And then I failed with somebody else. Let this be a lesson. Do not get close to anybody. Period. Be distant and impossible to approach. You will feel safer this way.

A lesson to all you kids out there. Get a degree. Yes, it may be beneath you. But it might not be beneath the unimaginative overlords who will rule your world one day.

That is all.

Eight Valentine's Day since puberty and I still have yet to have Valentine's Day fall on a day when I have a woman in my life.

It looks as though quoting favorite poetry can actually be of incalculable benefit. Not to mention theraputic. Here goes nothing,

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I turned to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

--Yeats

I'm almost done acquiring enough gear to record my music...need to find a place to host it though.

Normally I shun such strong expressions of emotion, but lately I've come to realize that I have to lose my cold, remote disposition, and try and connect with humanity.

Taking a cue from Squiggleslash, I posted a troll on todays story about Microsoft wantint to compete in the cluster market. Funny thing is, I was modded up.

How messed up was that? I'm sick today, and couldn't even think straight...

My parents live there...will be back in two weeks. If anyone is interested I'll post pictures.

How cliche is that?

Well, I do happen to believe that by entering the wilderness, man finds himself most calm. I'm planning on going on a long backpacking trip next summer with a good friend of mine, but need some ideas as to where to go. The trail must be at least 200 miles long, and within the continental US, preferrably someplace 2 or 3 days of driving could take me (I live in central Texas). So far, the Colorado Trail seems to me to be the most likely candidate. At 475 miles, it would take far too long to backpack the whole thing, but I could hopefully take on at least 250 miles.

I used to hate my father taking my family and me on hiking trips up in Alaska; it is only recently that I have come to see how foolish I was in not appreciating the immeasurable value that such journeys presented.

Has anyone out there fallen in love with the wilderness? Any backpackers?

Allright, fellas, who would win in a confrontation? Would the Sentinels tear the Cube to shreds, or would the Borg quickly rip out all technology on earth? I bet they'd team up.....

Actually, I mean which is a scarier fate for mankind: becoming a Borg, or becomming a battery?

Furthermore, which one would be scarier to wind up in all of the sudden, a Borg Cube, or the Earth of The Matrix?

Update: This time it'll work. Promise....

For the past few months, my .sig has read,

Sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics? Me too!

Now, many people take offense to this. They feel I'm either attacking Gentoo itself (which I'm not), or that I'm unfairly targeting Gentoo zealots (over the myriad of other types of zealots).

My feelings on Gentoo are simple: it's a cool distribution, it's well maintained, and most of it's users are pretty cool. However, there are a bunch of zealots that like unleash their enthusiasm where it isn't appropriate.

I rarely go out looking for Gentoo zealots to pick on, and my .sig is more of a passive form of resistance than anything else.

Anyways, if you got here because of my .sig, I do not apologize if I offended you in any way. I don't feel I'm being unfair in targetting specifically Gentoo. Gentoo zealots have made me cringe at hearing the words "compile from source." Furthermore, I'm really sick of mindless Gentoo zealots suggesting that Gentoo "gives" users more control. Knowledge gives you control, not a distribution. And lack of knowledge is also why Gentoo zealots seem to think Gentoo is so much better than everything else.

Ok guys, I'm in a real jam.

Here's the deal. I was delivering a pizza to some redneck ol shabby house right off of a 4 lane highway. The somewhat narrow, topographically "unique" (read: one boulder shy of an offroad racing track) and unkept driveway turned inward from the road on a blind corner. I could not reverse back onto the road normally, being that the cars could easily hit me going 45 mph and not see me. I had to swing around in the limited space and turn my car around. However, the driveway was somewhat narrow and my right front wheel fell into a ditch hidden by a tree. I could not get out.

I called PJ's and got another driver to take me back to the store so I could clock out (I was definately through for the night), and find a towing service to bail me out. It was 10 PM, and not many places were open. I found a shop in the Yellow Pages, called Pronto Towing service (looking back now, the name itself should have been a red light that this may not be a great business to go with). I called them, and the guy that picked up spoke fast and rushed me through the process.

Me: "Where you guys at?"

Them: "All over...where you at?"

"I need a vehicle pulled out of the ditch...over at 360 and 2222."

"Ok, great, where you at? We'll send someone right over..."

"Wait...it's a particularly narrow driveway I'm stuck in, and I need to make sure you guys can send a small truck...also, how mu--"

"We got big trucks, small trucks, anything you need. We'll be there soon."

"Actually, I need to know how much it would cost."

"It depends on how hard it is to get it out and how long it takes."

Here's my first big mistake:

"Ok, I work for Papa John's, can you pick me up at Far West and Mesa?"

"Sure, we'll be right there."

Let me explain this little error here, so there's no confusion. Last week my battery died during the day and I got it towed and the towing was 50$. They only needed to pull my vehicle about 10 feet from where it sat. Couldn't be much more...so wrong. So, so wrong.

Oh God, so wrong.

Ok, so I cash out (give Papa John's their money I collected, and find out how I did in tips. On a side note, I did horribly), and wait for the tow truck. It was a Mexican fellow, about 40, and his girlfriend. They were pretty cool, and we went back to the scene.

It took about 5 mintes to pull the truck out. I asked him how much it was, and he went to the truck and looked at a chart, and replied "one hundred and fifty dollars." At the time, I didn't have that kind of money. I asked him when a check would get cashed (I get paid friday), and he said "tomorrow." He then asked me to sign a piece of paper that basically was an agreement that if my check bounces, then they'll repo my car.

I took the check I had written back, and asked about other payment options. I didn't have the cash, and I hope to never have a credit card, so they took my truck home with them, which added another 100$. Of course, if they repossessed it, it would cost 400$. I'm sure this tally will run up daily, however.

I asked the fellow why it costs 150$ to move a truck 10 feet out of a ditch and he said "my boss sets the price the same for every pull-out to be fair..some take as long as 3 hours." But wait...didn't they say the price varied based on how hard it was to pull it out? Liars! Of course, I only realized this until after I had some time to cool off.

Thus, they took my truck away, and I'm out of the delivery business until I can get it back. At my current salary without driving, that'll be 2 weeks, except the cost to keep it there will be more than I can make.

I got swindled. I'm going to contact them tomorrow, and if nothing changes I will contact the Better Business Bureau.

Of course, I doubt this could hold water in court, because of several errors on my part, but I think the fact that they said the price would vary based on the difficulty and time spent on the task, and the fact that it did not would help my case.

I need advice...anyone have similar horror stories that they can relate? Anyone else I could talk to?

I was just watching Niteline and noticed their piece on Saddam. They got at least 12 suits with foreign accents to tell the cameras just how erratic and dangerous we're being led to believe. "Just how dangerous is Saddam?" asked the reporter. Promptly, they showed at least six europeans giving sentence blips saying either a) he won't step down, or b) he wants to use any means necessary to destroy the US. Of course, they didn't show their names or go to any measure to establish crediblity.

Clearly this is an attempt to dispell the fear of acting unilaterally to the American public (they did not address unilateral action specifically throughout the "report," they want us to feel like we're drawing our own conclusions I guess).

In my hometown, they're running ads that show policemen busting people for not having seat belts. They're saying basically, "we are starting to put more and more cops on the streets, looking for people who don't have their seat belts on. It's a fact--not having a belt buckled can kill."

I doubt there are more cops on the road to solve this one issue, which leads me to believe they're putting more and more cops on the streets, and are masking the real intent. Is anyone else out there seeing this happen? Are we turning into a police state? I don't think seat belts are much of a problem anyways, but people just blindly accept this.

Anyone know a quiet little corner of the world I could move to 10 years from know when the America I love starts to really suck?

By the way, its not the Bush regime in power. The liberal/conservative dichotomy is setup to make the opposing party allways seem like the cause of the real problems. The state of affairs in this country is really pissing me off, and there isn't a soul in Washington I don't blame for it (aside from John McCain).

This journal is a response to Interrobang's entries, not a flame (Interrobang: I respect your views inasmuch as I differ from them)

We need roads, power plants, schools, police, firemen, defense, and much more that I'm bound to forget. This is not in dispute. However, this is not an excuse to sneak in broad social programs or large, expensive projects. You can't say that because power plants are needed and we couldn't possibly build them ourselves, those who oppose tax'n'spenders or, more broadly, those who want to increase taxes, are wrong.

I firmly believe that the government should directly serve to protect us from real, physical threats. Is Iraq such a threat? I don't have a clue. But I do know if a nation attacks us, we should have a well-trained military to respond. Due to increasingly liberal attitudes towards troop training (and, more generally, the military becoming the battlefield for all sorts of trite political debates and legislation), our army troops have become the mockery of the other services, who receive far less scrutiny. Our government should do the best job it can of training our troops. However, our defense budget is ridiculously high, and I'm frankly uncomfortable with my country wielding so much physical power--though it may be necessary.

I agree that to acheive equality, the government has a critical role in education our children. If that means contracting under strict scrutiny or actually setting up schools, so be it. I don't think there's anyone who would debate this, so I'll move on.

The government should contract out internal improvements. Roads, power lines, national parks, etc. are very important. However, this should be taken care of by provincial/state and local governments. It is reasonable to devolve powers as much as possible until the next lowest power would not have the jurisdiction or authority to properly handle the situation. Let's keep the federal government out of farm-ranch roads, but have them lay out the interstate systems, for example.

Local communities must provide police/fire/etc protection in the local area. These departments must have as little oversight from the higher authorities as possible, however--if the citizens of a community want more cops, they can pay for it. If the whole nation were to vote, the government could easily scare or coerce the populace into a police state. I don't want men in ski-masks and FBI patches running around with automatic weapons not disclosing what they're doing.

The various governments should also regulate trade, zoning, etc. This should also be devolved unto the most local level as possible. If a regulation is to require a huge beaurocracy but is necessary for a specific region or constituency, they can agree to it and agree to pay for it. A huge advantage of this system is that other regions now have multiple examples of real-world scenarios with which to base the merit of a proposal on.

Now on to taxes. Taxes are what fuel all of this. I want full disclosure of both the money going in to these departments, contractors, or programs, and their operating budgets (this is not wholly the case where I live). We're unfortunately going crazy with building more beaurocracies and programs and such that are costing too much from people to whom these issues do not apply. I am distrustful of my government, and though it would be easy for me to allow them to manage my retirement plan, take care of me when I get fired, etc., not only could the feds taking care of the country lead to them taking over the country, I think we should have enough courage and strength to deal with such issues ourselves.

This is not simply because I believe we should accept more responsibility for our actions, but also because when and if our government tries to screw us (historically speaking, the odds of them not eventually doing so are astronomically low), these tax dollars will help support that through physical means and simply by the precedents that the accompanying legislation will set.

Basically, I know we need a government that collects taxes to pay for a lot of things, but I also firmly believe we should do our best to limit it without crippling its ability to carry out its exclusive functions.

On a side note, with regards to corporate control, the huge corporations are also restricting freedom in a big way, and (as in the media giant's case) are often getting Congressional support. We must also be weary of the giants as well, since they often begin to act like governments. However, this really doesn't pertain to taxation (but I felt it worth mentioning in response to one of Interrobang's points).

Offtopic moderation no doubt had a reasonable problem to solve. In any given story, there are always a few that open up new threads that are ridiculous and way out there, but not necessarily reduntant, trollish, or flamebait.

Offtopic moderation has gotten out of hand. Almost all threads 'drift' from the original topic. No big deal--'Offtopic' should be given to posts that have nothing to do with their parent--be that an article or a post.

I'm sick of getting modded down for interesting, intelligent conversations with people--that's what the moderation system is supposed to promote.

Here's how I think it should work. If a post has little or nothing to do with the parent, it should be offtopic. All subsequent responses to that post can be considered offtopic as well. However, any offtopic threads must begin with a legitimate crap-post. If the post has something to do with a parent post that can't be quickly traced back to a such a blatantly offtopic crap-post, then the post is not offtopic.

Meta-moderation doesn't cure this--no one reads the context. Today I replied to a thread about kernel source sizes being too big, when the subject was something about two new features being added to the kernel. I got modded down as offtopic, even though the thread started by someone commenting along the lines of "why add new features when the kernel source is already so big?" A decidedly on topic question (despite however you feel about the quality of it). It ended up that I suggested that perhaps someone should distribute a source tree without the non-x86 architectures in it. Someone responded to me, saying that such a file would not be significantly smaller (4 megs). The comment that got modded down as offtopic was my response, that 4 megs for a dialup user is between 10-20 minutes on a good day.

This is one example--of many. Any one else pissed off about this? And before saying "calm down, it's just Slashdot," once I leave Slashdot and go do something else it probably won't urk me anymore. But for now, I really want to know if other people get similar treatment for their contributions to the articles.

Can anyone (out of the 3 people that no doubt read my journal ;) list the most actively moderated comment they've seen?

Ex. Overrated=4,Insightful=3,Interesting=1,Flamebait=2,Funny=5,Troll=1,Informative=1