I am on my second of the requisite 10 listens of the latest Dream Theater album "Black Clouds & Silver Linings". Because it usually takes so long to catch on to the regular DT album I would normally refrain from commenting so early in the process but I will make an exception.
Call me what you will but I love the song "Wither". It is awesome. It may be the only song under ten minutes on the whole 3 CD set but I won't hold that against them. The song is radio ready but still full of DT style.
There is one song that starts with a ticking clock for 18 seconds and I hate that. I know it is art but that is dead driving time. The song is "The Best Of Times" and it has a violin and piano so it is not the average DT song but then the guitar starts. Man, these guys are great. The run up reminds me of Styx. I don't know that is on purpose or if it is the fact that I heard Dennis DeYoung on Bob and Tom this morning.
The other songs cannot be commented on yet. They are long and I need time to hear them several times before I can say something about it. I will say that the 3rd CD has songs from the 1st CD without words. You can imagine the folks that will crank this up and read the words in a really high quality background music karaoke.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
No distortion
In Ms. Armstrong's English 2 class I read the book, The Pearl. This taught me that a stories have conflict and resolution. The conflict could be between 2 people, between people and nature, or a person against their self. There should a crescendo building to a powerful denouement and ending with a resolution settling the central conflict and any dangling peripheral conflicts. Ms. Armstrong also taught us all that white eye shadow make-up makes a frail white woman look dead.
Real life does not have crescendo outside of classical music. Denouement occurs at random moments that often don't fit the story. Resolution is elusive. Some of us seek the tying of loose ends but disappointment is more likely. You may never know what happened to Eugene the leg breaker. You may never see Jason from up the road to find out if he ever fulfilled his dream of becoming The Junk Yard Dog.
The talk amongst us normal people tends to be of the failures and missed opportunities of those around us. In retrospective slow motion we detail the should've, would've, could'ves of grand figures and coworkers alike. Milling and fussing over nothing of great interest or importance.
I was a believer in the building conflict and eventual resolution theory of life at one time. I guess this is a flaw of youth. I know now that if you work harder all you do is get old faster. If you build something that people want then most people will want it for free. If you a tyrant then you will find an outlet for your tyranny. Never attribute to malice what can better be explained by laziness, ineptitude, or outright ignorance.
At the start of this post I was a non face-booker but now I am. This post is even more relevant after having chatted and face-booked with those from my past and present that happen to own a computer and have a need to reconnect. People from the crowd come at you with questions, pokes, and offers of fruit. Just what I needed, another facet of my life that requires my interaction and offers only intrusion and train wreck observation style satisfaction. I am hooked.
Real life does not have crescendo outside of classical music. Denouement occurs at random moments that often don't fit the story. Resolution is elusive. Some of us seek the tying of loose ends but disappointment is more likely. You may never know what happened to Eugene the leg breaker. You may never see Jason from up the road to find out if he ever fulfilled his dream of becoming The Junk Yard Dog.
The talk amongst us normal people tends to be of the failures and missed opportunities of those around us. In retrospective slow motion we detail the should've, would've, could'ves of grand figures and coworkers alike. Milling and fussing over nothing of great interest or importance.
I was a believer in the building conflict and eventual resolution theory of life at one time. I guess this is a flaw of youth. I know now that if you work harder all you do is get old faster. If you build something that people want then most people will want it for free. If you a tyrant then you will find an outlet for your tyranny. Never attribute to malice what can better be explained by laziness, ineptitude, or outright ignorance.
At the start of this post I was a non face-booker but now I am. This post is even more relevant after having chatted and face-booked with those from my past and present that happen to own a computer and have a need to reconnect. People from the crowd come at you with questions, pokes, and offers of fruit. Just what I needed, another facet of my life that requires my interaction and offers only intrusion and train wreck observation style satisfaction. I am hooked.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Shelves and Substitues
Joy is a rare condition. It is not a natural state. With no forces acting upon us we don't revert back to joy. Some are able to relax but while that may lead to joy it is no guarantee.
Chip tells me that self awareness is key to life. I want to be oblivious for a while. As disengaged and adynamic as I perceive myself to be I still feel I need to recoil further from the outside forces. I find there are few things I can say to identify myself or my beliefs these days. I feel trapped and I am forced to communicate. I am not talking about the fact that Chip butt dials me at least twice a day but seriously, stop that. I don't even answer anymore because it happens all the time.
I don't think of it as isolation but insulation. I can't image what real people with real problems do. I am scrambled but it is my fault. I have no biological excuses or terrible tragic thing to blame. Its just me.
The songs seeing me through these days are:
That's Not My Name by The Ting Tings
Soulful Christmas by James Brown
Curbside Goodbye by Emery
That's right, I own the Thriller Album and shut up! Statistically you either own it or are lying about not owning it.
Chip tells me that self awareness is key to life. I want to be oblivious for a while. As disengaged and adynamic as I perceive myself to be I still feel I need to recoil further from the outside forces. I find there are few things I can say to identify myself or my beliefs these days. I feel trapped and I am forced to communicate. I am not talking about the fact that Chip butt dials me at least twice a day but seriously, stop that. I don't even answer anymore because it happens all the time.
I don't think of it as isolation but insulation. I can't image what real people with real problems do. I am scrambled but it is my fault. I have no biological excuses or terrible tragic thing to blame. Its just me.
The songs seeing me through these days are:
That's Not My Name by The Ting Tings
Soulful Christmas by James Brown
Curbside Goodbye by Emery
That's right, I own the Thriller Album and shut up! Statistically you either own it or are lying about not owning it.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Living with 7
I installed the Windows 7 beta to see if I liked it more than Vista. I did not have to live with the software so I put it on a junk drive on my laptop and used it only long enough to see that it had some skills.
At the same time I installed Jaunty Jackaloupe on another junk drive on the same laptop. Very nice but it was not a long term option because of the software I use. I did notice a big difference. Cellular modems turned out to be a surprise for me.
In my day job I have to setup and install Verizon PC5750 air cards on Windows 2000 and Windows Vista. There are bugs and tricks to the VZmanager software and you have to force it onto either OS. On Windows XP you can use the standard download software and you are fine.
I borrowed one of these aircards one weekend and decided to see if the new OS flavors were up to the challenge. Ubuntu identified the new hardware and I was online in a few seconds. The rest of this post will chronical the steps I took to get online with Windows 7. For the tech-weak knees turn away now.
I had decided that my 2gig, 2 year old laptop ran Windows 7 better than a new 4gb Dell Optiplex with Vista so I would try a longer term Windows 7 trial. Thanks to rare and brilliant move by Microsoft to allow for an unheard of Release Candidate trial period of Windows 7 I decided to commit.
I upgraded my Dell Latitude D620 to 4gig of Ram and a 7200/8mb cache/260gb hard drive and installed Windows 7 RC. I won't deny that there are a few odd "vista" like issues with 7 but overall I like it. That is now that I fixed the major problem. Verizon Air Card!
I downloaded the VZAccessManager from the Verizon website. I ran the setup and it asked for me to insert the card into the PC. I popped it in and nothing. Windows 7 had a message that it did not have the drivers for my new hardware that it called Pantech PC card. The install failed telling me that the OS was not supported. I figured that the VZ software worked but that the card install failed.
The normal course of action would be to go into Device Manager and update the drive to the drivers manually. I found that the Pantech folder was not in Program Files. I drilled down to \Program Files\vzmanager\drivers\pc5750\install\ and only found setup.exe. I ran this but it did not do much of anything but tell me that the OS was not supported. I heard this somewhere before.
I googled and googled but did not find much info. I guess that is why I am writing this.
I took the setup.exe out of the install folder and ran it on my Windows XP desktop. This created a nice directory filled with drivers! Yeah. I copied the files to my laptop. I used device manager and updated the drivers individually. This solved one problem. Windows 7 could now see the modem right but VZaccess manager still would not use it.
Using a tip from a posting online I uninstalled VZaccess manager and killed the modem in the network connections folder and rebooted.
This worked!! I was able to create a custom dial up connection and make a connection.
To recap the Verizon Air Card install on Windows 7:
Download the VZAccessMgr software from Verizon's website
Install the software on a Windows XP machine.
Copy the PANTECH PC Card folder from the XP machine to the Windows 7 machine from the Program Files directory on the XP box.
Insert the PC card into the Windows 7 PC.
It will fail to install the drivers.
Go into the device manager and update the drivers for each of the ! error devices with the drivers in the PANTECH PC Card folder.
Reboot.
Go into the network sharing center and setup a new connection and select Dial Up Networking.
All I put in was the #777 as the phone number, no password and no username.
This worked!!!
Milage may vary. I am pretty lazy about this sort of thing but I appreciate those people that aren't lazy about documentation. I hope this helps those in this situation.
At the same time I installed Jaunty Jackaloupe on another junk drive on the same laptop. Very nice but it was not a long term option because of the software I use. I did notice a big difference. Cellular modems turned out to be a surprise for me.
In my day job I have to setup and install Verizon PC5750 air cards on Windows 2000 and Windows Vista. There are bugs and tricks to the VZmanager software and you have to force it onto either OS. On Windows XP you can use the standard download software and you are fine.
I borrowed one of these aircards one weekend and decided to see if the new OS flavors were up to the challenge. Ubuntu identified the new hardware and I was online in a few seconds. The rest of this post will chronical the steps I took to get online with Windows 7. For the tech-weak knees turn away now.
I had decided that my 2gig, 2 year old laptop ran Windows 7 better than a new 4gb Dell Optiplex with Vista so I would try a longer term Windows 7 trial. Thanks to rare and brilliant move by Microsoft to allow for an unheard of Release Candidate trial period of Windows 7 I decided to commit.
I upgraded my Dell Latitude D620 to 4gig of Ram and a 7200/8mb cache/260gb hard drive and installed Windows 7 RC. I won't deny that there are a few odd "vista" like issues with 7 but overall I like it. That is now that I fixed the major problem. Verizon Air Card!
I downloaded the VZAccessManager from the Verizon website. I ran the setup and it asked for me to insert the card into the PC. I popped it in and nothing. Windows 7 had a message that it did not have the drivers for my new hardware that it called Pantech PC card. The install failed telling me that the OS was not supported. I figured that the VZ software worked but that the card install failed.
The normal course of action would be to go into Device Manager and update the drive to the drivers manually. I found that the Pantech folder was not in Program Files. I drilled down to \Program Files\vzmanager\drivers\pc5750\install\ and only found setup.exe. I ran this but it did not do much of anything but tell me that the OS was not supported. I heard this somewhere before.
I googled and googled but did not find much info. I guess that is why I am writing this.
I took the setup.exe out of the install folder and ran it on my Windows XP desktop. This created a nice directory filled with drivers! Yeah. I copied the files to my laptop. I used device manager and updated the drivers individually. This solved one problem. Windows 7 could now see the modem right but VZaccess manager still would not use it.
Using a tip from a posting online I uninstalled VZaccess manager and killed the modem in the network connections folder and rebooted.
This worked!! I was able to create a custom dial up connection and make a connection.
To recap the Verizon Air Card install on Windows 7:
Download the VZAccessMgr software from Verizon's website
Install the software on a Windows XP machine.
Copy the PANTECH PC Card folder from the XP machine to the Windows 7 machine from the Program Files directory on the XP box.
Insert the PC card into the Windows 7 PC.
It will fail to install the drivers.
Go into the device manager and update the drivers for each of the ! error devices with the drivers in the PANTECH PC Card folder.
Reboot.
Go into the network sharing center and setup a new connection and select Dial Up Networking.
All I put in was the #777 as the phone number, no password and no username.
This worked!!!
Milage may vary. I am pretty lazy about this sort of thing but I appreciate those people that aren't lazy about documentation. I hope this helps those in this situation.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Where did April GO
In 8th grade April sat behind me in state history class. She thought my drawing of a rock band made up of fruits and vegetables was funny. Her bedazzled denim jacket and bubbly handwriting could not have foretold her grunge high school days. Just like I lost touch with the Jr. High April I have lost the month of April. Where did it go?
With the tax deadline, Easter holiday, carpentry work, sick kids, new tires, and the hellish torment known as the blooming of the lugustrium, it was a crazy month.
May is looking better. I will finally get my big bad laptop hard drive and memory in. The specs of said laptop would make most geeks laugh. I plan to put Windows 7 RC, Ubuntu - Jaunty on this puppy. I get to setup my first production Server 2008 network.
The month is young. I have ambitions of posting more this month. I think this will be a great month. Afterall I did not go to school with a May. I did know a May. She went to our church and she walked all over town selling Avon. Crazy.
Not really on the topic but the class after the class with April was Industrial Arts. Industrial Arts is also known as "shop" or "prison training". As a part of the grand failed experiment called "Deseggregation/Integration" I learned real quick that "shop" is not for the college bound. I think my next post will have to be more about this.
With the tax deadline, Easter holiday, carpentry work, sick kids, new tires, and the hellish torment known as the blooming of the lugustrium, it was a crazy month.
May is looking better. I will finally get my big bad laptop hard drive and memory in. The specs of said laptop would make most geeks laugh. I plan to put Windows 7 RC, Ubuntu - Jaunty on this puppy. I get to setup my first production Server 2008 network.
The month is young. I have ambitions of posting more this month. I think this will be a great month. Afterall I did not go to school with a May. I did know a May. She went to our church and she walked all over town selling Avon. Crazy.
Not really on the topic but the class after the class with April was Industrial Arts. Industrial Arts is also known as "shop" or "prison training". As a part of the grand failed experiment called "Deseggregation/Integration" I learned real quick that "shop" is not for the college bound. I think my next post will have to be more about this.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Slipping Out
Once again I find myself sitting here wondering why I am not asleep. Instead I am looking at old digital photos. This is a black hole of time for me. Where have the years gone?
I have some activities coming up this summer and I am wrestling with this question: Do I take the Nikon D200 with me to take tons of photos and then make a slide show and maybe a Blurb book OR do I buy a cheap video camera and try to take my daily cuts and put it together with stills in a video/still montage?
I am leaning toward the still shot answer. Here is my thinking. I have access to this really nice camera, lenses, case, extra batteries and stuff. I have the software to make a kick butt slide show with timed music and everything. While I have a 7 year old 8mm video camera and a capture card I don't have a battery or tripod. Buying a new camera would not be easy considering that to have any value on the projector screen I will have to spend $200 - $300. That is some serious jack right now.
I guess I could borrow a video camera but then I have to pack around a tripod and other junk everywhere I go. I also have to setup at least a little bit ahead of the action and then remain stationary for a little while.
I think this post has talked me out of the video option. Maybe one day I will be able to afford the kind of gear that I can great things with. Right now I will go the cheap route.
If I buy anything it will be a couple of high speed 16 gb CF cards.
I have some activities coming up this summer and I am wrestling with this question: Do I take the Nikon D200 with me to take tons of photos and then make a slide show and maybe a Blurb book OR do I buy a cheap video camera and try to take my daily cuts and put it together with stills in a video/still montage?
I am leaning toward the still shot answer. Here is my thinking. I have access to this really nice camera, lenses, case, extra batteries and stuff. I have the software to make a kick butt slide show with timed music and everything. While I have a 7 year old 8mm video camera and a capture card I don't have a battery or tripod. Buying a new camera would not be easy considering that to have any value on the projector screen I will have to spend $200 - $300. That is some serious jack right now.
I guess I could borrow a video camera but then I have to pack around a tripod and other junk everywhere I go. I also have to setup at least a little bit ahead of the action and then remain stationary for a little while.
I think this post has talked me out of the video option. Maybe one day I will be able to afford the kind of gear that I can great things with. Right now I will go the cheap route.
If I buy anything it will be a couple of high speed 16 gb CF cards.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Always the bridesmaid
It seems to me that if you want something bad enough and you are willing to do anything to get it that you will eventually meet the guy that got it for free even though he does not want it or understand it. Can I get an amen on that one.
At present I am a contractor. A mercenary in the non-violent, economic sort of way. I am present but must not participate. I am observed but must not lead. Nonessential but cheaper than full on employee commitment.
At heart I am a patriot. I don't want to shake off the disdain at the end of each day like the postman in from the storm. I want to wrap myself up in the flag of my fathers and charge ever onward despite my enemies. Forsaking my detractors and flying in the face of the nefarious nare-do-wells and all like that. I want to be a part of something important even if anonymously.
I have to lead a double life in order to have a small role in the greater good. After hours unpaid citizen airman doing what no one will pay me to do.
I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't gamble. My resume is terse and succinct without embellishment or liberties and absolutely true. Maybe all of these things I hold as virtues are standing in my way. Perhaps people just assume that since everyone else is so screwed up that I must be lying about something. Maybe I need to reveal that I am a chronic procrastinator and a Lego Maniac. That ought to reel em in.
The bouncer at the What I Want Club keeps me behind the ropes and giggles like a geisha each time he lifts the rope for some punk to skip me.
Maybe I am secretly that bouncer and the guy in the front of the line is Destro and I am forced to stare into his shiny head right back at me and ignore the fact that he has rocket arrows on his wrist bands. Or maybe it is the wrist band rockets that tell me not to let him in.
I have given up on getting the job that puts me standing cross ways but rightously in the way of oppression or terror or something else pretty bad. I have given up on that call that says "we have noticed your work and would like to discuss your future". This will not ever happen.
I have to wonder if how much my adversion to the masonic mystery cults and charasmatic fire eaters of the world has harmed me. My inability to blend and fold into the shiney inner fabric of society means I will always be on the fuzz laden and stained outermost layer of the bedspread that is the middle class.
At present I am a contractor. A mercenary in the non-violent, economic sort of way. I am present but must not participate. I am observed but must not lead. Nonessential but cheaper than full on employee commitment.
At heart I am a patriot. I don't want to shake off the disdain at the end of each day like the postman in from the storm. I want to wrap myself up in the flag of my fathers and charge ever onward despite my enemies. Forsaking my detractors and flying in the face of the nefarious nare-do-wells and all like that. I want to be a part of something important even if anonymously.
I have to lead a double life in order to have a small role in the greater good. After hours unpaid citizen airman doing what no one will pay me to do.
I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't gamble. My resume is terse and succinct without embellishment or liberties and absolutely true. Maybe all of these things I hold as virtues are standing in my way. Perhaps people just assume that since everyone else is so screwed up that I must be lying about something. Maybe I need to reveal that I am a chronic procrastinator and a Lego Maniac. That ought to reel em in.
The bouncer at the What I Want Club keeps me behind the ropes and giggles like a geisha each time he lifts the rope for some punk to skip me.
Maybe I am secretly that bouncer and the guy in the front of the line is Destro and I am forced to stare into his shiny head right back at me and ignore the fact that he has rocket arrows on his wrist bands. Or maybe it is the wrist band rockets that tell me not to let him in.
I have given up on getting the job that puts me standing cross ways but rightously in the way of oppression or terror or something else pretty bad. I have given up on that call that says "we have noticed your work and would like to discuss your future". This will not ever happen.
I have to wonder if how much my adversion to the masonic mystery cults and charasmatic fire eaters of the world has harmed me. My inability to blend and fold into the shiney inner fabric of society means I will always be on the fuzz laden and stained outermost layer of the bedspread that is the middle class.
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