bad thing, but sometimes I look back and wonder where my time has gone. I would like to have accomplished more by now, and certainly would like a larger paycheck. Overall life is good - great family life, good place to work, bills are paid - but I'm not entirely satisfied. Guess it's time to get working on something to sell that people will want to buy. Got any ideas? Let me know. Not a service, please - you can only sell your time once.

I sure don't feel 36. I should do about 10,000 sit-ups, though. Maybe run a marathon or two.

A snippet from the cover of The Void.

A few years ago I published The Void

I recently dissolved Stanton Industries, Inc. I think it's safe to say it's a failure.

Boo

I was looking for languages the people had written CodeDOM Providers for, and I stumbled across Boo. Go check it out. They are doing some really cool stuff, and Lore may wind up looking similar it in the long run, as they have implemented several features that I want to include. They even have a SharpDevelop add-in for it, which is on my to-do list.

There are things I want Lore to do that Boo does not, like compile to native code, and also to the JVM. The type system of the JVM is going to slow down that last bit, though.

Rain

It's been raining a lot here over the last two weeks, to the point where there's flooding to levels not seen in 90 years. I think it's because of the tsunami. Before you blow me off as being totally insane, let me explain a bit. The tsunami dumped a massive amount of water onto a lot of land, and while a lot of it drained back into the ocean, a lot just sat on the ground and is evaporating. That water vapor has to go somewhere, and I think that even if it rained out slightly east of where the tsunami hit, that still ramps up the water cycle. Water flows downhill, and I think that the water cycle would reach saturation and it would keep rolling across the globe until it stabilizes out. I don't know how long that would take, but I think it might explain the astonishingly crappy weather we've been having lately.

Or I could be totally wrong and the two are completely unrelated. I could still be insane anyway, but not because of this.

Dude, that's just...harsh.

So I dropped my son off at day care this morning and stopped off at the all-too-convenient Starbucks to get a latte before getting on the highway to go to work. On the way in I spotted something in the rain-soaked parking lot but didn't take the time to pick it up. I did on the way out, however, and found that it was the senior photo of a moderately pretty girl. That alone doesn't make this event blog-worthy, but what I read on the back does:

"Dave -
Well, buddy. We were always on again/off again friends. Being friends in 8th grade, then not talking again until junior year. I hope that after this year that this will not be the case. You have always been a great friend. Keep in touch. (heart) - Mari"

(I put (heart) there because I don't have a heart-shaped picture icon handy to insert there.)

Dave, you are either a careless klutz or a heartless bastard. Either way, shame on you.


(Edit: It's been pointed out that maybe she dropped it before giving it to him. I had considered that, and left that out of the original version of the post. So, if that's the case, she's a careless klutz. At least in that case she'll pretty clearly know that he never got it. In the scenario I paint above, unless he is a klutz, knows it, and admits it to her, she thinks that a good friend is blowing her off. Pretty crappy, huh? That or he is pretty heartless and tells her, which is still pretty crappy.)

Get out of Your Way

For much of my life I seem to have had some sort of mental constipation that stops me from functioning at my peak capacity. I have never figured out how to cure myself of it. I can overcome it for short periods of time, the longest of which got me back into school through a B.A. and a Ph.D., but it has long since faded. I had a coherent driving goal at that point in my life, but that's gone, and I'd like one back.

The title of this post is a statement I came up with in my last year of grad school as advice to a first year student in our research group. He was (and I assume still is) pretty smart, but was having some difficulty understanding some stuff. I knew he could get it, but his biggest problem was that he was convinced that it was supposed to be difficult. As a result, he was making the material much harder than it really was.

Essentially that's what I need to do - to get out of my own way. I'm pretty sure that I'm what's holding me back. When I was teaching highschool students a couple years ago, one of the things I told them was that "Most human failure is not a failure of ability, but of the will."

Funny how the person who gives advice is frequently the one who needs it most.