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I Was Heading Towards Nirvana, But Somehow I Lost the Map
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Happy Birthday Matt

Edit: Posted this yesterday but it was private. Oops.
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Matt and Don are both pissed at me now. At this point, given the shit going on in my life right now, I am trying to decide if I care.

This issue with Don is one of the title "best friend". Apparently I am not allowed to have more than one best friend now. On June 6th I wrote I was trying to get a hold of my two best friends in Toronto, Seb & Jeff. He told me that he felt like all the times he stood by me meant nothing. I sent back an IM stating that I had more than one “best friend” but instead of actually talking to me, he simply blocked me on AIM. Some best friend I guess.

Excuse me? Last I knew "best friend" was not an exclusive title. I can have one or one hundred best friends. That is my choice. If that is the way he feels then so be it. I have got enough stress and problems in my life that I do not have the time to deal with this especially since I have to be in court next week in Detroit (Note: I will have a big write-up on that once the matter is settled).

And people wonder why I run to Toronto in the first place.

Toronto is the issue of the fight with Matt. He is angry with me because since he moved to Chicago, I have not visited him at all and I have gone to Toronto for four planned trips including the one two weekends ago. I do not count the one last August since literally it was a twenty-minute IM conversation with Jeff to let him know the final stuff for his immigration had arrived at my apartment that day and within an hour I was on the road to hand-deliver them.

But more importantly I have my own reasons for going to Toronto. First of all it is my sanctuary. The place I go where I want to forget the troubles I have in the US. I go there, hang out with friends and for that brief time I have no cares or worries. Additionally, I was also meeting another friend up there I met playing Star Wars Galaxies and ended up having a blast with her, her boyfriend, and their one-year-old son.

I know in some cases it is just jealousy. Matt has a legitimate case because I have to admit that I have been neglectful in not visiting him and I do apologize. However I will not apologize for having more than one best friend.

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Ok, I have had to sit on this since October but I am finally able to let you all know. Today I signed the paper work for an out-of-court settlement to head off a wrongful termination claim in court. TI cannot discuss the terms of the settlement so I will just leave it at that.

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I feel : relieved relieved

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I just checked my LJ and realized that it has been over three months since my last update. It still is pretty much the same shit on a different day. I do have a big announcement to make but cannot do that for a little while longer.

Been trying to get a hold of my two best friends in Toronto to reconnect but I keep getting voice mail. Hopefully I can catch them at home soon.

Other than that I just have an online project that will be six months old on Sunday which is pretty amazing to me. Still searching for a job and so forth. Dreading what seems to be the inevitable move back in with my mother. Not happy about that.

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I feel : blah blah

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While checking my my friends view I realized I have only updated once this month. Mainly it is because nothing really new is going on in my life at the moment. Still looking for a job, still facing the horror of having to move back in with my mother, still going to school, etc. At this point I just consider my life "on hold". I do have something major in the works that I cannot discuss publicly just yet but the day is not far off when I can do the big reveal.

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Ambient Sounds of : Silent Hill 3 - You're Not Here

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I purchased my no-longer-trusty Dell Inspiron 8600 back in the fall of 2004. I was quite happy with it as it had an nVIDIA display adapter, a secondary battery option, 15.4" wide screen display, and a non-celeron processor. Unfortunately the damn thing turned into a lemon. I was averaging a service call every two months and, if tech support had its way this last time around, the thing would have had its fifth motherboard, third hard drive, second display adapter, and a partridge in a pear tree. At the beginning of the month I called up Dell and tried to get a refund on the system. I explained to them that I like the quality of their machines but this model just turned out to be a lemon for me. Under normal circumstances I would have been satisfied with a brand new 8600 but that line had been retired in favor of the 6000 which was a downgrade in my opinion.

Unfortunately they stone-walled me on the issue no matter how high I escalated the call. So I did some escalation on my own about a week and a half ago and sent in a consumer complaint to the Michigan Attorney General's Office. Yesterday morning I got a pleasant phone call from Dell stating that they had received the letter from the MI AG and were going to accept a return of the system. The only restriction is that I had to get the 8600 within two weeks of receiving the shipping label and the refund could take up to thirty days to make its way over to Dell Financial Services.

Naturally since I cannot go without a laptop these days I had to order a new one. I had planned on getting an Inspiron 9300 which my brother has and loves but Dell is phasing that particular model out in favor of the Dual Core E1705 system which a) was too expensive and b) is not a good mobile machine at the moment due to a faulty driver in Windows that does not regulate the second core very well and results in the loss of battery life. The first step in that was removing the nVIDIA graphics card option from the 9300 leaving it with a low-end ATi card. So I ended up having to go with the XPS M170 which is the same hardware as the 9300 but in a different chassis. Ended up only being a $100 price difference from when I originally priced out the 9300 before the change.

So now the thing has been ordered and is apparently already being boxed so I hope to have the thing her by Friday so I can transfer my data and then perform a Gutmann wipe of the 8600 and get it back to Dell. A Gutmann wipe involves destruction of all data on the hard drive to standards used by intelligence agencies. A few runs with that and the data is irrevocably lost. I know it sounds a little extreme, but chances are these parts will be refurbished and stocked for repairs so I want no chance of anything being able to be resurrected.

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I feel : blah

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I got through to the state unemployment office today and got around the block on getting a check. Basically I had to tell them that if suitable full-time work was available to me I would quite school. I just said "yes" even though one of my classes is online and I would talk to my professors in the others about turning them into independent studies. That quelled the fear of an abrupt and immediate return to my mother's house to live.

I might have one job opportunity coming up thanks to a tip from [info]redpandacub. The money is not what I was being paid at my old job but there's room to grow and it helps close the void on my resume. The job will require me to put aside my distaste for learning more languages but I am willing to do it. I am keeping my fingers crossed on this one.

I also got around to testing the installation of a key component of a business idea I had so hopefully within the next week or two I can get my "venture capital" (a couple of domains and another web hosting account) and get that launched and advertised. I just need to learn some basic scripting stuff for the web and get a design and I am ready to launch.

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I feel : optimistic optimistic

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Not content with my Jedi and Spy on the Starsider Galaxy, I decided to create an entertainer character so I could have some fun with. Well I made it a woman and decided to take her clothes off so she was dancing in her underwear and I got $50,000 in tips :).

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I feel : dirty dirty

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So we're less than twelve hours away from 2006 but frankly I could care less. 2005 turned out to be a shit year and right now 2006 is not shaping up to be any better. I am still out of work and half-way through my unemployment benefits with no new job in site in spite of numerous applications. Each day without any word on a new job brings me one day closer to having to move back in with my mom which is a fate worse than death as far as I am concerned because I literally will just become a hermit there. I won't go out or anything like that. In fact, I probably would not even come out of my room except to go to the bathroom or the kitchen.

Even though it has now been four months since I lost my job I still feel incredible amounts of resentment towards my former boss because I recently found out he lied to me in my exit interview and such as he claimed the decision to fire me was over his head but my employee file revealed he was the one who recommended I get fired in the first place.

It also has me feeling more and more depressed as time goes on. I barely come out of my bedroom here at home. I remember when I used to watch TV in the living room exclusively and such but now I just stay in bed under my blankets. I would also sometimes relax in the chaise and read/write on my laptop but now I just stay in bed with that too. There is not joy in my life right now because I am constantly worried about what is going to happen tomorrow. I cannot do the things I want like just pack up a few things and head to Toronto or Chicago.

I hate this.

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I feel : depressed depressed

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Today has been a nightmare of sorts. I have been trying to learn WordPress for my main site. I want a three column design and found one I liked enough and began to modify it but the CSS style sheet, while logically laid out, is a bitch to read and convert. I have no idea how the guy that wrote it can even maintain it.

Hopefully I will be able to finish it tonight so I can put it through its paces on my site and go from there.

Other than that not really much to report.

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I feel : blah blah

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I just checked my calender view and realized I have barely updated this thing this month. My laptop is alive and well again after the hard drive failed. I was getting it ready for blasting Thursday night when I kept getting CRC errors while copying data to my workstation. I ran some diagnostics and found out that the periods when my laptop would just start wildly accessing the drive for no apparent reason was actually due to problems with the drive itself. Naturally I discover this after I miss the time Dell could have gotten me the part on Friday so I just moved some operations over to my workstation.

Other than that really nothing new or interesting is going on. Still looking for a job and whatnot.

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I am absolutely floored by this entry over on Paul Scheer's blog. He asked his readers to tell him some of the fucked up shit their friends and family members said at Thanksgiving. It's a good read but I will quote some of the good ones...

"I'm can't be racist...I'm dating a Spic!"

"Only a Muslim would have a store open on Thanksgiving. Those people have no religion."

"And P.S. there was no such thing as slavery! The blacks came here for the free welfare!"

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I feel : shocked shocked

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It seems odd but I have to laugh when I hear someone get hysterical about female genital mutilation happening in the world. I laugh not out of any sick sense of humor or misogyny, but rather at the hypocrisy of these individuals. They cry about women in far off countries having the clitoris forcibly removed but yet they are strangely silent, and in some cases even participating in male genital mutilation. Of course I am referring to the practice of circumcision which involves the removal of the foreskin of the penis which results in the loss of about two million nerves. A few unlucky souls get some souvenirs too like psychological problems.

The procedure is done for a variety of reasons. In the Jewish tradition it is done on the eighth day of a boy's life as a sign of the covenant between Abraham and God. It gained popularity in the US as a general practice amid the mistaken notion that there was some connection between intact foreskin and penile cancer as well as other myths. For example in regards to cancer one can just look at the rates of Japan, a country where circumcision is not practiced, and see that is a mere myth.

What sparked this entry was TiVo happened to be on the Detroit Fox affiliate when I turned the TV on this morning and Montel Williams happened to be on with a show entitled "Medical Horrors". The promotional clip for the next segment was this woman from the Seattle area talking about having her son circumcised and the doctor coming out and saying "we have a problem". Now even before they got to the part about the botched circumcision, I had to question this woman's intelligence since she said that she felt uncomfortable with the obstetrician that she had been referred to and when she mentioned it to the doctor's own secretary she was told "do not come back" and when she did get another obgyn, she let him talk her back in to coming back with him.

The procedure takes about ten to fifteen minutes. This particular doctor took almost forty-five minutes because he cut the artery down there and had to cauterize it. Even better though, during the cauterization process he dropped the instrument which left a scar down the child's stomach and across his penis and testicles. Stuff like this is not isolated either. But stuff like this is not isolated. There have been cases where the penis was damaged so badly that a son becomes raised as as daughter. Boys also have died from exsangination or systemic infection directly caused by the procedure.

I definitely am against the procedure. I view it as no different than when a girl is held down and her clitoris is not-so-surgically removed. Even in religious cases I find it to be a form of mutilation. Why? Because even if it symbolizes a covenant with God and whatnot, then it still needs to be a choice made by the child. In fact, some Jewish parents are not having the procedure done allowing their sons to make the choice later in life. I will concede however that it may be medically necessary in some cases. That is actually why the mother in the "raised as a daughter" link had her twin sons circumcised because the boys were having trouble urinating. Another site quotes a man who had frequent urinary tract infections. But again those problems develop later. It is akin to preventing a child from breaking his arm by cutting it off first.

What I find the most sickening is that circumcision is a violation of the Hippocratic Oath. "First do no harm" apparently does not have any meaning in the case of circumcision. Since there is no medical reason for arbitrary circumcision why is it still being done?

In a side note, there is a bizarre twist to the Seattle area woman's tail though. Remember hearing about a case where an obgyn had a twin brother and that a lot of the patients were sexually assaulted? Well, that is the doctor this woman went to. He was found guilty.

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Support World AIDS Day



- Light to Unite: For Every Virtual Candle Lit, $1 is Donated to AIDS Research

- FightAIDS@Home: A Screen Saver that Lets You Help Find New Treatments for AIDS

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I feel : hopeful hopeful

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It has been brought to my attention that there is a new distributed computing program available for users now that helps AIDS researches develop a cure. For those of you not familiar with distributed computing, the process works by installing a client that handles everything. It connects to the master server and downloads a block of information and then disconnects. Using your available CPU time, like when the screen saver is activated and such, the client then processes the data block and then, when complete, sends the results back to the server and then grabs a new block. Some notable projects include Distributed.Net, which specializes in mathematical problems like encryption cracking and Golomb Rulers, and SETI@Home, which processes radio signals received from space.

Now, available from the World Community Grid is FightAIDS@Home. The Frequently Asked Questions are available here.

There really is no reason not to install this software. It is small and nonintrusive as it can be run constantly or merely as a screen saver. AIDS affects everyone.

So download the client and sign up.

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I feel : hopeful hopeful

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I really want to put a bullet in my head right now. It would be a lot quicker and painless than the training CD I have been forcing myself to endure. I like the fact it is visual and akin to taking a course on the subject, but I really wish that some of these productions would have been more well thought out as opposed to treated like a live class.

The one I am doing right now is on JavaScript which is one of the skills that has been listed as a requirement in a lot of the web designer job listings. My main issue is that the instructor is so damned redundant and slow with his delivery. How many times does he need to mention that server side JavaScript is executed on the server?

Hopefully, since this is just introductory material I am going through right now, it will pick up when the lessons switch over to actually coding. Until then my brain will just have to go ahead and melt.

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I feel : bored bored

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Here's a funny little reminder of what you need to know about sexual harassment.

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I feel : amused amused

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Had to try this one out...


Bloke Exchanging Lustful Indulgence and Naughty, Unrestrained Stimulation

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I feel : amused amused

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Holy shit Bre is a psychotic bitch! She has a fit over the fact that someone swiped one of her granola bars that she had just bought and, without any evidence, decided that Nicole did it. In retaliation Bre took some of Nicole's Red Bulls and dumped them down the drain. In a bad move, Kim tried to mediate between the them but Bre went psycho on her. Then, after both her and Bre had finished their shoots, Nicole confronted her and Bre went psychotic again. Girl needs to cancel her subscription to those issues.

Mr. Jay overheard Nicole and Kim talking about the incident and so he was filled in. Naturally, since the girls are always being watched by everyone on set, word of the incident got back to Tyra. What is funny is that she had a chance to just admit "Yeah I did it, it was childish and stupid, and I am sorry" but instead she launched into an attack on Kim. Mr. Jay's words described her as 'going for the jugular' which is exactly what she did at judging. Instead she goes off about how the flare up at the photo shoot was all because of Kim. It did not even stop there. When the girls were dismissed so that the judges could deliberate, Bre just went right for Kim's jugular yet again. Kim made a very valid point by trying to shout over Bre and tell her that her anger is what got her into the situation and earned her a dressing down by the judges and so she should just quit right then. Naturally Bre just ignores her. Funny thing is Bre commented on Lisa's insanity. Pot, meet Kettle.

Unfortunately when elimination rolled around it was down to Bre and Kim and, since she has not been all that consistent in delivering good photos, Kim was sent home. I was really hoping Bre's little episode earned her a one-way ticket back but unfortunately it was not to be.

What is it with the black girls on this show being such bitches? I never saw the first season, but in two we had Camille, Eva was kind of a bitch in Season 3, and Brandy followed by Keenya were bitches in the fourth season. During the third season's casting, Tyra told Eva to her face "I do not want to cast another black bitch." But in the end, their attitude is their down-fall. Only Eva made it all the way and that was probably because her bitchiness was just things like a lack of tact and tendency to speak before thinking as opposed to that of Camille who was just insane with arrogance.

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I feel : shocked shocked

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MSNBC is reporting that Sam, the world's ugliest dog has died. Unfortunately he was beginning to suffer from heart failure and his owner put him down. Poor guy. He's so repulsive he's cute. He was just short of his fifteenth birthday.

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I feel : sad

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Here's how you make a baby

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I feel : giggly giggly

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I forgot to mention that on Wednesday I had a six month follow-up with the Endocrinologist. It was largely a waste of time for both of us since the blood work six months ago answered any questions about my testosterone levels. The department just went ahead and made the appointment for me so I just showed up. She did a cursory exam and made sure outward signs were still ok.

But it was not a total waste. They threw me on the scale and, with an adjustment for the jeans and shirt I was wearing, I have lost about thirty pounds. I still have a shit load more weight to lose, but this is definitely a start.

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I feel : ecstatic ecstatic

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There has been a big blow-up in the media when people detected a rootkit in Digital Restriction Management (DRM) used by Sony BMG CDs to "protect" the content from being pirated. A rootkit is a set of software programs designed to cloak things on a computer. This may involve something as simple as hiding files to hiding running processes and much more. Naturally Sony BMG neglected to tell its consumers about this. The main concern is that the rootkit would become exploitable by others as rootkits have been used to hide the presence of things like programs that record your keystrokes and such. That concern became reality when malicious software was spotted "in the wild" making use of Sony's rootkit. Sony recalled the CDs and vendors of malicious software protection products like Microsoft and Symantec have publicly stated that their products will detect and remove Sony's rootkit with or without Sony's blessing.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its sister organization, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), I am a criminal. I have been judged guilty without facing my accusers, without a trial, and without my guilt being determined by a jury of my peers. Instead I apparently announce my guilt when I buy a CD. That purchase tells the record label that I will be pirating the album instead of enjoying it. I apparently will be making MP3s of the tracks not to add to my library stored on my computer or to listen to on my MP3 player, but instead will put them on networks like KaZaA and package them to send over BitTorrent. Though I have never seen it, sometimes I feel like I am in Tom Cruise's position in the movie Minority Report. But instead of the Pre-Crime division coming after me, it is agents of RIAA/MPAA because I may commit piracy.

But I guess this is the new attitude of content providers in US today - treat your customers like criminals. When we buy a CD/DVD today, we no longer own it, we just rent it. Media we paid for with our money has to be used on their terms. Unfortunately it works because either way they still end up making money. Why? Because people will still buy the media.

Sony makes my hair hurt oh so much though. In an article on C|Net's News.Com, it is discussed how the rootkit that Sony BMG apparently has used open source software like the LAME MP3 encoder, but yet the rootkit in and of itself is closed source. This is incredible hypocrisy on Sony's part. Why? Because under the rules of open source software, any piece of software that integrates open source software must also be open source. If the rootkit merely called upon a separate instance of the LAME encoder and the other open source software found in the rootkit they would have been fine. But since the code was integrated into the rootkit's executable, they committed.... you guessed it.... copyright infringement. Kind of ironic that Sony positions itself as a "defender of artist's rights" but yet tramples on those same rights when it comes to software programmers.

The thing that bugs me the most is that with all these copy protections, broadcast flags, and other such "protection" crap content providers have missed the picture big time. Do they honestly think they will ever stop piracy? They may succeed in pushing it underground on occasion but as we have seen historically they always find something new and come back. The new protections they devise are today's inconvenience for pirates, nothing more. The bottom line - Criminals will engage in criminal behavior with the content. What these restrictions end up doing is merely punish those who are honest and will abide by the non-distribution and non-commercial use restrictions.

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Ambient Sounds of : Patrice Rushen - Forget Me Nots

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Kudos to South Park for tonight's episode where Stan delivers the line: "Dad! Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet!"

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America's Next Top Model finally delivered for me tonight. One of the girls I want to go home was sent packing and, as an added bonus, Lisa was the one who got sent back to the US. It was down to her an Jayla but the judges tonight had finally had enough of Lisa's over-the-top antics.

I am definitely revising my opinion of Bre though. In the beginning she seemed shy and not too sure of herself. This bought her a spot on the bottom two a few weeks ago. But now she has improved and is taking great photos. But her attitude has shifted from shy and insecure to haughty. She could easily take Lisa's place in terms of my disdain. Her, Jayla, and Nik all went after Kim because she is a little gossipy. Big deal? Bre tells Kim that it is something she needs to work on as all of them have at least one thing they all need to work on. At first I thought this was very admirable of her because rather than just tear Kim down, she said what she felt needed to be said and then offered some encouragement. But in her little commentary of it, she says things about "keeping [her] enemies closer." The preview of next week's episode kind of reinforces that because she goes after Kim, again, calling her an ugly person and such.

Personally, I think she needs a dose of reality. During the third season, the girls got a chance to meet and chat with the winner of the second season, Yoanna House, specifically mentions that the girls just need to focus on what they are doing themselves and not concentrate on what the other girls are doing. I think this is where Bre is going to mess up eventually because she does seem a little too preoccupied with other people in the house are doing.

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I had to bust out laughing when I read this news story on 365Gay.Com. Apparently in their paranoid thrust to "defend" marriage against us evil homosexuals, the state of Georgia neglected to actually look at its marriage laws and note something more than a little disturbing.

In an effort to prevent children born out of wedlock, Georgia passed a law that allows for children to get married, regardless of the age of either spouse, with the only requirement being that the woman is pregnant. This law is currently being used by a Florida woman who wed the the fifteen year-old boy she had been having a relationship with just prior to her arrest. Her defense attorney plans to use a Supreme Court ruling that bans the use of statements made by a spouse. If it holds, which it probably will, the statements the boy made to the police and anything based upon them are inadmissible as evidence.

The kicker though is that, in spite of being told by a Florida woman who wrote the every single member of the GA legislature and confirming what she told them, Republican leaders do not endorse changing the law. The quote from Rep. Karla Drenner, the only openly gay person elected to state office, sums it all up: "We're protecting society from the perceived threat of homosexual marriage, which was already illegal. But yet if you're pregnant, you can get married -- and it doesn't matter if you're 9 years old or 10 years old." Of course the Republicans state that they will strengthen sex offender laws but, as I pointed out, that will not stop this problem because of the aforementioned ruling from the US Supreme Court.

It is simply amazing the level of hypocrisy that exists. Democrats who refuse to vote of a constitutional ban on Gay Marriage are labeled as supporting it. So I guess since these Republicans do not endorse a ban on minors getting married, they in fact support child marriage.

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While watching clips from The Soup and Best Week Ever relating to that batshit-crazy christian woman, Marguerite Perrin, I kept thinking to myself "You know some one is going to sample that shit and put it to music". This is of course what Madonna did when she sent out MP3s of American Life tracks going 'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' and they were remixed as well.

Someone has done it, click here for the Ungodly Mix of "Slagkicks".

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I feel : scared scared

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Looks like we may have have found the next Gary Brolsma... This guy is hung up.

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I just got home from the Thompson-Prometric testing center. I have survived the GRE exam and I think I did pretty well. I am a little upset with myself because I rushed a little bit during the Math exam and accidentally cubed a number I meant to merely square so I answered that one quantity was bigger than the other when they were actually the same. But combined I got an 1140/1600 or 71.25%. I do not remember which exam I got which score on but they were 550 and 590. I think I did better on the Math but I will have to wait for the final test report which I will get in 2-3 weeks.

The writing exam had me a little worried when I went in but I managed to pull through for the essay I had to write taking a position on the issue. One of my recent LiveJournal postings actually came into play for that one which I found amusing. When it came to analyzing an argument I think I totally just laid waste to it. I was presented with an argument based on an empirical study and, thanks to the courses I took with my adviser, I was able to easily spot the problems with the experiment and just went at it like a piñata.

In terms of my scores being "good" or not in terms of admission, the only figure I have seen was 1,000 which was used to describe the reading/math exam scores so I hope the writing exam just vaults me even higher.

But now that it is over, I can relax now. This exam has totally stressed me out and the protocol at the testing center does absolutely nothing to assuage it either given the fact I sign several documents and I am video taped the entire time. I also have a very low opinion of standardized testing because it is not really a valid measure in my opinion. The purported racial, gender, and socio-economic biases aside, I do not believe that these exams are accurate of real-world situations. For example if I need an antonym for the word "quixotic" in writing a paper or something, I will have access to some sort of thesaurus and such. If I am going to do a factorial analysis of variance for an experiment, I will not need to be able to regurgitate the formula on cue, I will be able to look it up if I need to. In fact my undergraduate statistics class had the math portion of exams open-book. Oh well.

Now I can go back to doing my application training and stuff and work on getting some job skills since I got some major depressing financial news yesterday in regards to my student loans.

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I feel : relieved relieved

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The episode that aired last week was a clip show due probably to the fact that the winner of the challenge in tonight's show won a guest appearance on the episode of Veronica Mars that aired right after ANTM.

I went in thinking "Lisa is going to win this one" but was shocked to find Kim was the winner. Of course Lisa gets this sour-puss expression on her face because she does not win. I fully expected her to hit the bottle again like she did last time when Nicole and Kyle got to be on a VH1 special. Later on she was being obviously passive-aggressive with her back-handed compliments of Kim saying how she would have liked to have won but Kim deserves to win at least once.

Lisa has to be the nastiest girl ever to be on America's Next Top Model. The photo shoot involved the Wild Boys from MTV who are background characters in shots designed to have the girls express anger. After the shoot the girls were hanging out on the set and Steve-O is lavishing Nicole with attention with things like rubbing her feet and such. Since she is not the center of attention, Lisa decides to usurp the Wild Boys' attention and comes out wearing a diaper. As if that was not bad enough, she announces that she is going to urinate in the diaper to see if the leak protection works or not. girl must be needing Depends soon or something.

Elimination was a little tense though. I will freely admit I was happy Jayla's picture was compared to an inflatable sex doll and that she was in the bottom two. Tyra had both her and Nicole up there and played it up like they were both being eliminated. Season 4 also had a double elimination when both Rebecca and Tiffany were eliminated and Tyra ended up literally screaming at Tiffany. That time she flipped over a blank photo and told them they were both being sent home. But this time around Tyra told them that they were both packing their bags and flipped over the photo to reveal a Union Jack and "London" printed on the paper and told the girls they were all going. The tension was very nice and everyone was crying. Nicole lost it though after the reveal.

The reason there was no elimination tonight was probably due to the sniveling little socio-path Cassandra who quit the show in the third episode. That girl's problem was that she had long hair and was miss beauty pageant whereas as Tyra wanted to take her away from that since models cannot play it safe. She felt that Cassandra had great bone structure and had the salon give her a major hair cut to make her look like Mia Farrow in "Rosemary's Baby". She had a fit and was crying the whole time about it. The salon messed up and left it too long so Tyra arranged for it to be cut again. The episode was set up so that she debated about her hair. Nicole told her that if she really wanted to model, then get the cut. Cassandra's mother laid it down for her - An inch of hair or a modeling career. At the previous judging, Twiggy told her that cutting her hair is a good thing and that her career took off in the 1960's when they cut her hair short. In the end she told Jay Manuel that she was not getting her hair cut so he booted her from the set and Cassandra was sent home. But since they still had an elimination that night, they were down a contestant until this point as the final six always go to a foreign country to finish the show.

So now we have four episodes left and then the finale. Hopefully Lisa will be booted soon cuz girl has some issues and the subscription needs to be canceled.

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Wow... just when I thought social conservatives could not appear to be any dumber, The Washington Post comes out with this article.

The pharmaceutical companies Merck, of Vioxx infamy, and GlaxoSmithKline have developed a vaccine that appears to be 100% effective in preventing two of the strains of the Human Papilloma Virus, which causes the sexually transmitted disease commonly referred to as "genital warts", that are responsible for cervical cancer in women. Both companies would like to see the vaccinations made mandatory for teenagers before puberty as research shows that prepubescence is the ideal time to administer the shot and have it be fully effective. Even though cervical cancer is obviously only something women can get, boys would receive the shot too in order to prevent further infections.

Naturally since HPV is classified as a sexually transmitted disease, conservatives are screaming how such a shot would "encourage sexual activity". The proponents of the universal failure known as 'Abstinence-Only Education' think that because the vaccine makes sex a little bit safer, people will engage in it. Of course they neglect several facts such as:
  1. The HPV vaccine combats two strains known to be the most cancer causing. There are other strains not covered much like the meningitis vaccine only is partial protection. Chlamydia in particular is one concern because majority of people who have it do not show symptoms and therefore are unknowingly infecting others.

  2. HPV is not the only STD out there. There's herpes, syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea and of course good 'ol HIV. So removal of HPV does not remove any of those other threats.

  3. HPV is a disease that, like herpes, can be spread even if all safety precautions like condoms are taken.

  4. HPV is not only the most common viral STD, but is the most common STD period due to the fact that it can be spread by only skin-on-skin contact even if a condom is used.

  5. Since HPV is the most common STD out there, the possibility exists that people with meet, marry, and have sex with individuals who have HPV. Even though an individual has been abstinent for their entire life up to that moment, they are still at risk.
The director of the National Cervical Cancer Coalition, Alan Kaye, had the best quote in the article: "Just because you wear a seatbelt doesn't mean you're seeking an accident." That describes it perfectly. Most of the gay men I know, myself included, have condoms on hand. Does this mean that any or

There is a broader issue here though. Even though cervical cancer strikes about 10,000 women annual and kills about 3,700 of them, HPV is not that serious of a disease. Neither is herpes. What concerns me is what happens when the day comes and there is a vaccine for HIV? Will these same idiots throw tantrums and shriek about how a mandatory vaccination against HIV would be encouraging teenagers to engage in sexual activity? Will these idiots still have the power to block such vaccinations as Bush's ineptitude allows them to do now?

One thing I hope for is that the health insurance industry, as much as I am critical of them at times, jumps in on this one and sets up a situation to make vaccination look infinitely better. And I am not talking about just covering the vaccination with little or no co-pay either. Because money is the ultimate motivator in this country, I am talking about making women who were able to receive the vaccine prior to puberty but did not pay more for any treatment of HPV and/or cervical cancer.

I also hope a group of people in power will have the balls to stand up and tell these conservatives to fuck off and that the health of the population comes before their delusional moral superiority. I would definitely do it. And if I was in such a position, I would also add that if these parents are so worried that a vaccine would suddenly cause a rise in teen sexual activity, then they must not be very good parents.

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First she got caught lip-syncing on Saturday Night Live... now she was caught drunk in Toronto at McDonald's making an ass out of herself once again.

Dealing with the fact Jessica has a bigger career must be so hard for her.

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Just finished registering for a full load of classes for Winter Semester. Had to do some shifting around since two classes I wanted to take conflicted. I wanted to take Research Writing over in the English department but unfortunately they were offering only one section of it. That section just had to conflict with the one section of a class I wanted to take in the Psychology department. The Psych section was being taught by a professor I would like to have as my mentor. I have taken a class with this professor in the past but I bombed the course because I had just shifted to working full time and the burn out got to me. So I felt it was more important to take a psych class with this professor again and redeem myself to her.

I was able to make a quasi-compromise with the writing class. Instead of taking Writing for Research, I am taking Principals of Technical Communication which has some overlap. The other two classes I registered for was Intro to Creative Writing and, because I needed a fourth course to get full-time enrollment, Intro to Sociology.

So now I just have to sit back and wait for everything while studying for the GRE which is a week from today and getting both my entrance essay and APA proposal written and turned in. There is also my NaNoWriMo novel to work on as well not to mention my continuing job hunt.

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They used to call him K-Fed, but now he's just crap... listen to a sample from Kevin Spears Federline's rap.

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I had a little burst of inspiration the other night to write a completely different genre of novel so I am taking the plunge and going with it even though I do have to conduct a little research on the topic but I was able to get off to a pretty good start for about an hours worth of work.

My original novel was going to be a gay "coming of age" story told be a high school student about to graduate and go on to college and what he experiences at home and at college through coming out and whatnot. However I happened to be watching the Halloween Special of Ghost Hunters on Sci-Fi and one of the pieces of evidence they got at a brewery in Savannah, GA kind of spooked me. It was a shadow coming out of the wall about a foot taller than the pool table it was behind. It comes seemingly out of the wall, darts to the end of the table and then back. It obviously was not a shadow cast from something behind the camera because the pool table covers it and it definitely was not a person because it moved too fast, did not have a human shape, and human beings are not translucent.

That little piece of footage inspired me to try my hand at writing a classic haunted house story. This may be a little bit of a challenge since this horror sub genre has been done quite a bit so I am drawing additional inspiration from reading people's accounts of their own hauntings. My goal is basically to blur the line and present a fictional story in a way so that it looks like a factual retelling of an actual haunting.

I once again missed the 1,000 word mark for the day but I figure I will pick up steam now that I have locked in on a plot for sure.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
856 / 50,000
(1.7%)

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... go out to Mr. Slave and Big Gay Al in celebration of their wedding this evening.

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Because everyone loves a rap feud, 50 Cent has decided to come out and say how Kanye West was wrong when he declared "George Bush doesn't care about black people" during the live telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina that aired on NBC. According to 50 Cent, "The New Orleans disaster was meant to happen. It was an act of God" and that, in reference to West's comments, "I don't know where that came from."

Well if 50 Cent had been paying attention about two months ago he would have seen where West's comments were coming from. Like images from the New Orleans Superdome where a lot of people, mostly black, were sitting around with no climate control, no food, no water, no decent facilities and no one was doing anything about it in spite of there being more than enough resources to get them at least food and water. It also came from Associated Press photos that were being labeled differently depending on the race of the people depicted.

Timing of these comments is also very suspect. 50 Cent stars in his own version of 8 Mile called "Get Rich or Die Tryin". Mysteriously it opens next week. Sounds exactly like Young DeBarge when he made the announcement that Janet Jackson and his brother James have a secret daughter born during their brief marriage. Coincidentally Mr. DeBarge happens to have released an album and is currently promoting it.

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To listen to Senator Majority Leader Bill "I-can-diagnose-anything-via-edited-videotapes" First (R-TN), the US Senate was "hijacked by the Democratic leaders" who "no convictions", "no principals", and "no ideas". This comes after the Senate was forced into a closed-door session for the first time since former President Clinton's "trial".

Sometimes I wonder if people really are too stupid and/or ignorant to see the hypocrisy in that man and the Republican party of today. His use of the word "hijack" is ironic considering he is the same man who continuously threatens to hijack the Senate and change the rules because Democrats do not want Republicans putting judicial activists like Priscilla Owen into life-long judicial appointments. So when Democrats opt to use the filibuster, First responds by threatening to change the rules.

First also claims the move was a "political stunt" on the part of Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). Of course First neglects his own "political stunt" when he helped "hijack" not only the Senate but the House of Representatives as well in order to ram through legislation to "protect Terri Schiavo's right to judicial process" because, after viewing heavily edited video tape First, a doctor but not a neurologist, was able to make a prognosis for her recovery in spite of the fact independent experts who actually are neurologists had said otherwise and that imaging of Terri's brain showed large areas where the cerebral cortex was gone and replaced with fluid which is something that current medical science cannot reverse. Of course the child in Texas who was in the same situation Terri Schiavo was in get neglected... probably because the order to remove the child from life support against his mother's wishes was signed on authority of George W. Bush when he was governor of Texas.

In a larger sense though, it seems like Republicans have a very short memory because it was only a decade ago when they did even worse to then President Clinton. To this day I fail to see how receiving oral sex in the oval office has anything to do with a supposed real estate scam. And on that same vein, Republicans and their apologists were scoffing at independent council Patrick Fitzgerald's decision to indict I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on charges of lying to the grand jury investigating the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame instead of charging him in the leak itself... amazingly former President Clinton's articles of impeachment, railroaded through by Republicans, were virtually identical in that they charged him with lying and such to independent council Kenneth Starr but yet neglected to actually charge Clinton with the crime Starr was investigating in the first place.

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I ended up playing Lunar a little bit longer than I intended so I did not get much written before I started to doze off. Thankfully I did get a burst of inspiration and was able to get some things written that set up my novel.

Depressingly enough though, I have already run into a major problem with the style of my novel. I started writing it in third person but find myself wondering if it would work better in first. I will have to play with it a little bit and see how the first chapter flows before I make a final decision on it. I definitely do not want to hit the half-way mark and then find out third person simply will not work and have to go back and re-write goddess knows how many chapters.

But here's an updated progress meter. It's not much, but it is a start.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
541 / 50,000
(1.1%)

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Once again I am putting my hat in the ring to try my hand at National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo.

I still have not decided on a plot or anything so I have to hurry up and do that. I have a few ideas that I am kicking around in my head. I definitely do not want to give up like I did with last year's attempt especially in light of the fact that my employment status gives me plenty of time that I definitely need to utilize better than I have been. I would like to get at least 50,000 words written by November 30th and then, once I polish it up, maybe submit the work to various publishing houses. Who knows, I may even sell the thing.

My PlayStation 2 as been a bit active lately too with inspirational things like the myriad of RPGs I own. Right now I am playing Lunar: The Silver Star Story for some high fantasy inspiration. I have some other stuff I can refer to for inspiration in other genres like CSI for mysteries, Ghost Hunters for paranormal, and so forth. One main problem I have though is coming up with an idea that has not already been done or a creative way to take something that already has been done and add something to it such as how Konami reinvented Dracula with its Castlevania series.

But since it is November 1st, I will start my counter right now...

Zokutou word meter
0 / 50,000
(0.0%)


Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo?

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I have never really understood these things but they look cool.


Click here to see! )

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While doing my morning sweep of various news sites I ran across an article on MSNBC from Newsweek entitled The Price of Loyalty. In it Jonathan Alter discusses how the Bush administration's exorcism of those who dissented against the war in Iraq have have left some pretty devastating effects.

Before the war we The New York Times published an editorial by Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat. He had returned from a visit to Niger investigating claims that Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium for weapons of mass destruction. The documents cited by both the US and UK governments as they laid out a case for war in Iraq. Geroge W. Bush cited them in his 2003 State of the Union address. Wilson's editorial criticized the US for citing those documents when they knew they had been forged. Eight days later Conservative apologist Robert Novak exposed Wilson's wife as a CIA agent and not only damaged her cover, but also the cover of all the covert agents working for Brewster Jennings & Associates which was a front. Of course Novak tried to claim he though she was only an analyst and therefore revealing her identity was not an act of treason but critics argue that after decades of reporting from Washington, DC he would be unlikely to make such a simple mistake. LexisNexis searching backs up the critics as Novak used, correctly, the terms "CIA operative" and "covert operative" to describe covert CIA employees in every single article he wrote including the one where he revealed Valerie Plame. The CIA had even asked him not to publish her name but he considered that "a very weak request" and did it anyways. Now I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby stands indicted on charges relating to this matter and Karl Rove is still under investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Valerie Plame is casualty number one.

Next we come to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. You may recall that his firing was pretty much the first publicized action Bush took in trying to fix the sliding economy. O'Neill presciently tells Bush that he can either have a tax cut or a war in Iraq, but he cannot have both because the nation could not afford it. O'Neill is fired. Along those same lines Larry Lindsey, Bush's former economic adviser informed Bush that he projected the costs of a war in Iraq to be between $100 and $200 Billion (as of 12p EST, National Priorities Project has the cost at over $204 Billion). Guess what happens to him? He's fired too. Casualties two and three.

Even more mind boggling is the case of General Eric Shinseki of the US Army. He says that in order to accomplish the publicized goals of the Bush administration in Iraq, it would take several hundred thousand troops to do so. Mysteriously he sent into early retirement after that. I say it is mysterious because the US military is under a "stop loss" order. This means that enlisted military personnel can be kept in service beyond their contractually agreed upon term. In fact, the payroll system has their military service expiring after 2030. This has been criticized from both sides, most notably Senators John Kerry (D-MA), and John McCain (R-AZ), as a "backdoor draft" given that in 1973 Congress refused to renew the draft law and thus it died on July 1st of that year. But more importantly, under a "stop loss" order, commissioned officers such as Shinseki can have their retirements deferred by the military. So why is a general being put into early retirement? Casualty number four.

On the other end of the spectrum we have CIA Director George Tennet. Unarguably he has been at the helm of the US intelligence gathering operations through the two biggest blunders in its history. Of course I am referring to the Iraq WMD but even more so for the September 11th attacks. He have even helped spread information discrediting one of his own employees in the "Plamegate" scandal. Yet instead of being punished for his incompetence, he is instead rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Anyone notice an interesting pattern? You doubt Bush you are removed or marginalized. Support him, you get rewarded. No debate, no discussion. It is black or white. Even George W. Bush's father, former President George H. Bush, has had little luck getting the president to closer to those who do not rabidly echo him. Brent Scrowcroft served as National Security Adviser to former president Bush. Like the elder Bush, Scrowcroft held a philosophy towards foreign policy that was more grounded in realism than that of the current president. The elder Bush has tried to get his best friend and his son together after Scrowcroft wrote an editorial published in the Washington Post entitled Don't Attack Saddam but has been unsuccessful. Oddly enough, the differing between the two Bush presidents is echoed also in their national security advisers as well. Condoleezza Rice was Scrowcroft's protégé but switched sides when she switched Bushes. The same can be said of Dick Cheney too.

Alter's article mainly focuses on the war in Iraqi so I feel it lacks a little balance but then again he may be omitting the most glaring example of the incompetence of the Bush administration because it has already been waved around recently. Of course I am talking about Hurricane Katrina. Everyone is familiar with the line "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" that Bush used to congratulate former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown. This came in spite of the fact that media outlets and officials in Lousiana were describing how FEMA had actually inhibited aide such as Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard describing how shipments of bottled water being provided by Wal-Mart and fuel provided by the Coast Card were turned back by FEMA. When the press got even worse attempts were made to block it resulting in CNN filing a lawsuit resulting in an injunction against federal officials blocking reporters access. The blame game started with federal officials laying the responsibility of their lack of action on sate and local officials in spite of the fact that various laws such as the Insurrection Act allowed them to do what they claimed the states had to give them permission to do. Not to mention the "supremacy clause" in the Constitution would probably have been enough justification as well. FEMA Directer Michael Brown was recalled to Washington, DC on September 9th and resigned three days later. He is still on FEMA's pay roll to this day.

Pretty much what has happened is a small, dangerous group of incompetent neo-conservatives have hijacked the nation and has dragged the population along with it. The notion that to dissent publicly was "unpatriotic" or, according to those idiots over at 'The "Free" Republic', "treason" took hold for some odd reason yet those who whore that notion neglect the fact this nation was born from dissent against what was unarguably the most powerful nation in the world. Instead now such acts are "aiding the enemy" and "hurting our troops". The damage no one seems to see is that the American Democracy became the American Oligarchy during all this. But hopefully we will get it back.

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I feel : discontent discontent

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It's just a jump to the left. And then a step to the right. Put your hands on your hips. Bring you knees in tight.

Time to set your clocks back folks!

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Today was kind of a bust in terms of anything tangible for work around the house. I woke up late which always bodes ill so I decided to make it a more low-key day.

Today's focus was getting my workstation up and running so I can transfer some of my design and coding work onto it so I can emulate dual monitors by having one thing on my laptop and working on my workstation. Works great for things like tutorial videos and such. Certain things, like working with Alias Maya, require the punch my workstation has even though the video card could use an upgrade (I am basically using a steroid-enhanced GeForce 4400 at the moment) and the CPUs are not the fastest (Hyperthreaded Dual Xeon 2.2GHz) but I deal. Maya itself is not a resource hog so much as the renderer is. But then again thanks to the laptop taking over as my primary computer, I can set up a render to go and just let the damn thing sit crunching numbers.

Through my cleaning I have managed to locate two of my old PlayStation games that I have been looking for, Lunar: The Silver Star Story and Castlevania: Symphony of Night. I popped in Castlevania since that is my favorite of the series and have been hacking my way through the castles. Right now I have it idling as I am leveling up all of my familiars since I picked up the gas cloud relic.

Right now I am just kind of veggin' waiting for a download to finish so I can burn two CDs and then let the workstation have it.

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Well after slacking off and sitting on this, I have finally scheduled an appointment to take the Graduate Records Exam (GRE) so on Friday, November 11th at 9a I will be trapped in a room for about four hours proving to a computer that I will be a success the first year of grad school. I am very happy I got a November slot mid-month because it gives me time to better prepare even though diagnostic testing extrapolated my score to be well above the floor the program I want to get into requires. In the event I bomb, I still have breathing space to take it again as well.

Next Thursday I also have to hop online and actually register for classes for Winter semester. I have looked at the schedule book and am mad because I wanted to take the Research Writing class with the English Department but the only section offered conflicts with the Psychology of Prejudice & Discrimination section I want to take because one of the faculty members I want to work with as a grad student is teaching it and I bombed miserably the last time I took a class with her and I want to make that up. I will figure it all out soon I guess as I have to decide whether I want to go only half or full time which determines if I need to take two or four courses total.

I have been slacking off in reading research papers for my writing sample but I think things like cleaning my room and such make up for it since I am doing something else productive. But I do need to get back on track with that so I can get the things written and then go to work on the editing because this thing has to absolutely shine.

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Mr. Sulu came out.

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Well I got the shit cleared out from under the bed and got ready to move it but then I realized that I had not measured to make sure it would fit where I wanted to move it. So I grabbed a networking cable and used it like a tape measure. Unfortunately I cannot move my bed where I wanted to. It would just barely fit but my night table, which I need, will not fit without blocking the door.

The key to the problem is the location of my computer desk. It pretty much is stuck in the corner I have it in now due to the cable outlet and such. If I had the coaxial cable I need for the cable modem or a long enough Cat5 cable I could move it to the opposite corner but the problem there is that my south-facing window is there as well and would be blocked.

So for now I have moved the bed back to where I had it. I will create my little study area in the dining area once I get that area cleaned up and swap the dining room table for one that is much smaller. I also am toying with the idea of moving my computer desk to the dining room or even segmenting the living room so it will be out of my bedroom but I would need help doing that so that will have to be saved for when my mom visits again or something because there is no way I can maneuver that desk out of my room by myself without continuously hitting the walls and such.

I am a little disappointed but at least the floor should be clean and all my laundry done by the end of the day and I can relax a little.

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Ambient Sounds of : Ian Van Dahl - Inspiration

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News stories like this one just me feel warm and squishy inside. A woman goes to see her husband off to Iraq and gets fired for not showing up to work. Naturally the employer cites "other factors" just like the moron who fired a woman for having a John Kerry bumper sticker on her car.

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Unfortunately the local girl on America's Next Top Model was sent home in tonight's episode. While I feel bad about it, I have to agree with it. The main complaint about her from the judges is that she does not get past the "I am pretty" thing. They are right. They kept saying the same thing over and over again and it went in one ear and out the other because she did not even seem to be attempting to put their criticism into practice.

She was unarguably the best looking girl in terms of raw material in the house. But the problem is she ended up having absolutely no depth to her in her photos. At the end of every episode there is a montage of the judged photographs that each girl has taken up to their elimination and in all but two, Kyle's face looked exactly the same in terms of expression. Someone with expert knowledge of Adobe Photoshop could have taken one photo of Kyle and changed the hair and make-up and created identical ones of all the others she has taken. It would have been so easy for her to. In fact one girl in a previous season went into the bathroom and just spent time looking at herself in the mirror while she made faces. Simple trick and it got her compliments from the judges.

Nik was still bitter about the whole thing with Jayla. Suck it up you drama queen! Nicole was her usual, annoying twit self on tonight's episode. That girl is so immature I wonder if she lied about her age to get in. The girls have exercise sessions every so often and the one for tonight involved an obstacle course where the girls had to go through a mud pit on their stomachs under one net and on their backs under the second. Nicole was making such a big deal out of it where as Lisa just dove right in. As much as I dislike her, Nik was the real trooper since she kept losing her pants when she was running and they clearly came down in the mud. Directly from the mud pit the girls went to their challenge which was a "go-see" for Elle Girl magazine while they were still in their exercise outfits and covered in mud (The idea was that they had to win the interviewers over with natural confidence and personality as opposed to looks).

Surprisingly this episode did not have any shots of Lisa with alcohol. She won the challenge which carried a prize of spending the day with a stylist who helped her on various things. Naturally she was thinking about how this gives her advantages over the other girls in the competition. Girl needs to wake up and smell the coffee because the girls have an edge on her... they are not aging themselves prematurely because of constant drinking. Kim made fun of her during the plastic surgery photo shoot but Nigel Barker said it during the deliberations... Lisa looks old.

So now all but two of the girls I was cheering for are gone. I want either Bre or Kim to take this one.

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All the stress and drama surrounding my brother's wedding has made the bug bite again. For those of you not familiar with me using that expression, every so often I get seized by the urge to go to Canada for a while because I can go there absolutely miserable, not do "fun things" like helping friends move, and put up with a four hour drive each way, and I come back with a 180° change in my emotional state and such.

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Journal Blessing
Lilith - Bless this journal and all those who read it with love and light in their hearts. My they know love and peace.

Curse those who read it with malice and hate. May they know no peace until they mend their ways.

So mote it be!
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