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Friday, November 14th, 2003
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I am TOAST! Crunchy and delicious, I am good with things on me.
I know this because I took an online test written by lunatics.
I would get the same result no matter what I put in, because the
nutcases in question really like toast.
Take some kind of Quiz!
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, November 6th, 2003
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I've finally finished .000000001beta of my Dark Chess game. I don't know if it works yet but you can try it out. Single player mode isn't active in a single window yet and multiplayer has not yet been tested on a remote machine. In addition theres probably bugs hidden everywhere.
Anyway, this is the best program in the world. It's like chess, but with a fog of war. Each player can only see where they can move or attack (including with pawns and that special en passant move everyone's always talking about, but not including pins and threats [yet]). Obviously you want to run it, so here are some quick instructions.
Single player:
Open two instances of DarkChess. On the first one, change the name, click TCP/IP, and have it host. On the second one, change the name, click TCP/IP, and have it join. Enter the IP address 127.0.0.1. Choose the game to join.
Once you're in the oversized chatroom in both windows, click white or black on the host window and click begin. To make a move, click the piece you want to move and click the destination square (no, drag and drop is not yet enabled... instead I have a P.O.S. colored square that keeps you from seeing your selected piece). For now, you know you're checkmated when you can't get out of a damn check.
Note: You can play hotseat like this... just hide the chessboards on the right side of the screen or have them minimized (cheating is controlled by the Honor[tm] system).
Multiplayer:
Much the same as single player... in fact, it's all intuitive, scary enough. Just make sure to use TCP/IP if you want to play via IP Address and expect problems, especially if one of you is behind a router. Give up quick if you're both behind routers on different networks.
Download it here (put mscoree.dll into system32 if you have problems starting it):
http://strobetal.homestead.com/files/darkchess.zip
Microsoft .Net Framework (REQUIRED if you don't have it already, 23 fucking MB):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=262D25E3-F589-4842-8157-034D1E7CF3A3&displaylang=en
...
or you can download it the inconvinient way...
...
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
Note: You can check whether you already have the M$ .Net Framework by going to start-controlpanel-addremoveproggies and searching the list for "Microsoft .Net Framework". The latest version is 1.1.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, October 31st, 2003
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Tuesday, October 21st, 2003
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Monday, October 20th, 2003
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| Subject: | Geek Code: TNG |
| Time: | 12:42 am. |
| Mood: | close to 10 on the geeky scale. | | Music: | doubtlessly something with Radiohead in it. |
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I have uncovered an Ungeek script that decodes your GeekCode! Geek Code online translator (for those of you who can't do it in your heads)! Which means, GeekCode is allowed to become 50 times more complicated and still be legible! God yes. Laugh. Cry. Disembowel yourself with great fury. This is what the world has been waiting for. Like Jesus Reincarnate. Geek Code is back, and nothing can stop its unremitting advance!!!
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/M>IT/CC/P>TW@ dpu(!) s--:+++>- a21(?)>+++$ C++++>$ U P+ L E---(----) W++() N- o? K+++>++++++@ w--@(++)>$ !O? M-- !V-- PS(+)>++ PE-(--) Y--> PGP--(+)>+++ t+(*) 5-(--) X R(++)>- tv(--) b++@>+++ DI---@>++$ D++>++++$ G(-) e*>++ h!>* r--- y+
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ [Decode]
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| Siskel and Ebert (via necrotelicomnicon) give it two toe-sies up! |
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, October 19th, 2003
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 | 1. e2-e4 d7-d5
2. e4xd5 d8xd5
3. b1-c3 d5-e6+
4. f1-e2 c7-c5
5. g1-f3 h7-h6
6. d2-d4 c5xd4
7. f3xd4 e6-e5
8. f2-f4 e5-f6
9. c3-d5 f6-h4+
10. g2-g3 h4-h3
11. d5-c7+ e8-d8
12. d4-e6++ |
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 13th, 2003
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A conversation snippet between a trio of bored Chinese patrolmen working the sewer beat underneath the embassy, discussing effective military strategies against the United States, before being silently hunted down one-by-one by you, the protagonist.
Tang: Of course we can hurt them, but America has spread too far. We could never crush all the cells.
Wang: Not this again...
Bang: What?
Wang: Tang's got this idea about fast-food restaurants and amusement parks.
Tang: They are the American version of terrorist cells.
Wang: You know, small, widely scattered, independent, high-tech, coordinated propaganda centers.
Bang: *skeptic wonderment involving swear words*
Tang: We can kill their soldiers and flatten their capitals, but we will never beat their hamburger stands.
And now for an important notice.
I will no longer be referred to as a Pizza Delivery Guy. I find the term demeaning, derogatory, unpalatable and wholly inaccurate.
* I do not simply deliver pizza. I am not limited to the miniscule catagory of 'pizza'.
* I do not simply deliver pizza. There are other tasks I perform besides mere deliverance.
* I do not simply deliver pizza. It takes time, planning, management of resources, a huge knowledge base and a particular skill in maneuvering landcraft.
All analysis of my current profession has led to only one possible conclusion: what I do can only be described as the work of a Culinary Distribution Engineer. I shall henceforth be known thus.
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, October 8th, 2003
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Sunday, October 5th, 2003
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The Ultimate LiveJournal Obsession Test
| | Category | Your Score | Average LJer | | Community Attachment | 21.51%
You don't really have an audience to applaud you... Yet. | 23.07% | | MemeSheepage | 15.79%
Only trendy when it's sufficiently entertaining | 29.03% | | Original Content | 54.84%
Using LiveJournal to express a few strong opinions | 39.05% | | Psychodrama Quotient | 26.51%
Known to go off without warning | 17.18% | | Attention Whoring | 45.45%
You'd sell your mother for another three friends | 20.91% | |
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 2nd, 2003
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Today marks the first day of my War on Negligence. No more going to sleep after midnight, living in a filthy room, wearing dirty clothes, forgetting to visit the grocerie store, missing my showers and neglecting excercise and responsibilities. I'm going to cook, clean, work, and earn my stay on this planet. This is going to happen. It's going to begin tonight.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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After considerable time spent in vigorous star searching and perilous animation gif editing, we bring to you this year's
F i N a L
S P R i T e
S H o W D o W N !
Date Edition v1.2
This year's match will be conducted by allowing our faithful readers to send in their own opinions on which character is the cutest, most datable, and most all-around succulent! We rely on YOUR comments and YOUR ideas! So, come on! We cordially invite you to Bring It[tm]!
Who will be the winner of this year's FiNaL SPRiTe SHoWDoWN (Date Edition v1.2)? Only you can decide.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, September 14th, 2003
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Ok. I've never really been drunk. I've thought i've made it in past attempts, but this time it's for real. Gawd damn. Well. Yes. Introduction has been made.
I've made plenty of attempts to communicate this. Most have been rejected for a whole variety of reasons. Understandably so, since it is not a great conversational starter to admit one's diminutivity of the mind. I have hoped in some mild fashion that this would be shrugged off in the same way one looks half-heartedly at a sign saying "Now Entering Los Altos Hills" with a quick nod and flashing thought, though expentantly waiting to enjoy the thrilling rollercoaster joyride available to anyone upon entrance. Unfortunately, i have been shrugged off in more aggressive ways more than once in tonight's endless-seeming rollercoaster of romanticistic despair. Obviously there is nothing romantic about being drunk off your ass, but I haven't expected quite this much dissatisfaction to my apparently thorn-like presence.
A great problem lies on the foreseeable horizon. I am due at work in the morning at 10:45 to drive swift and without error to earn the only income my family currently receives. That's in 2 hours from now. The alcohol must leave my system, "or else bad things...". I can't allow myself to sleep, or I undergo the high possibility of a hangover and the dreaded crumby feeling of not enough sleep.
So I stay awake.
I have tried to share my story of ill repute to the world at large. I joined into the diablo II servers and found it much too difficult to maneuver my character without an adequate supply of dexterity and reflexes. I quit out of a shadow of frustration I am barely even capable of at my current state. I then joined a couple of online chess games. Although I won several games, albeit through emotion and feeling rather than the cold deep-thinking logic, I apparently frightened away all the players, who said nothing at all in my presence. Perhaps it was the admition of my drunkhood, description at my difficulty playing the game, and my thrusting of suggestions of symbiotic understanding and respect of circumstances ever-experienced.
With those attempts a failure, I relocated myself to an environment more conducive to the sharing of experiences and peace-offerings --- the quakenet #c++ channel on IRC. They, of all people, should be of the exact nature to sympathize with the faults and injustices that only a true drunk coder could alone experience. What programmer hasn't spent a long night of partying and enjoying him/herself only to return home in front of a defunct piece of hardy code needing a bit of a attention (both the code & the coder). However, after a rather short and good-spirited rant I was given the deaf ear and even threatened to be banned unless I offered an actual c++ coding question.
I wondered to myself, maybe the #c++ channel isn't the right place to hang out. I scanned the list of channels, and, among them, found a most opportune possibility among them. I joined the #cheers channel, for who is least likely to be disinterested in my troubles than the proverbial bartender caring for his customers' needs? Well, needless to say, I was kicked in a matter of minutes, though not before threatening a curse of ill conscience to the man in charge to spend the next 2 minutes filled with regret and self-consciousness. I left in a flury of martyrdom and mediocrity in a clash that has probably been seen before.
Somewhere between being kicked from two conversational channels and finding myself unable to enjoy some of life's best gaming pleasures, i discovered just how disenchanted i became to the whole idea of getting drunk in the first place. Especially in circumstances where responsibility certainly does not permit reckless drinking without a lot of hurt comming in nigh direction. And, boy, do I wish that I could sleep just a weee bit. Just a tad. It will all be over soon.
Doubtless, a world of hurt is comming my way right now.
Update: 11:33 am
Apparently those fuckers at Pizza Chicago have screwed up my schedule. I had switched shifts with another capable driver for today, but they not only incorrectly updated the employee room's shift listings, but they also wrote in some royally strange things in the indents.
But this is a good thing. I can sleep and not risk driving into a tree or a ditch or any sort of inanimate hazard. Instead I can crash into my bed.
G'night.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 7th, 2002
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If a light sleeper sleeps with the light on, does a hard sleeper sleep with a hard on?
Yessss...... for now, I am sleeping on the run.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 3rd, 2002
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"The size of a man can be measured by the size of things that make him angry."
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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For an essay assignment that's broad catagory focused on the future developement of the American family, I seem to have come up with yet another theory that nobody approves of. The teacher gave me an A+ for the assignment (the first A-grade essay in the history of my life) and spoke the words to me, "You have incredible control over the english language", so perhaps it is livejournal-worthy. No need to worry though. I would have uploaded it even if I got a D. Here it is, for your very unparticular tastes, the unpopular opinion of an underacheiver.
When one ponders on the notion of family, many different opinions quickly take shape. From the natural unconditional love between mother and child, to a father lecturing to his son on the evils of this world, to the specialization of labor within a household, we each come up with a unique vision of the rules that make a working family unit, but somehow we can neither comprise nor even decide for ourselves the ultimate defining factors that found a family. We similarly find even more trouble navigating the chasmal distinctions between family and friend. Human beings rely upon these relationships in order to survive, yet each of us comes up with conflicting, often contradictory, opinions regarding its purpose and function. Even the experts are baffled; just read Graff’s “What Makes a Family?”, Hochman’s “Growing Pains: Beyond ‘One Big Happy Family’”, Coontz’s “What We Really Miss About the 1950s” or Crittenden’s “About Marriage”. There are too many people posing questions and beating around the bush, but not enough are actually providing the answers and pushing universal definitions. Perhaps we have been searching too narrowly for the answers, maybe we have overlooked some aspect of human nature, or even possibly our minds may be too biased to accept answers that already lay discovered but remain unread. Whatever the reason, it is my self-inflicted duty to present to you an alternate view opposing the often mistaken notions of family and its apparent ramifications in an attempt to discredit that which is generally taken for granted.
As members of the human race, we feed on relationships for the same reason evolution delivered to human beings the capability to communicate. Human relationships are psychological economics, always centering on the trading of ideas, emotions or physical resources. Business partners, lovers, teachers and students, each of these institutions exemplifies a section of this rule of exchanges. All relationships serve to meet these goals of exchange. Family and friendship are unarguably the ultimate in human relationships; thus, the concepts of family and friends must certainly lie on the extreme edges of a spectrum. As a spectrum is a straight line, at least two points are required to define it. With this, I present my own vision of the underlying distinction between family and friends: the ideal friendship is a set of relationship defined by agreement, selfless affection and evenhandedness; the ideal family is a set of relationships defined by the unidirectional exchange of ideas, emotions and physical resources.
A friendship is an attachment between two people based on mutual agreement and fair play, often sealed by emotions built from experiences. Friends act in a mutual manner, compromising rarely because the best friends don’t need to compromise. Impartial selflessness is the mark which defines the closeness of a friendship, yet, in a working friendship, each member gains back more than invested because it fulfills our given nature. As all benevolent relationships sacrifice a degree of individuality (because of the collective good becoming more important than the individual good), those who dole out the energy to make the leap of trust soon find themselves revealing secrets and spending a good deal of time in each others’ company. Conversation, whether about people, events or ideas, is an exchange of information that usually plays as the main activity between friends. Most people do not lend money to their friends with the expectancy of return on the principle of avoiding one-way dependency. It is little surprise that entrepreneurial partnerships, romantic engagements and intellectual circles often spur from close friendships.
A family, on the other hand, is a long-term commitment made up of dictators and their willing and needing retainers. The various controllers may coordinate together and the prisoners may console one another, but the most stringent requirement for any family is the dependence of at least one individual on another. Children, slaves of inexperience, are potential as students, dependents and loved ones. They naturally reach out for educational, financial and emotional support. As the blind follow the one-eyed man, children yearn for someone to provide to them wisdom, love, shelter and safety. Their inability to survive or even think on their own must likewise be followed by the sheltering domination of another part. Parents, having reached the eventual state of any capable person wishing to continue the evolution of the species, are slaves to the cravings of power and satisfy their appetite by borning children. It’s not at all surprising if you consider that since parents have been the section of humanity that has carried the torch and has continued the evolution of the species for so many millennia, they must be absolutely subject to the whims and throes of human nature. The parents of a functional family provide the guidance, love and economic well-being that allow children to become healthy human beings and one day become parents themselves. They are the benevolent-seeming masters of the symbiotic family, forming the children into the image they see fit to thrive. However, (and this is the real twist…) because the family is a system of one-way transfers, it inevitably approaches an entropic equilibrium – a friendship. After the first transfer of information, emotion or resources, a family has already become infused with friendship, resulting in a reality-based fusion of the two. This indefinite, recurring mixture could explain why most people fallaciously assume friendship to be a requisite for family. “Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.” (Oliver Goldsmith, The Good-Natured Man, 1766)
A family does not necessarily need to consist of parents and children; anyone that can mimic the long-term role of complete dominance pitted willingly against resistless subservience will substitute finely. Children in particular are not necessary building blocks in the family structure. If a teacher provides to his student more than by raining buckets of knowledge, they certainly fit the guidelines of parent and child. If the Italian mob offers its members lasting emotional, financial and ethical support, it is a fully functional family in my book. The only reason children are so commonly considered requirements for a family is because of their complete lack of anchoring experience, allowing them to be molded like clay. Although the family manages to be an institution of the development of the less privileged, in practice it is usually referred to by some variation of the nuclear family – mother, father and their biological children.
Compared to the ideological nuclear family of the 50’s, the average American household of today is dysfunctional. Most of the responsibilities of the parents to raise their children have been stripped away by the community. Teachers and counselors handle the education of the children, including moral and ethical guidance. Parents’ sole role in education is to discipline their children for earning mediocre grades. With divorce rates reaching record levels, reality does not commonly conform to the stereotype that parents give unconditional love to their children; quite often one parent deserts, leaving a single parent to deal with the prospect of raising children alone. Nowadays, at minimum wage, a two-income family is barely enough the support children in a stable environment, let alone the more common one-income family. Childcare and nannies are paid to raise children when parents are out working and “don’t have time” to for their kids. Family members might sometimes be frustrating, but kids always love their favorite TV programs. The modern American family, when viewed in isolation from the rest of the world, has long been broken by the inability to provide educational, financial and emotional stability from a single source. Today’s children are communally nurtured, raised by their schools, the television and the World Wide Web. They are not necessarily dysfunctional human beings, just raised in an incredibly different manner than any other previous generation in history.
Wherever there is a demand for a bringing up and that demand is met, a family is born. Society is shifting to meet the rising demands of children from incomplete households; it’s psychological economics. If instantaneous electronic communication and increasingly cheaper means of transport serve to make the world smaller, they would also serve to make the family larger. The actual family has already grown in size through the transferring of children from household to communal institutions such as schools and daycare centers. Between 1990 and 1999, the world real GDP has grown by about 24% and the world real GDP per capita gone up by 8.5% (Klemas). Given that the economy continues to grow at the same rate (even though world real GDP has actually increased exponentially over previous years (DeLong)), the services that will be offered by the world market doubles every 30 years and the value of services per capita will double every 80 years. Simply stated, the bursting market promises a future with a great deal more products and services for sale to every person. As we reach out to the world and rely upon its services, we allow it to dominate and enslave us and become our very essence. Consider a possible future -- who would be the family of a child if a perfectly fluid global market of information, products and services were to completely dominate the world? |
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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In my meloncholy, I searched the internet randomly until I came up this lame excuse for an idea to make a lame excuse for a list a few of the grand concepts we would sacrifice everything which we catagorize as the ends.
Profit, peace, culture, glory, saving lives, new world order, welfare, success, science, knowledge, nothing, my essay.
Sure, it's a small list, and this entry really has no point... except to curl up and roll in the glory of today's fortune cookie. I've decided on using it for the thesis of an essay on the idea that writing's primary purpose is the facilitation of slavery.
"All that is human must disintegrate if it does not advance. 3 6 8 5 16 17 21 37 47"
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There are tens, perhaps hundreds, of ontological arguments in circulation since the middle ages. Ever since I first read the proof in a philosophy book, I have been victim to a gut feeling that there was something very false at the heart of the ontological argument, but I haven't been able to convert this irrational objection into a rational proof. Until now. For those of you that that are unfamiliar with the ontological proof of the existence of God, I have outlined below the argument given by Descartes', his argument being the most famous.
- Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing.
- I clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary existence is contained in the idea of God.
- Therefore, God exists.
However human intellect, among other problems, has been formed by a physical world and happens to be imperfect. Descartes believed that, because the rules of his concept of God required God to exist, God must exist. Today, my direction of attack is at the phrase "I clearly and distinctly perceive". I took the liberty of drawing this idea into a diagram.
I took even more liberty in changing around a few words.
- Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing.
- I clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary courting of Julia is contained in the idea of Leon?.
- Therefore, Leon must be dating Julia.|
? In my concept of Leon, "dating Julia" happens to be alphabetically sandwiched between "d&d addict" and "future lawyer". It should also be noted that this is my concept of current Leon, and that I perceive all of these properties to be necessarily true, regardless of fact. I omitted 'current' due to the word being so much of a chore to type and to retype (and to read and to reread).
By the same logic:
Leon calls me mad. I must be for clearly and distinctly perceiving that necessary courting of Julia is contained in the idea of Leon. I call Descartes mad. He must be for clearly and distinctly perceiving that necessary existence is contained in the idea of God. The point is that, whatever insane rules embody a concept, it is created by a human mind, and human minds are very capable of (and experienced at) deriving falsehoods.
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Jagged Alliance, the most addicting DOS game I have ever played, also seems to have the largest hours spent to ending satisfaction ratio for DOS games (meaning that I wasted all that time playing the game just to watch the world's suckiest ending and credits).
Also, Mike, my $12,000 / day mercenary, died on the last day. |
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, March 27th, 2002
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"Ladies and gentlemen," he boomed with a patronizing smile. "Good things come to those who wait, and better late than never, it is now my great privilege to address you on this auspicious occasion. Cliches are taking over the world, but as from now the boot is on the other foot. For no longer will we turn the other cheek. It has been tough going for us, but when the going gets tough the tough get going. We who march to the beat of a different drum prove that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Others may try to lead us down the garden path, tell us not to rock the boat, but even at this late hour I am sure we can pull a rabbit out of the hat and save our bacon. I know some think we are closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but we must weather the storm. Remember it's darkest just before the dawn, we must pin our hopes on the fact that the tide's beginning to turn. Keep in mind, a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and also that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. It is no good for us to see the world through rose colored glasses. The forces of darkness will be laughing all the way to the bank if we let them off the hook. It all boils down to this. When the chips are down you must play the cards you're dealt. Now's as good a time as any to throw a spanner in the works. I'd bet my bottom dollar that by stirring up trouble, we can get them on the run. We must strike while the iron is hot, we must keep our shoulder to the wheel and go the extra mile, give a hundred and ten percent, and put our money where our mouth is, because there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel. Some accuse us of making a mountain out of a molehill, and say cliches are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. The strongest steel is cast in the hottest fire, and we will not be handed victory on a silver platter. I don't like to rule with an iron fist but at this point of time I must lay down the law. The pro cliche push is just the tip of the iceberg. From the four corners of the earth, they leave no stone unturned to place us at the end of the pecking order and strip our language down to the bare bones. They think it is signed, sealed and delivered, but there's more than one way to skin a cat. Now you have something you can really sink your teeth into, and it's sink or swim or go out in a blaze of glory. It makes me sick as a dog to see people following in the footsteps of those who could only be described as having bats in the belfry. Patience is a virtue, but if we wait they will lead us like lambs to the slaughter. I trust them as far as I can throw them and we'll have a snowball's chance in hell if we don't take our fate into our own hands. We must keep the language pure as the driven snow or it's only a matter of time before we're caught between a rock and a hard place. Faith can move mountains but if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, because right now we're in trouble with a capital 'T'. We are all busy as a one-armed paperhanger, but nothing ventured nothing gained and you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Silence is golden but it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, so we're going to burn the midnight oil come hell or high water to keep the home fires burning. Sometimes I feel like a fish out of water when from all sides I hear " ... if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," but I feel if I give an inch, they'll takes a mile and I'll be a monkey's uncle before I jump on the bandwagon. So let us not rest on our laurels, let us not go with the flow. He who hesitates is lost and we must not fiddle while Rome burns. I don't want to cover old ground, but now is not the time to throw in the towel and bury your head in the sand. When we started this campaign we opened a can of worms but there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and if the mountain won't come to Mohammad, Mohammad must go to the mountain."
He flung wide his arms in a theatrical gesture, and concluded with a slight bow. "Thank you friends, thank you for your attention." |  |
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
strobetal's journal
artistic.
jubilant.
crushed.