Weekly Ramblings

Good-Bye George

John — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:59:21 +0000

George Carlin died yesterday in LA from a heart attack. Looking back I can remember hearing his stand up for the first time and think “Oh my God! Did he just say that?” And yes he did jsut say that. I was both shocked and awed by things he came up with. The 7 dirty words you can’t say on Radio or TV, Pay-per view Prisoner fights/riots, and so many more bits than I could possibly list here. He have great performances in every roll on screen he had. A true comedic genius (who wasn’t afraid of saying or doing anything) has been lost to us all. And although his mind and body may be gone, his irreverent spirit will continue forth in all of our dirty, filthy minds.

Project Assassin

John — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:26:19 +0000

I’m in the pre-planning phase of a new project I’m going to be undertaking soon. Now what does pre-planning phase entail exactly? Well basically it means that I have a need to start another project and I have a very, very rough idea of what I want it to be. But I have no clue about name or any specifics other than it will be a new media format. So why call it Project Assassin? Because I don’t think Project Alpha has the same flare and I like to keep things orderly and exciting.

Failing Goals

John — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:29:58 +0000

As anyone who has been following the blog I’m writing about my journey to become more physically fit ( can tell you I’ve been enjoying great success for past few weeks. And I’ve been riding the high of the wave that making some simple food choices and exercise decisions have brought me. And its been awesome. That is until today. Now I’ll be honest I’ve been a bit nervous about this weeks goals all along. I set them pretty lofty in some respects (double the number of push ups I had the week before from 15 to 30, run for 15 minutes straight) but I still had thought that some way, some how I could pull them off. But my other goals to loose 3 lbs (this is my weekly goal) and to cut my smoking down to half a pack a day instead of the pack a day I’ve been smoking for the past 15 years, these should have been fairly simple, and the cutting back on the smoking hasn’t been too difficult. But this week is the first time since I started this whole program up at the beginning of the month that I’ve actually gained weight instead of loosing it. I guess it’s not too bad when you put in the grand scheme of things that I’m still below 200 lbs for the first time in a decade, and that feels wonderful. But I still feel frustrated at myself for setting goals for the week and not being able to accomplish them. Or course the final challenge is not until tomorrow but unless I magically loose 4 lbs and seriously boost my endurance while running and doing push ups, I’m fairly certain that I will fail all but the reduced smoking goal I set for this week. This is the point where I feel like giving up. Where it feels like despite all the effort I’ve put in I’ve failed. It feels like I will never be able to do the things which I set out to do last Monday. Now is the point where I have to find something to help strengthen my resolve and kick my ass in gear and make me get back on the damn horse. Just because you fail off the horse and land in a pile of horse shit and kicks you in the head doesn’t mean you can just shoot the horse and never deal with it again. No! I must get back on the horse and whip it into submission. This is my body, my life, my future. And if I don’t put in the effort then I will never see the return. And the return is being able to watch my beautiful baby daughter grow up and grow old and live her life. And be able to walk her down the aisle, if I ever let her talk to a boy.

Computer Quandary

John — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:32:47 +0000

I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I now find myself surround by computers. Let me start at the beginning. I’ve been building my own PCs for over a decade now. And I hate to throw out still operating hardware. I’ve rebuilt my main PC desktop 4 or 5 times now and yet I somehow always seem to be able to reuse old parts to build a “back up” PC. I have my current desktop in my office which I haven’t touched since I bought my Macbook. I have my “backup” PC sitting in my garage and another old PC sitting in my attic. All usable and working. When I bought my Macbook I gave my Laptop to my brother-in-law for him to use for school. While helping my mother-in-law to move I found a Thinkpad that she used for work before she became disabled. She said that she couldn’t remember the password so she was just going to throw it out. I couldn’t let that happen. So I took the Thinkpad and with surprisingly little effort I was able to retrieve the password and restore the Windows XP install to factory defaults and wipe the hard drive of all the information she had stored on it. Now recently my mother-in-law bought my brother-in-law a new laptop and bought herself a new Macbook. Since they no longer needed the laptop I had given them they gave it back to me. I have cleared all the information off the Hard drive of that lap top and now I find myself with 3 lap tops and 3 desktop PCs. And yet I only ever use my MacBook. I’m thinking of converting one of the PCs to a Media server and one to a NAS Box. But I have no idea what to use the other’s for at this point in time. I would like to turn one of the Laptops into a more kid friendly version of Windows for my daughter as she is nearing 2 years old and I would like to start building her computer usage abilities and be able to get some good learning programs for her, although my wife just laughs at me. I could easily keep a PC lap top for those PC programs I enjoy running, of course I could easily update my Macbook to leopard and have it all in one machine. Guess I just need think on this some more to come up with a good solution. I guess I could use one for a dedicated “work” machine for blogging and podcasting, yet I do all of this on the Macbook much easier than on the PCs.

Screnzy

John — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:00:29 +0000

So I’ve decided to do Script Frenzy (aka Screnzy) this year. When I was younger I would write scripts for fun and always thought that it would be cool to have someone actually produce one of my scripts. I still think that it would be fun and a great experience trying to write a 100 page script in the month of April. Although I now realize that the chances of someone actually producing any script I write would be practically nil. Although at this point I don’t precisely care if what I write is ever produced, although it would be nice. I think I may have come upon a story line to follow for decent first script…well a first in nearly 20 years any ways.

Why I Smoke

John — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:48:42 +0000

I can remember as a young child going to my grandparents’ house every Sunday for lunch after church. My grandmother smoked, until she quit. My grandfather quit. My great grandfather smoked. As a young child I was unable to see the ceiling in their house as the smoke was so thick, it loomed above me like a thick gray swirling soup.

One Sunday after lunch one of my younger cousins and I decided to try smoking a cigarette. This was in early eighties, an age when newscasters still smoked on camera and every man wanted to be the Marlboro Man. We managed to get a pack of Marlboro Reds from our grandfather’s carton, which he kept on top of the refrigerator, and hid in the back bathroom. Once there with the door closed and locked behind us we managed, with some difficulty, to finally get the pack open. Standing there looking as the open pack one would think we just unwrapped a bar of gold with our eyes wide and mouths gapping. After a few seconds we puled a cigarette each from the pack and placed them between our lips.

I found a lighter beside the sink and struck the wheel and trigger; success on the first try, we had a flame, which danced against our breathes. Lighting our cigarettes we felt older and more mature immediately, then we inhaled.

The coughs were like dominos falling, one after the other. Our stomachs churned, our eyes stung, and our lungs burned. We quickly threw our new idols of manhood into the toilet and ran outside for some fresh air. We never spoke of that to anyone, not even amongst ourselves.

Word Count – 282

Hello world!

John — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 02:50:12 +0000

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