| (no subject) |
[May. 21st, 2004|01:54 am] |
I was online chatting with an old friend of mine. She used to date another good friend. We all hung out together, back in the day, we barely had money to live. I went hungry many times, and back then I thought getting a good job was the most important thing in the world. She said something to me, and it really struck me how sometimes a girl will immortalize you in her heart, and they're always be a place for you. A secret that she keeps, a ritual that reminds her of you and the part of her life you belonged to.
I'm going to write it in here, because a different girl, a girl I loved very much, told me earlier tonight that whenever she hears a motorcycle she looks for me, and it made me feel like I'll always be part of her life. It quieted my heart, I can't really put it into words, but it's things like this, that make girls worth while.
"i used to have a lotta fun every night
and now the highlight of my day is talkin on the computer most of the time
i still smok cigs sometimes and its not even cause im addicted or cause i want to really
its mostly so i can sit back for a min and remember what it was like to be young and carefree
taste and smell take me back
to the days where my boyfriend reeked of cigs and wiskey" |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 16th, 2004|11:37 pm] |
Allright, I redesigned all the "Professional" pages on my website to make them contrast with my personal pages. The logo and the menu are now metalic with dark clouds flowing over them :) Everybody loves it :) Which is cool. Tell me what you think.
http://www.valhallas.org/resume.php |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 14th, 2004|07:50 pm] |
If I found a pair of panties in my bed but I can't figure out who they belong to, does that make me a bad person?
And, if you left a pair of panties in my bed, let me know. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 11th, 2004|01:00 am] |
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In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 9th, 2004|11:53 pm] |
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Well I met a great girl the week before last, and she was sweet and nice and very interested in me, which is pretty unusual. She spent the night here that weekend. It was nice. Suddenly she dissapeared on me. Apparently her best friend since high school confessed his love for her, and she's had a crush on him all this time too. So yay for her I guess. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 6th, 2004|02:00 am] |
Don't be humble ... you're not that great. -- Golda Meir
Ok! Tons of new work and a whole new look for the website. No more monochrome greenness. Tell me what you think:
http://www.valhallas.org/main.php
(Link skips the flash animation) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 4th, 2004|11:32 am] |
Haha, I've been using a "Monochrome monitor" theme for my website, which is a very old kind of monitor people used before we had fancy things like color and "graphics". I just realized , that those monitors where old skewl before most of the people that read my journal where born....
So, perhaps I need a new theme. :) Any suggestions? |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 2nd, 2004|12:56 am] |
So, a friend of a friend of a friend decided to pass away. A man I've never met. I wasn't planning on reading his website, I didn't know him and sharing his sadness after his death could never help him. But Pommerantchen asked me if I had read her entry about it, so I went there and read it. It's his life story, a short goodbye, and messages to half a dozen of his friends.
Honestly, I don't even know if it's true, but I can only assume that it is. In real life, when a person wants to dissapear they take their own life, on the internet, they only have to pretend to. In the first ultima online, there was a girl who played often. She was very kind, and her favorite part of the game was helping other people and befriending them. She had many close friends, and many people knew of her and thought warmly of her. She was elevated to guide status, which is a person specially empowered by the programmers to help others in the game. I never met her, or even played the game, but I know her story, or at least some small part of it. One day, she didn't log on. A few days later, rumers start to circulate that she was in a car accident. Rumors that she had passed away. Eventually someone looked at a website that belonged to a member of her family and found an entry there, an entry mourning her death. The entry was posted to the ultima online community website, and before long, the entire community mourned her passing.
There was a programmer she was close to, and he missed her so much he created a garden in a special place in the game that only guides can reach. A place where they congregated to talk among themselves. He created the garden, with a stone bearing a message grieving her loss, and the story goes that he even programmed a ghost to walk the halls of this place bearing her name. She was very much missed.
As you must have guessed, she never really died. But in a sense she did, because she ended her life with those people. To them she has passed away. When in reality, she only moved on in her real life to other things. Do you think that is what death is like? Perhaps life is only a temporary diversion in some much grander scheme, and death is to return to and move on in that other life. Perhaps death manifests itself much more powerfully in the hearts of those you leave behind, than it ever expresses itself through your passing. Perhaps it is our connections to others that defines our life, and death and disconnection from those you love are not so different.
But I digress. This man is what prompted my post. I only wish to illustrate with the other story, why I take this one so seriously. We know he has passed away in one tangible form even if we will never know of the other. And before he died, he left messages to half a dozen people that where meaningfull to him. The messages where encrypted with each persons middle name. They are private. The last messages of a dieing man to his handfull of true friends. They should be protected, they should be secret. They should only be for the people they are intended.
The encryption the public is allowed to use is so weak. And this is why you should all care. I could break those messages in the blink of an eye, as a matter of fact when I first sat down to write this post my question was should I, not why not. I have already decided that my interest in his life, garned by reading his last public messages, is not worth transgressing his final wishes. Still, it makes me sad, why should only geeks like me be empowered to keep a secret? Why shouldn't he have been able to leave a message that only his friends could read? You cannot truely hurt someone with words, no matter what they are. Only flesh burns, not letters. To strip us of our privacy will not solve our problems, and will only eliminate human dignity.
http://members.tripod.com/riotstone/coda/
I know some of you will argue that words can hurt very much, but I will argue that we hurt ourselves, and the words we hear are just an excuse. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 1st, 2004|11:07 pm] |
graveyrdflower says, "What does creepy imply, anyway? You should get the specifics."
Well, I don't really know :) You should get to know me, then you can tell me some time. :) Long and meandering though this is, I'll give answering you a try anyway.
Well, I look pretty normal, but I have long hair and my beard. Just short of 6 feet tall, 320lbs. You can see my picture down below if you scroll down. I guess I look a little intimidating for girls that are used to dating small clean shaven guys with short hair :)
But mostly, people tell me I'm not what they expect. Even my oldest friends have trouble guessing how I'll think or feel about any given thing. Alot of people pick an image when they're young and they stick with it. Psychologists say everybody does. They say everybody picks a role and plays them in any given situation, and I think that's what's most unsettling about me. I've never do that, and I don't have an image.
It's hard to describe. But because I don't pick a role people don't know what role to play back. When I was a boy I spent alot of time thinking about philosophy and morality. When I make my decisions I always make them on the spot, with no hesitation and no preconceived notions of right and wrong. I believe that any philosophy that doesn't deal with the now as it happens is flawed.
With "normal" girls, I like their lack of insanity, but I often find myself having difficulty with their lack of self evaluation and often hypocritical thought process.
Religious girls are sweet and innocent, I love to corrupt them, but they have all the normal girl flaws with the added guilt and fear that doesn't mesh with my sexuality.
Punks, Skinheads, their energy is wonderful but I often find their anger childish and without purpose, un channeled and unfulfilling, and they find my lack of anger uninteresting.
Gothy girls are always beautiful even when they're not, sweet and deep thinkers, but they often seek to create self destructive situations that don't leave any room for a guy that won't drag them under.
All this adds up and people perceive me as big, strong, strange and unpredictable. I travel in many circles, I'm always the guy that's everybody's friend but not part of the click. Maybe that's my role? :)
I'm funny, quick witted and charming, so I'm always welcome, and girls often gravitate towards me, especially if they're looking for someone to talk to, or someone to listen to them, but I don't usually end up taking them home with me.
Few people enjoy being around me often. It takes someone who really thinks out of the box and evaluates themself honestly to enjoy my company for any stretch of time. So my favorite kind of girls are the awkward ones that don't fit in and find themselves wondering about life now and again, but honestly I often find many interesting aspects in any particular girl.
Barely scratches the surface really, how I feel about things is hard to put into words. I have been too long writing this message already however, so I will just have to trade imperfect communication for some marginal brevity. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 29th, 2004|01:07 am] |
Man, I sure do feel lonley tonight. Nobody online to talk to, and I'm feeling a little sad. I notice myself feeling that way more and more. I miss having someone around to talk to late at night. I feel like the stuff I've done, my career, all that doesn't mean anything.
My ex-girlfriend is seriously pissed off at me, wich makes me kinda sad, because there was a time I could say I was sorry and be forgiven, but that was long ago. I feel like we're going to loose touch, which is never something I wanted even when I was most upset with her.
I've been talking to a new girl for a while, and yesterday she tried to open up to me but I could only meet her half way. Some of the things she feels I just don't understand. I know of them, read of them, heard people talk about them, but they're not feelings I've ever felt before. I could even quote a poem that describes how she was feeling.
For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
- Francis Bacon
And I almost quoted it to her, just to pretend that I understood her. Just to make her feel close to me. But it wouldn't be right would it? To pretend to understand her. I wish I could have reached her heart, but when something like that happens I wonder if I ever will. Or if she will even want me to, knowing that I can't empathise with some of her most powerfull emotions.
People seem to have such an array of subtle feelings that I don't feel. Experiences that seem strange to me, alien, feelings I just have never felt. Most of the time I don't feel much of anything at all, a vauge emptiness. When I do feel it's strong, and simple. Love, frustration, sadness, desire. Much more rarely anger and feer. The first four I feel often, the second two so rare in 6 years I could count on one hand.
I feel like I'm filling the days of my life with things to do, when I really want to be filling it with things I feel.
A girl I know called me creepy today. It's not the first time I've had a girl call me that by any stretch. Even my ex-girlfriend used to say I was creepy. It always makes me feel sad when I hear it. Something beyond my control that I can't change. I wonder what makes some girls feel that I'm so wierd. Maybe when they talk to me they feel what I feel when they express an emotion I've never felt before and can't really understand.
My buddies are always asking me why I date goth girls. They think I'm too normal, they say I should date "normal" girls. They say of course I'm not going to have any luck with goth girls when I'm such a normal guy. What they don't understand is that for the most part I just take out the girls that are interested in going out with me. Maybe I am creepy, and maybe it's just that goth girls are the only ones still interested in a guy that is. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 28th, 2004|11:54 pm] |
http://www.valhallas.org
Latest overhaul of my website! :) With my first published flash animation as an intro. Some new graphics I made, nothing complex, but better looking than anything I've done before. I'm really enjoying working with this design stuff. |
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| Blah |
[Apr. 26th, 2004|12:47 am] |
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Had a pretty good weekend as far as boaring weekends go. Learned Flash, so now I can make silly little web movies. Saw punisher, got in touch with some old friends. Not much, I think I am going to start flying again soon, I miss it. Randomly added a bunch of people from people's journals. Some people think it's cool, others wig out. I don't really know what the deal is. I was just board on a Saturday morning. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 21st, 2004|10:56 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sad | ] |
So it was Tuesday, Sarai was going to bring her friend over, someone to meet. I was board, and was looking forward to it since Sunday. Sarai never showed, and she never answered her phone. I tried to leave her a message tonight, but her mailbox is full, which is really strange for her. I hope nothing bad happened.
So after I was sure I got ditched I headed up to the strip club, and there I met this beutifull girl that I've run into half a dozen times before at different places around the city. Each time I see her she comes over to me and sits next to me. She always talks to me all night. She's a little wiccan girl, and I know it's foolish of me to think so, but when she sits in my lap and looks in my eyes it feels like she loves me.
She never accepts much money from me, so I don't think she's working me. I've told her before she could have as much as she wants, but she's never let me give her more than $70. Usually only $20. She has two little boys. Last time I met her she asked for my number at the end of the night and I gave it to her, but she never called. I went back to the strip club but she was gone. It's always the same.
This time, we talked like we always do, and she asked me a couple times if I was married. She asked me if I had a girlfriend. I said no, and I told her I'd love to take her out sometime. She smiled and said she'd like that too. She asked me how I feel about reincarnation. She asked me how I felt about war, she asked me questions about occult philosophy.
At the end of the night I gave her my number again, I walked her to her car and we talked for a while. She was in my arms and smiling up at me that smile of hers she always gets when I see her. I kissed her goodnight. It was the first time I ever kissed her. She lay there in my arms and she said, "I can't beleive such a wonderfull guy is interested in me". She smiled and asked if she could call me tommorow during the day, and I said that I would be at work. So she asked me to come back to the club tommorow, which was today. So I did.
Today when I get there she's on stage. She smiles at me and I watch her dance. When she's done she goes back stage, and when she comes out she's in tears. She got into a fight with one of the other girls. She's really upset, she tells the manager she's leaving. I walk her to her car and she tells me she's going to go home. She breaks down crying and asks me why everybody hates her. She starts crying about all the things that are wrong in her life and I told her I wish she'd let me help her make it better. We talked for a while and then I watched her drive away. I couldn't convince her not to.
I don't think she'll be back, I don't think I'll see her again for a long time. I don't know if she really was ever interested in me. I don't know if I'm just a fool or if fate keeps bringing me across her path.
I do know her real name is Tracey. I do know that how I felt when we kissed was worth how I felt when she drove away. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 19th, 2004|10:25 pm] |
"Studies have shown that un-circumcised men are six to eight times more likely to be HIV positive."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4607933/
Hey look, I cought a break! Thanks mom and dad... Then I did some more research:
"Szabo and Short cite a controversial recent study from Uganda looking at couples in which the woman was HIV-positive but the man was HIV negative. During a two and a half year period, the 50 circumcised men did not become HIV-positive, but 40 of the 137 uncircumcised men did become HIV-positive."
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/25/1728_58353
Having unprotected sex with an HIV positive person isn't a death sentence? Heh, the way the church talks oral sex with a condom will kill ya.
"Ironically, their report is published in the British Medical Journal -- the same medical journal that 50 years ago published an article that brought routine circumcision to an end in the British commonwealth. The article, called "Fate of the Foreskin," set off a furor after blaming infant circumcision for 16 deaths per year."
Just reminds me how amazing it is that doctors can flip flop on everything every 10 years or so and still be beleived without question. Maybe in another 100 years they'll figure out how to channel christian fundamentalism to manufacture clue. It would be the greatest force on earth, short lived, but great :) Talk about a depletable natural resource.
Ironicly, however, the foreskin produces anti-bacterial and anti-viral chemichals which fight other stds. This is the "wetness" under the foreskin.
Yea, well I guess I'll just have to live without. Why do I feel like I'm in the middle of one of those female commercials for men? Feeling fresh? Having trouble with wetness? ... Hahaha, have a nice day :) |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 17th, 2004|09:55 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | disappointed | ] |
Well, I had a date on friday. A girl I met on here actually. She's a sweet girl going through a real rough time, just the type I fall for. I know how she feels, I had the same problems in my life a few years ago. No job, no place to go. She broke up with her boyfriend a couple weeks ago and was crashing with friends from night to night.
So anyway, she's supposed to call me at 6:45, her idea. We're going to go out for coffee. But time passes, and she never does. I go out with an old highschool friend instead, and when I get home, I have messages from her on my computer waiting for me. She says she's sorry, she crashed out and slept right through it. I go to bed, I wake up the next morning and I have messages from her again, asking if I'm there.
So today she finally reaches me. She wants to meet for coffee at 10, then go back to my place to watch some movies and have some drinks. She tells me she likes vodka and cranberry juice, and I just happen to have some here.
At 8:30 I get a call from her, she's been fighting with her ex boyfriend and wants me to come pick her up, I tell her I still havn't gotten ready, she says she'll meet me up there.
At 9:30, I'm sitting in Rosses, when this absolutly perfect girl with purple disheveled hair comes walking in the door, smiles at me, and heads for my table. I'm a little speachless, I'd never seen her picture before, and I didn't expect her to be so beutifull. Like an angel with nose rings.
But there's some wierd guy dropping her off. A short man with a big red bierd, tripping his nuts off and rubbing his shaved head. There's a big black half circle drawn on the top of it, he's pierced everywhere, and not speaking. She gets there and asks to bumb a cigarett. I laugh at her and send her across the street with 5 bucks, but when they leave he's holding her hand.
When she gets back, I ask her... Is this your X-boyfriend? And she looks at me like she's sorry, and says to me... "No, he's my boyfriend, we just made up." |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 17th, 2004|02:38 pm] |
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Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. |
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| Man |
[Apr. 15th, 2004|09:50 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | bored | ] |
Man, I need to make a change in my life. I am so completly out of my mind board. I need to come up with a new hobbie to keep me interested, or a girl to keep me company. A little trouble would be nice, haha.
I've been thinking about taking up the guitar again, maybe I should learn to be a punk rock poser? A friend of mine wants me to design a new telivision transmision chip for him, but man, I just can't bring my self to sit down with the silicon and start the work.
I've been chatting with a new girl online, she's sweet, and smart, but too scared to meet me. My ex girlfriend is stirring up plenty of trouble as usual, hehe, lots of pain but no payback there.
I think I've seen every episode of law and order and stargate by now, and I've had about enough of the X-box. Even cruising in my new car is getting to be a little unfulling :) Hmmm, brainstorming on new ideas. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2004|01:30 pm] |
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A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something... |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 5th, 2004|02:56 pm] |
CANNETO DI CARONIA, Sicily - Some little village is freaking out because things keep randomly catching on fire. Police and scientists have been swarming over the place since january and no one can figure it out. They say they thought it was a person until the cops were standing around and saw the electric lines over head randomly catch on fire. The electric company shut off power and brought in a generator... then the generator cought fire.. Now there's no power at all and things still keep going up. They evacuated the village. Kinda interesting.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4669114/ |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 4th, 2004|05:42 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  pissed off | ] |
What the hell is it with women? What makes them think the best way to end something is to bait some guy until he gets so pissed off he ends it for her? How selfish, cruel and cowardly is it to hurt some guys feelings over and over again until he can't take it anymore and stalks off just so you don't have to tell him you've changed your mind?
I'm sick of that crap, so screw all the women guilty of it. If you are guilty, and especially if you think it's a GREAT way to finish somemthing, please post a comment below so I can remember to never have anything to do with you. |
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| Graphix |
[Apr. 4th, 2004|01:58 pm] |
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Well, Katie's come to pick up my brothers car, which is fine, execpt this is the first I've heard of it, and I need to get the graphix on it before they leave with it. A couple days notice would have been nice, it sucks that my buddy Franco's got to spend Sunday afternoon putting on graphix just to help me out. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 29th, 2004|07:36 pm] |
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Omg I am so sick... fever... cold... stomache hurts, want to toss, kidneys hurt like hell and I'm soooo thirsty. I had to leave work today, I'm starting to think either you can trasmit disease through livejournal, or staraphobia has been sneaking into my house and drinking out of my glasses. So I guess you can add delusional too.. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 28th, 2004|09:01 pm] |
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Science may someday discover what faith has always known. |
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| Me and my new car |
[Mar. 27th, 2004|09:41 pm] |
I am so fucking board. :) Someone drop me a message and we'll go out and have some fun. Here's my picture, well, because I've discovered nobody follows links in livejournal... haha ;)
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| Chernobyl |
[Mar. 27th, 2004|12:15 am] |
Imagine a ghost town vastly larger than the quad cities. Huge towering skyscrapers lie desolate and empty. A city the locals are terrified to enter. A city with street lights that don't work, and miles of pavement with no speed limits. A city where the clocks show radiation count. 400,000 people died of radiation. How many bodies did they pull out of this place?
It's got to be the most incredible and surreal place in the world a person can take a vacation. Their are a couple companies that tried to run two hour tours through the town. But they don't anymore. They say the silence panicked their customers.
The link below has pictures a russian woman took while she explored the city on her motorcycle. Take some time and explore the empty city with her. See the empty skyskrapers, and the ruined kindergartens.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/ |
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| Lissa |
[Mar. 27th, 2004|12:01 am] |
Rock a bye Lissa, In the tree top...
When the wind blows, her wind chime will rock...
When you breakdown, uncionciuse you''ll fall...
And down will come Lissa, little stars and all...
And down will come Lissa, little stars and all...
Sweet Dreams, Lissa :) |
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| Sitting Up |
[Mar. 24th, 2004|11:44 pm] |
So I'm sitting up, waiting for a telephone call. Long past the point when I realized it's not going to happen. Don't you hate the way it makes you feel when you spend the day looking forward to a call that never comes?
Silly of me anyway. Who cares how I feel at 11:46 on a Wednesday night? Sometimes I think it would be awfully nice if somebody did, but I've grown used to it being otherwise.
I honestly think that's the essence of loneliness. When you're sad and nobody cares. |
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| One of my products made the news again |
[Mar. 3rd, 2004|04:47 pm] |
http://www.stjoenews-press.com/main.asp?SectionID=81&SubSectionID=272&ArticleID=50570
“The filters aren’t causing any problems,” said John Marshall, a Robidoux Middle School student.
Mission accomplished. At least you can research breast cancer, gay rights, alternative religions all you want kids. Screw the evil censors and their agenda, my filter doesn't have one. Unfortunatly, if you want to surf porn you're going to have to do that somewhere else. Sorry, but I couldn't get the Child Online protection act repealed.
You should be surfing porn at home anyway.
David |
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| No respect |
[Feb. 24th, 2004|12:24 am] |
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I almost died and not one comment! :) Talk about a tough crowd! :P |
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| Flying was a little more exciting than usual today... |
[Feb. 21st, 2004|03:38 pm] |
I went flying this morning, but it wasn’t like any of the lessons I’ve had before. The clouds were low, lying in a flat blanket and gently rolling over the city. I looked up, and I could imagine a soft rain showering down on me at any moment. Everything was dark and gloomy, my favorite kind of weather.
My instructor filed an instrument flight plan for us, and we went up into the clouds for the first time. We passed into them at about 1,500 feet, barely off the runway. All you can see is glowing whiteness out your windows. Nothing below, nothing above, nothing anywhere, just white. The higher you get the brighter it glows until it starts to hurt your eyes, then suddenly, you break out on top and it’s bright as a summers day, the sky is perfect weather blue, and you’re flying over hills and valleys of soft white.
The clouds have as much shape on top as they seem to have from the bottom, it feels like you’re gliding just over the ground on the most beautiful day you can imagine. I love the dark gloomy weather, but if you are ever sick of it and need a pick-me up, I promise you, it’s an amazing sight. It’s so bright, at times I dove back into the clouds to hide from the sun :)
The clouds are shaped by the air as it rolls around above the surface of the earth. Cold air from above, warm air from below, pushes up and down on you as you fly. A large mountain in front of you means an updraft, and your plain soars up as you pass into it, and then falls as you pass over the valley beyond. It’s all very surreal.
My favorite part was just at the top of the cloud layer, where we glided along at over 120mph, the plain gently tossed by the swirling winds as we vanished into the crests and re-appeared in the valleys beyond.
We dove back into the center of the cloud layer and practiced some instrument flying, which I took to right away, since I used to fly simulators all the time. We navigated around the quad-cities using the radio beacons for a while, and started shooting some “approaches”, where we pretend to be coming in for a landing to practice doing it by instruments alone.
We had just finished our second approach, were gliding along a 70-80knots at an altitude of about 1,000-1,500 feet, talking about weather we wanted to do more of them or practice some ground reference maneuvers… when the engine suddenly just quit.
At first, there was a moment of disbelief, we both just stopped talking and stared at it for a second. In 30 years, my instructor has only had his engine fail twice. Today was the second time. Everything was so silent, pilots call it the “big quiet”. Nothing but the wind rushing outside your cabin.
It was the worst possible time for the engine to be out, the plain was barely above stall speed, and we were so low I could make out people on the ground. The nose dropped, and we started to glide silently towards the earth, the airport seemed impossible far away.
I hear my instructor over the raidio, “Moline, this is six oh one two Juliet, experiencing engine failure”.
Moline: “One two Juliet, can you make it to the runway?”
Instructor: “Negative, I’m picking a field”
He banks the aircraft to the left, and points it towards a small field surrounded by tree’s, there’s only seconds now, and he’s got almost no time.
“There’s no fuel pressure”, I say, as I start to read the gauges. I hit the switch for the electric boost pump, backup incase the main one fails, and the fuel pressure needle starts to climb, the engine roars to life and we stop loosing altitude. But just as soon as it starts, the pressure falls and everything goes silent again.
I wonder to myself how much it’s going to hurt when we hit the dirt at 70-100mph. I get a brief flash in 20/20 full color stereo of us hitting the ground, and I think to myself, this is going to be a great story for my journal.
“How’s fuel?”, he says, and my eye catches the tank gauges, “Right tank empty”, I say. He reaches under his seat and flips to the left tank, the engine roars to life again, fuel pressure climbs to normal.
Instructor: “Moline, this is one two Juliet, engine is running again, we’re coming in for a landing”
Moline: “One two Juliet, do you need emergency vehicles?”
Instructor: “Negative”
But they roll the vehicles anyway, huge fire trucks built like tanks with 5 foot wheels for driving through the mud line up along the runway as we come in and follow us as we taxi over to the fuel station. People come running out, in the moments from the time he said, “experiencing engine failure” to the time we touched down, everybody in the airport knew what was going on.
Looks like a carburetor problem was causing the engine to burn fuel about twice as fast as it should. We check both tanks visually before every takeoff, and they were both full when we left. Normally, it would take 2.5hrs – 3 hrs to empty a tank, we were only up for an hour and a half. :) Anyway, more later, my brother’s here :) cya guys later. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 19th, 2004|12:36 am] |
Linux users support same sex couples right to marriage. Why? Because why should we fucking care, first of all. Second, if you're smart enough to install Linux, you can't possibly have your head so far up your ass as to think that you should be able to force someone to live your way just because you believe in some 5,000 year old piece of literature that does not seem to indicate that their way is acceptable. I mean, where do people get off? What makes them think they have the right to dictate other people's lives?
You don't think gay people should be married? Fine, if you're gay don't get married. If you're not gay it's not your problem. We have a secular government. That means that here in America, unlike where the Taliban hold sway, we don't force people to adhere to one religion arbitrarily over another. We don't force people to live according to this doctrine or that. We don’t justify our laws and regulations with “it’s a sin”! Maybe it’s a sin to you, don’t do it! It’s not a sin to them, and they have the right to make that choice! I don't understand how these people think that they have the right to force their religious doctrines into law just because it’s THEIRS. Don’t they ever stop to think what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if we were passing laws requiring our women to wear veils? What if we executed them for infidelity? The bible says it is a sin to be gay, it also says it’s a capital offense to wear clothes made of two kinds of clothes, and to plant 2 different crops next to each other and to eat shellfish. The world will teach you wisdom. The world is crying out to teach you wisdom. The perfect example of why our government is secular stares them in the face yet they ignore it. The only way for them to keep it out is to shut their eyes firmly and scream “it’s a sin” at the top of their lungs over and over again so loud no reason can slip in.
Yes, I played the crappy terrorist card. It’s no better than bringing up the Nazi’s I know.. It’s bad rhetorical form. But I bring it up because I'm sick of hearing about it too, as sick as I am of these ludites that miss the whole fucking point of their religion and spend their lives misguidedly attempting to be some sort of holier than thou hall monitor.
Don’t these people realize how all their prejudices, misconceptions, and ridiculous crusades against breasts at half time waste precious time and energy that could be used to better themselves? To actually really help people that really need it? Or maybe just to spend some time in thought about what it really means to love your fellow man, or perhaps just take a high school level philosophy class and learn just how big the world really is, and how trivial all their “righteous” pursuits have become in the scheme of world poverty, war and famine. Maybe they could read that fucking book they’re always quoting JUST ONCE so they can see just how ridiculous parts of it are. Wakeup call: The bible was written by several dozen people. At least one of them, Leviticus, is widely acknowledged to be a fucking nut ball
Leviticus:
18:22 You must not have sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman, it is a detestable act.
25:44 "'As for your male and female slaves1 who may belong to you-you may buy male and female slaves from the nations all around you. 25:45 Also you may buy slaves from the children of the foreigners who reside with you, and from their families that are with you, whom they have fathered in your land, they may become your property. 25:46 You may give them as inheritance to your children after you to possess as property. You may enslave them perpetually. However, as for your brothers the Israelites, no man may rule over his brother harshly.
19:19 You must keep my statutes. You must not allow two different kinds of your animals to breed, you must not sow your field with two different kinds of seed, and you must not wear a garment made of two different kinds of fabric.
19:27 You must not round off the corners of the hair on your head or ruin the corners of your beard. 19:28 You must not slash your body for a dead person or incise a tattoo on yourself. I am the Lord
11:9 "'These you can eat from all creatures that are in the water: Any creatures in the water that have both fins and scales, whether in the sea or in the streams, you may eat. 11:10 But any creatures that do not have both fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the streams, from all the swarming things of the water and from all the living creatures that are in the water, are detestable to you. 11:11 Since they are detestable to you, you must not eat their meat and their carcass you must detest. 11:12 Any creature in the water that does not have both fins and scales is detestable to you.
People die. Every day they die because somewhere, in some fanatical backwater, some local holy man proclaims they have committed some sin, and their neighbors, brothers, family and friends set on them like rabid beasts.
Religion can be a bright spot of human existence, but it can also be the most terrible. Blindly chasing an arbitrary cause is not the solution to the worlds problems anymore than it is the path to salvation. You want to be saved? Go do something good. Here’s a hint for the ethically challenged: good doesn’t involve prejudice and injustice. |
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| Quad Cities community |
[Feb. 18th, 2004|08:25 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  happy | ] |
Hey everyone :) Hehe, I got kicked out of the quadcities community by that little christian girl from ambrose. Aparently, anybody who critises her is a "trouble maker". I am a trouble maker ;) But that's besides the point. Anyway, in order to keep meeting live journal users from around here I've made a new ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) quad_cities community. Join it and post in it if you love me :) And wish me a happy birthday. |
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| The article |
[Feb. 14th, 2004|08:26 pm] |
Here's the article that was in linux journal. It's absolutly tiny, but it's still very cool I was in a national magazine :). Hehe, it doesn't even mention my name. It's a little box in the lower right hand corner :)
Scan of page |
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| My fortune |
[Feb. 14th, 2004|12:52 pm] |
A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a
sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane |
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| My website |
[Feb. 13th, 2004|06:06 pm] |
I have decided to update my website, to make it more interesting. It was so boaring before, so here is the first revision.
http://www.valhallas.org/ |
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| Sitting at work |
[Feb. 13th, 2004|03:12 pm] |
I'm sitting at work, my job has been complete cake latley. Everything is working well, sales are rolling in, profit margins are way up. So much different than two years ago when I was coding until I fell unconciouse just to pay my bills.
I finished the new driver driver for my second job last week, was a complete breeze. Took me longer to get windows to let me have access to the parellel port than it did to write the code to drive the cutting machine.
Flying lessons are going well, I'm starting to finally get the hang of things. I've had about 7 hours of ground school and 3 hours of actual flight. We're changing our schedule now, so I'll be seeing the instructor in 4 hour blocks to help improve how much time we spend in the air. Everything is so complicated. The plane I fly was built int he 70's, everything is manual, everything. You have a lever for the throttle, a lever for the mixture, 2 dials for trim, the main control stick, the rudder pedals, a switch to turn on the alternator, a switch to turn on the avionics, a switch to turn on the main power, a switch to select between left/right magnetos and start the engine. 15-20 buttons to turn of this or that piece of gear when it breaks. It's just crazy. That's only half the stuff on the dash, and that's not even counting the radio and navigation equipment.
It was warm last time we went up. The air was turbulent. Every time you cross over a road at low altitude the airplane jumps like you hit a pothole. The dark colored road heats the air above it up, and it rises, the white snow reflects the light/heat from the sun and keeps the air above it cool, so it sinks or stays still. The plane hits the rising air and gets pushed up, only to fall when it leaves it.
The plane actually falls. You don't think of this when you think about planes, but when you take one up you balance all the "trim" they call it to keep the plane steady. It rises up and down like a submarine... It's trimmed so it hangs in a specific density of air, the air below is thick, higher density, the air above is light, lower density. A force pushes the plane down, into the higher density air, and it gets more lift, so it rises back up to where it was, but if a force pushes it up, like an updraft, it falls back down to where it was after you fly out of it.
The plane I flew on wednesday was different than the one I've flown before. And it has a problem aparently, the right wing, even though it had almost no fuel in it, was hanging down. Not producing lift like it should, the entire flight the plane was crooked and leaning to the right. I asked my instructor what was going on and he said he didn't know, he said maybe it "had a problem". This was not comforting, especialy as he quickly changed the subject. :) |
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| Work, Flying, Baseball |
[Feb. 5th, 2004|12:05 am] |
You know, I've never really been very interested in baseball. It takes forever for anything to happen ya know? I think the people that like baseball are the people that watch it, and like to guess what's going to happen. They savor the waiting. I, on the other hand, would need a seriouse diversion to keep me entertained to sit through a baseball game :)
Yesterday I get a call from Ez the wargame developer. Apparently he's in charge of Tech at the new baseball stadium. They're putting in some sort of wireless ticket counting system, and they want my advice on how to wire it all together.
So I show up, and hang out with him and the architecht for about an hour figuring out what's going on. He wants to pay me, but all I'm doing is sending him 2 paragraphs laying out the proper way to wire the stadium and what equipment to use.
What's interesting, is that a bunch of my buddies are doing all the rest of the work, and in exchange, they're receiving a vip box up top. Have you ever seen one of these new places? It's crazy, there's a whole seperate floor seperated from all the normal seats. There's a dance club, a full bar, a lounge, a patio, press boxes and a couple dozen private boxes that run 30k a year. It's like, they built actual entertainment into the stadiem so very important people can have something to do while they wait for the game to be over, hehe.
So, between the stadium and my house I managed to loose his card. Guess I'm ganna have to call him.
Work is so slow for me right now. I don'thave anything pressing to do, it's kinda nice not to have a million things on my list. Router sales are really picking up, and Anders made another 30-50k sale this week. Our marketers are starting to make cold calls now, to libraries hawking the content filtering system. It's hard living on commision, you never have any idea how the buisness is going to run. You never have any way to plan for your future. You just take your check every week, stuff it in the bank, and hope you're income positive.
I had another flight lesson today too, I spent an hour in the air with my instructor. I'm really starting to get the hang of things. We did some stalls today, it's crazy, you slow the plane way down and pull up hard... and it just falls out of the air. One minute you're flying.. the next you're falling. And it's never strait down, it's always sideways and twisting. On top of falling like a rock sideways the controls stop working because their's no airflow over the wings. If I gave a damn about getting back to the ground or not it would be absolutly terrifying. As it is, it's like riding some sort of crazy rollercoaster, only if you screw up you die.
The only controls that work on this cessna during a stall is the rudder. You have to pull itout of the stall with your feet.
I talked to Lauren again last night. I helped her sleep again. I don't know if I'm going to call her tonight or let her call me. Oh well, it's time for sleep. |
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drachs's journal
