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Explosions of personhood may follow
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| My day |
[Jun. 6th, 2009|03:28 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Siouxsie and the Banshees - Spellbound | ] |
Just about 2 months since my last post. Jeez, I fail at this blogging thing. :|
Work is going well. I applied for a "real job" last week as a metal fabricator - would've been a great job, good pay, insurance I'm gonna be needing at the end of August, et cetera. I'm completely confident I did the best I could at the interview - which included practical tests of my welding and print reading abilities, but I still didn't get the job. Oh well.
The self-employed thing is working out pretty well lately. I have 5 jobs-in-progress on my workbench right now: 3 laptops, a cell phone, and an external hard drive. My last 'house call' netted me $75, a U.S. Robotics USR5461 wireless router (which is already proving interesting to mess with), and a couple meals. Not too bad.
Joined the NRA. Still need to get around to getting my FOID. Might get that ball rolling over the weekend.
Today I squared up my finances, and started my move from Bank of America to Chase. Very happy with my decision, and they're going to be a lot more useful to me than BoA was. I've saved up a decent amount of money, and met several of my financial goals - among them, I have enough money set aside to incorporate one of my projects. That's not gonna happen right away - there's still a lot of detail work to be done before that's viable, but soon enough (I'm even learning how to do the accounting myself). I'm also about two-thirds of the way to achieving a long-term goal of mine way ahead of schedule - but that one is for another post.
I'm still not entirely sure of my current living situation, but it's more stable than it was a couple months ago. I've eliminated a couple things, cut back on many others - and I'm finding myself much better off because of it.
I'm back to reading and writing a lot more, and while my sleep is still a horrible mess, it's toned down a little bit. I'm recording more media, and while I'm not quite at the point where I'm comfortable releasing material yet, it's getting closer.
Two posts ago I wondered what I should do with myself. I ended up taking the 'all of the above' choice, and it's working out pretty damn well so far.
Now, It's 4:30 in the morning. Should I go to sleep, or stay up until 9am, drive to Schaumburg, and attempt to upgrade my amateur radio license?
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| Remember, only 4 months 'till GenCon! |
[Apr. 10th, 2009|12:14 pm] |
http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/1519789,w-indianapolis-sword-fight-040909.article
Indianapolis woman dies trying to stop swordfight
INDIANAPOLIS---- A 77-year-old woman who tried to break up a heated sword fight between her grandson and brother-in-law died, and both men were hospitalized with stab wounds, police said Thursday.
Franziska Stegbauer was stabbed during the fight and investigators were trying to determine whether she died from those wounds or a heart attack. Police placed her grandson, 39-year-old Chris Rondeau, under arrest on a preliminary charge of attempted murder. Stegbauer's brother-in-law, 69-year-old Adolf Stegbauer, suffered several serious stab wounds, police said.
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| What the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway? |
[Mar. 27th, 2009|05:00 am] |
| [ | Location |
| | Home | ] |
| [ | Music |
| | Cyberzen - Too Far Home | ] |
It's 5am and I've been awake for about 12 hours now. I fell asleep yesterday at around 7am. Slept through precalc again, which is a good indication of why I've been doing so poorly at classes with rigid time structures lately. Made it to commercial carpentry, ate breakfast out of a styrofoam box at 7:30pm - 6 chicken breasts and a giant heap of buttered noodles, $4.40 after sales tax, washed down with 2 liters of free water from the drinking fountain. Was told by someone twice my weight that I can eat more in a sitting.
Left school at 10:20. Did a quick circle through an area I haven't checked in a while, stopped and refueled the car. Brief text conversation with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) her_solace along the way, hoping she'd be free to hang out for a little - as always, she wasn't. Resigned myself to sitting at home for another night.
I've been sequestered inside on weeknights the last few weeks. I've made a lot of progress cleaning up the ridiculous junk piles I live in. I can now not only see the contents of my closet, but I can actually walk into it again. In the process, I found a third segment of rope lighting, which I've tacked to the end of the setup and threaded into the closet. In the interest of saving power, it's the only lighting in the room that isn't coming from a display. I actually really like how it gives me even lighting around the whole room, no major shadows or dark spots under my desks. Dim though.
You ever see Quarantine? Remember the last rabies-zombie at the end, the really emaciated woman just kind of standing there? That's a lot like the mental image I get of myself this time of day. A pale, thin figure shut off in a dimly-lit room. Not out of any self-pity or anything like that, mind you. Just visually similar, and resonating with the anticipation of what could happen - my mind works best at night, and around this time I often find myself in states where in-between projects I'll find myself just standing, in a blank option-paralysis state while something beyond my internal monologue decides what to do next...
...and there is so much to do, and so much uncertain ground to cover. I'm surrounded by stuff that I've accumulated in the 22 years I've been around. Much of it reminds me just how much I've changed, and a lot of investments that are simply no longer useful to me. My pride-and-joy computer - a 65lb steel supertower with space for a dozen internal drives - of 2004, back when I was gaming in full swing and fresh out of high school, consumed $1700 of my money. It's depreciated in value fast, and I'd probably be lucky to get a third of that today. It's baggage now, with a handful of broken fans and a case a bit worse for wear, buried under my workbench until I can excavate it again. its two LCD monitors conveniently broke just after their warranty expired, and the system that once drove 17 monitors now doesn't even have a mouse. What should I do with it?
While my work is apparently drying up, so are my future prospects these days - I probably won't be able to afford school after this semester, and finding a "real job" is proving to be just as futile as when I was first looking for work my freshman year of high school. A handful of people I really wish I knew better are leaving in the next few months, for various places - Germany, South Africa, Alaska, and the like. While they're off finding themselves and making the world a better place and being condemned by the pope for distributing condoms and therefore spreading AIDS somehow, I'm anticipating losing my home. It wouldn't be the first time I've been homeless, but this time around there won't be a quick fix back to normal after a few weeks. At least I have all this free time to get my stuff sorted out. Y'know, when I'm not sleeping away the morning and early afternoon.
I have plenty of ideas, though I doubt they're any good.
Do I embrace my freedom from the rat race, and pursue my attempts at media production - writing, putting out videos of my experiences, collecting and documenting interesting discoveries in the hopes that others will find them interesting enough to my sustenance?
Return to the basics and pursue my daydream of pioneering a means to live as a somewhat self-contained individual, providing for my own basic needs, showing others how to do the same, and blazing some new trail from my transhumanist leanings?
Develop THE GUILD OF COMPETENT INDIVIDUALS more seriously and forge my political standpoint into an answer to the specialization and consolidation that this recession is proving to be a mercurial foundation to one's success?
Focus and push myself into giving my self-employment the attention it deserves and hoist myself back to stable ground?
...all of the above?
. . .
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| Pop. |
[Mar. 10th, 2009|10:58 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Hanzel Und Gretyl - Fukken Uber Death Party | ] |
I am way past due for a post here. I have just sat down with breakfast, so let's see if I can get caught up here.
We left off at the end of last semester, when my schedule was in turmoil at the very last minute due to someone deciding "drop this class" means "drop all my classes." That has been corrected, unfortunately a bit late, so I'm still waiting for the end of this semester to get a couple more certifications. Right NOW, however, I've been dealing with the school insisting they gave me all 5 of the diplomas they owed me at the beginning of this semester, when in fact I have only received 3. The joys of bureaucracy.
Friday I had my wisdom teeth removed - also my first time under general anesthetic. Went fine, since three had already completely grown in already. I still have a constant minor headache, though - the pain medications don't affect it at all. It's annoying as hell, but at the same time it's kind of forcing me to actually keep working in order to keep my mind off it.
Employment is good but unstable. Money is coming in short bursts. This is partly due to my sleep schedule being thrown way off again, though spending the weekend sleeping to escape my headache and inability to eat has corrected this for now.
Anyway, 2 more hours of free time to spend now. I'm going to attempt to cram as much information into my head as I can. |
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| The semester finally ends... |
[Dec. 18th, 2008|12:45 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Ozzy Osbourne - I Just Want You | ] |
Alright, I just got home from my last day of school for the semester. Passed both my finals today, meaning I'll be getting all 6 of the certifications I've applied for this semester. Except...
While waiting for my car to warm up today, I checked my voicemail. One of them was from the college's financial department, informing me that I owe money for "re-enrolling" into a class I "dropped". I can only assume this refers to one of the two classes I was mistakenly dropped from (in what I have only been able to explain as a clerical error) earlier in the semester when I had to change my schedule. One more phone call I have to make tomorrow.
In addition to this, I have a $60 parking ticket from the city, ostensibly a toll for having the audacity to park near a permit parking zone. I'm not even going to go into the details of that one, as it will inevitably spark a flamewar about the nature of government and the validity of non-negotiated "agreements." Suffice to say I plan on greatly reducing the number of visits I take to the city, and the number of taxable transactions made within city limits. Way to be, Chicago. You're a fine example of civilization.
What else...
Further bad things: I've sliced into my hands seven or so times in the last week, either keeping my experiments in line or in the course of my metalworking.
The good: I've been working with my radio equipment more and more lately. I'm planning on building my first permanent radio astronomy antenna soon - a triple-element dipole for listening to Jupiter. I've also been tinkering with wireless power transmission and inductive coupling, and I've had some interesting results. I've also overheated a small solar cell, which shattered - a small piece of it is embedded in my finger. Oh, the things I do for science.
Anyway. I should get to sleep, or clean, or something. I have much to do over winter break. |
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| Hey, Internet-friends |
[Oct. 31st, 2008|09:51 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Aesthetic Pefection - Schadenfreude | ] |
Who's going to be at Nocturna tonight? |
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| Shenanigans |
[Aug. 25th, 2008|10:33 pm] |
Ok. First day of class down. Going good so far, many contacts and I came home with more money than I left with - always a good thing.
Updates... Indianapolis treated me well. Gencon was awesome and I met many cool people, and pretty much got everything I set out to do taken care of, with one exception. I'm not going to detail that exception, because everyone who should know about it already does. No point. I stayed at the Empowerment HQ and met many people from the Rant community in person for the first time. We got a fair bit done, and while it could have gone better, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome we got.
Updates have been made to my beltline, I have two new wearable components pretty much functional - central power storage and audio routing. I will provide writeups of both later, as while both work they're in need of revision.
Classes are alright, I still need to hammer out the details of working at the college. One book is unavailable at the school bookstore, but it's available online.
Late in the day I started having chest and neck pains, which are continuing now. I'm not sure what I did.
Anyway, I'm going to bed just as soon as I figure out where this bizarre rhythmic whistling noise outside is coming from. |
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| Today's Intentions |
[Jul. 24th, 2008|09:55 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Single Cell Orchestra - Unleashing The Horrors Of Some Of Our Great Power | ] |
Alright, so I'm actually waking up in the morning lately. I'm finally doing some of the long-overdue entries on my todo list. Not the least of which is actually getting my room cleaned up - much progress has been made, and I have room to experiment again. There's a lot of clutter, though. Some of it I'm trading away, some I'm finding better homes for, others are getting cannibalized or converted into parts for my projects.
Today's plans:
-Attempt to finish repairing desktop (not likely to happen today)
-Dig around in the crawlspace for surplus ventilation duct (It's for a larger version of this)
-1200: Class @ Harper
-2000: Lecture @ Bowers House |
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| Files GET |
[Jul. 23rd, 2008|01:49 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| | elated | ] |
| [ | Music |
| | Massive Attack - Dissolved Girl | ] |
I managed to recover my hard drive! YESyesyesyes!
The entire filesystem is intact, too!
/dance |
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| Failure |
[Jul. 17th, 2008|06:32 am] |
One of my external hard drives just died. I have just lost about a quarter terabyte of videos, music, and pictures.
Fuck. |
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| Unspecified Hate |
[Jul. 15th, 2008|06:38 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Goldfrapp - Twist (Jaques Lu Cont's Conversion Perversion Mix) | ] |
I really, really hate it when people use the word "anarchy" as a synonym for lawlessness and chaos.
Note to self: Livejournal is not Twitter. Posts should be more than one sentence. |
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| Lacking |
[Jul. 6th, 2008|09:36 pm] |
| [ | Music |
| | Negative Format - Static (Genocide Mix by Informatik) | ] |
I need more hard drives. |
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| Saturday Morning to Sunday Morning |
[Jul. 6th, 2008|05:14 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Electric Skychurch - Hipgnosis | ] |
Woke up.
Showered.
Drove to Barrington while listening to random findings on my radio.
Picked up Shira.
Drove to Bristol, WI. Long and interesting conversation I don't really remember much of.
Got lost for 45 minutes.
Found 94.
Found Bristol again.
Found the Renaissance Fair.
Paid.
Parked.
Paid.
Entered.
Met Shira's friends.
Beer #1. Leinenkugel Honey Weiss.
Wandered.
Watched guy do tricks with bullwhips.
Wandered.
Randomly encountered people from Harper.
Watched glassblowing demonstration.
Randomly encountered another friend from Harper.
Wandered.
Randomly encountered yet another friend from Harper.
Ate.
Wandered.
Watched the Mud Show.
Randomly encountered still more friends from Harper.
Wandered.
Beer #2. More Honey Weiss, I think.
Nonalcoholic beverage #1: Monster.
Wandered for a while.
Collected Shira.
Departed.
Picked up a hitchhiker. Conversation detailed where she was going/where she lived, peace corps volunteerism, nuances of living in Zimbabwe, hypnotherapy, and the dynamics of helping others versus helping them to help themselves. Explained where I was dropping her off and how to get home from there.
Drove back to Barrington.
Delivered hitchhiker to train station.
Delivered Shira to her house.
Sat in the car and read.
Delivered Shira to her workplace.
Drove to Wheeling.
Accosted by man in Jesus costume brandishing a cardboard sign that said "Jesus Loves You".
Called blackguard200 to report being accosted by Hobo Jesus.
Arrived at party. Further details unimportant.
Went to Steak.
Followed police car to congregation of about a dozen squad cars at bar.
Interrogated bystanders to determine exactly what went on that warranted so many police from multiple towns. (It was a very, very lopsided brawl.)
Returned to Steak.
Observed partygoers from earlier driving drunk.
Ate, drank, and was bored.
Met an interesting highschoolmate from 3 graduating classes behind me.
Returned home.
Wrote this.
Sleep. |
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| I find this awesome |
[Jul. 4th, 2008|02:25 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Liaisons Dangereuses - Aperitif De La Mort | ] |
Found on http://www.existenceiswonderful.com
http://queersunited.blogspot.com/2008/04/heterosexual-questionnaire.html
The Heterosexual Questionnaire was created back in 1972 to put heterosexual people in the shoes of a gay person for just a moment. Questions and assumptions made of Gays and Lesbians that are unfair, are reversed and this time asked to the straight people.
This is a fun survey, but also an activist survey. Please repost this to your email list, myspace bulletin, use it in a group setting, have fun with it but also let the point be made.
1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality?
2. When and where did you decide you were a heterosexual?
3. Is it possible this is just a phase and you will out grow it?
4. Is it possible that your sexual orientation has stemmed from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?
5. Do your parents know you are straight? Do your friends know- how did they react?
6. If you have never slept with a person of the same sex, is it just possible that all you need is a good gay lover?
7. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality... can’t you just be who you are and keep it quiet?
8. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?
9. Why do heterosexuals try to recruit others into this lifestyle?
10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual... Do you consider it safe to expose children to heterosexual teachers?
11. Just what do men and women do in bed together? How can they truly know how to please each other, being so anatomically different?
12. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?
13. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality?
14. Considering the menace of overpopulation how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual?
15. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don't you feel that he or she might be inclined to influence you in the direction of his orher leanings?
16. There seem to very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed that might enable you to change if you really want to.
17. Have you considered trying aversion therapy?
- Martin Rochlin, Ph.D., 1972 |
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| 3am highway driving, while falling asleep |
[Jun. 11th, 2008|09:36 pm] |
| [ | Music |
| | KMFDM - Tohuvabohu | ] |
Monday: Awoke to discover a broken tooth. Lost my ship and all my good implants in EVE. Spent the rest of my day meditating over my projects.
Tuesday: First day of summer semester. One class cancelled due to lack of enrollment. Other class went well - might get hired on as a teacher's aide to help out around the lab. Left at 7pm for first Lectures 'n Fries event. Arrived late due to suburban traffic delays, but enjoyed the lecture - lots of I-never-realized-that and never-would-have-known-that-but-it-makes-a-lot-of-sense moments. Long, wandering, and immensely enjoyable conversation followed. Wandered Hyde Park for a bit, made great time back to the suburbs, picked up a pda that needs fixing, and went home.
Today: Ridiculously overslept. Still attempting to compensate. |
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| Nerd Moment: Metasoldering |
[Jun. 9th, 2008|10:14 pm] |
| [ | Music |
| | Richard Jacques - Let Mom Sleep (No Sleep Remix) [Jet Set Radio Future] | ] |
Today's Nerd Moment: Using one soldering iron to fix another.
Real post coming soon. |
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| Don't believe in anything that you can't break |
[May. 30th, 2008|03:55 am] |
Woke up this morning to a phone call from my partner in the new computer consulting venture (hereafter referred to as Mr. Z). Got out of bed, through the shower, and out the door faster than I have in a long time. Made $112.50 in an hour and a half straightening up the shared printer settings and internal DNS of a new client in Des Plaines. Ran over to the cafe, made $102 in 12 hours. Established that my boss does not understand the difference between business and personal favors. Returning his laptop tomorrow, unfixed, and explaining to him that $8.50/hr to cook does not include off-the-clock laptop repair services. Depending on how that conversation goes, I may tell him this is my last fiscal week working for him, or I might just walk out. We'll see how that goes.
On a related note, I've noticed a disturbing pattern of people interrupting me mid-sentence, in such a way that my percieved intentions are opposite to what I was actually trying to say.
Example time:
Intended sentence: "I've been really busy with work lately, but I've been slacking off on my time off too, so that's not really an excuse."
Spoken sentence: "I've been really busy with work lately-" <-notice that sounds like an excuse
Intended sentence: "I had to run out the door to get there on time, but I made more there than I will this whole shift, so I'm sure you can understand my prioritizing that over an unpaid repair job."
Spoken sentence: "I had to run out the door to get there on time, but I made more there than I will this whole shift-" quickly interrupted by being yelled at about my work ethic, "how I talk to people" (Read: honestly, if long-winded), and a brief lecture on why I should do what my boss tells me to do because my boss pays me.
Possible solutions:
A) Stay the course and deal with it
B) Stop speaking out loud entirely
C) Figure out some gesture or method of providing visual cues that I'm not done talking yet
...I'm really starting to lean towards B. I've noticed people have very interesting reactions to emotionless stares when they're expecting the other person to yell back. |
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