Snakes and salaries

Caught a checkered garter snake in my room the other day. Went out and bought a cage for it, and now it's my pet. We'll see how well this goes. Hopefully it doesn't have worms or anything.

Changing topics here, but I read this morning in New York Times that "wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s". This makes me love big business and corporations even more, hurray!

Hyped about AI Class

Went to my Artificial Intelligence class this morning. I'm really hyped about this one. Gonna use Python in it, and A.I. just seems really interesting to me.

My hectic first day of (cancelled) classes...

I went to my first class, thankfully, and turned in my force add form. Got out of that class, which got about halfway through.

At like 10:30, some lady barged in and told us all that we had to leave. They were evacuating the entire campus. Evidently, a killer named William Morva was on the loose. Next, I couldn't go back to my apartment because of the blockades since I live about 3/4 mile from the spot on Huckleberry Trail where he was hiding. I couldn't go to the library or downtown to sit and wait it out. I couldn't call a friend to pick me up because the cellular towers were completely busy for like 30 or 45 minutes...

I'm glad they caught the guy. Not fun to have a murderer running around free near my apartment. I didn't get anything done at all today cuz all I could do was sit at my friend's apartment.

All that said and done, I'm beat. Good night.

Back in Blacksburg fall '06

Well, I'm back in Blacksburg again. Had a great time with my family. Got a nice tan from relaxing in the pool, got a brand new Nintendo DS Lite...

First half of 2k6, and then some.

So, it's time again for my extremely long update about my life and what has happened in it! I'll begin where I left off somewhere around January.

As I said before, I headed back to Blacksburg. I was on academic suspension. Totally sucks. My focus wasn't in the right place. I had a video game and Internet addiction. I think I still have a slight Internet addiction, actually. I've got to work on that. Anyways, I headed back to Blacksburg. I looked for a job and did land the one at PC Land as a computer technician.

PC Land
Now, I love being a computer technician. I wouldn't want to do it for the rest of my life, but it's an enjoyable job to fill my spare time. But man was the owner of this place a royal pain in the neck. The rest of the people that worked there were pretty cool, but the owner really irked me.

I swear he was trying to run a sweatshop or something. He didn't allow music or mp3 players because he thought it would distract us from our work. In case you don't know, being a computer technician requires absolutely no brainwork at all once you know the procedure of things. When he would come out of his office and ask what we were working on, it would be in such a sour, irritating manner that it began to burn into my senses like a spark sent with the wind into the dry mesquite of Texas on a mission of wildfire. I was never in a good mood when he was around. My thoughts were always dwelling on how pissed off I was because of this guy (whose name I won't mention). "What are you doing?" "Is it okay?"

He never had any praise to give. It was always criticism. He'd call everyone stupid, asking why we couldn't be smart. Over stupid stuff. Like giving a potential customer plastic standoffs. And throwing away an old, broken case and motherboard. Yeah, I was the one that threw away the old, broken case and motherboard. I was in Roanoke when he found out. He called me at Roanoke from Blacksburg and started yelling at me, barking at me like a dog. The stupid thing wasn't worth 5 bucks and he was about to fire me over it. I mean, the time I would have spent trying to fix it would have cost him more money than he would have gained from selling it. So I took the good parts out of it and threw the bad parts away. I thought this was reasonable.

I was wrong. This man drove up to Roanoke and began to berate me in person. When he asked me why I did what I did, I attempted to answer, only to be cut off. Later in the conversation, he accused me of trying to argue with him. He said I was stupid because I didn't see what I did was wrong since I was defending myself. Grrrr...I was only trying to answer the question, but he wouldn't hear any of it. He wanted to sell the broken piece of crap to a customer. Maybe they would want to fix it on their own, he said. Alright, whatever. I didn't know we were a junk store.

I could definitely go on, but I think I should stop now. I won't mention his lack of English skills (he's Chinese) or the how he reacted to an unavoidable situation where Norton Ghost didn't work as expected. Enough of him.

My time away from work--my projects and my roomate.
So other than working, I had decided on some personal projects to occupy my free time. My old friend Kyle gave me an old AMD-K6/2. I decided to install Ubuntu on it and set up an ftp server. I decided to finally make the switch from Windows to Linux on the computers that I actually use once I quit World of Warcraft.

I did accomplish the ftp server quite easily. Set it up with vsftpd. While I was at it, I set it up as a Teamspeak server, as well.

I had done a default install of Ubuntu on that machine, not knowing any better. I should have done a server installation so that Gnome didn't come with it. I did disable Gnome, but it's still taking up unnecessary hard drive space. I've decided I'm going to format the whole thing again soon and install the LAMP server on it. Learning scripting languages and SQL are actually my current projects. I've also got to figure out PAM, I think, to require a password to access my ftp server. It's annoying to get port scanners hitting my machine 24/7. Sometimes they leave random files in my upload folder, and there was one instance where a guy started downloading something my server. Not only was he downloading, he was very aggressively downloading. I have pages upon pages of logfiles of him attempting to access a single file, but my computer was refusing because too many connections were already open. After that, I turned my server off until I decided to reinstall and learn more about ftp authentication.

Moving on, my new roomate for the semester ended up being a guy from France coming to Virginia Tech on an internship. He ended up being a really cool guy. His name's Fabien.

He actually somehow motivated me to get out of the apartment and socialize with other human beings! Yes, this actually surprises me. I enjoyed it, though. Because of this, I ended up quitting World of Warcraft early. I haven't played the game since April or so. My account expired a few days ago, I hear from my brother.

I don't think I had even been to a bar in Blacksburg before Fabien arrived. Now, though, I'm pretty familiar with all of them. He also introduced me to rock-climbing, which was very tiring but fun.

Anyways, Fabien was great. He was really easy to live with. He cleaned up after himself, he was polite, he was friendly, he made an effort to include me in things. I'm really gonna miss the guy. He moved out of the apartment last weekend. He'll be moving back to France mid-September.

So since I quit World of Warcraft, I was safe to switch over to Linux completely. For about a month I was setting up a custom set of packages on a basic, or "server", installation of Ubuntu to create a good Fluxbox environment. Fluxbox was great, but I decided that maintaining my own set of packages was too much work. Ultimately I decided on KDE. So I installed Kubuntu! Pretty happy with it so far.

I've figured out one reason I don't have many friends, even when I do get out and socialize. I don't know anyone at all that really shares my passions and interests. Learning Linux, programming languages, network security, how the Internet works, etc. are my passions right now. Can't find anyone to share my experiences with. Oh, well.

Summer, into the fall.
Actually, I did go on one "date" this summer. My first one since high school. Nevermind the fact it was with some chick that found me on MySpace. Nevermind the fact that she's seven years older than me. Bah, it was a heck of a lot better than sitting at home doing nothing... She seems like a cool person.

This summer I started classes up again. Actually, they went pretty well. I'm amazed at how much a teacher can make a difference in how well I do in a class. I got an A- in the first class, where the teacher was amazing. The second class I got a B- in, and the teacher was not-so-good. He was genuine and caring, but his teaching style sucked. He was never really prepared for class, and all he did was basically give a brain dump onto the blackboard, hoping we'd gain an understanding of the material through hearing his thought processes.

Well, thankfully I don't have many more classes to take that don't interest me at all. I just got done with Electronics, which was centered around transistors and CMOS. The last two classes that I am not really looking forward to are Optics and Microprocessor System Design. After that I get to choose stuff that looks nice. Stuff like Operating Systems and Internet Programming. I'm going to try to get into an Artificial Intelligence class this fall, actually.

I've got to try to try to get into an Operating Systems course here in Dallas, though, I think, so that I can take Internet Programming and some other courses in December 2007 so that I can graduate then. Hopefully that works out. We'll see.

Yeah, I'm in Texas with my family right now. My summer vacation consists of staying here with my family and my visit from Steve last weekend.

Steve... my old friend from MCS computers. I am never around the 757 anymore since my family moved to Texas, but I still keep in touch with my old co-worker Steve.

When I started working at MCS, Steve was the one that brought me under his wing. We seem to think alike more often than not. Steve and I had a pretty good time in Blacksburg. We partied pretty hard, and I'll leave it at that.

So now I'm at home with my family. Relaxing, enjoying the sun and the pool. Enjoying seeing my family (and my grandma's here, too, until tomorrow!).

One thing I am noticing, though, which is kind of depressing me, is how my brother is distancing from me. We are still pretty close, but we used to talk all the time when we gamed together over the Internet. MMORPGs gave us a common interest and let us stay in touch.

I come home, and now he just talks to his girlfriend on the phone. We don't really have much to talk about. He isn't all that interested in the things I'm interested in, so I can't do that stuff with him. All I can do is try to find more common ground and find what else he is interested in so I can get involved.

It's difficult. It saddens me.

And it's not the only relationship of mine that seems to be faltering. Another one that I want to keep alive is between my old friends from high school, with Ralph and Robbie and Alan and the gang.

I feel sort of guilty because I never wrote my old friend Ralph a thank-you note about letting me stay at his place over Thanksgiving... Now I wonder if he'd want to let me chill there again this year. Oi.

I hope he forgives me, and maybe if I call him he invites me or something so that I can make it up.

Well, that's all for now.

Playing sax for God

What is my purpose for playing the saxophone in a church band? Am I using my gift for God?

Tonight it came to me that one way I am using my musical gift for God is by creating music that people will enjoy hearing. If people enjoy the music that I produce, they should want to hear more of it. By creating good music, I'm strengthening the appeal of my church family. The more people are pleased by our church, the more people are closer to God.

That is, in my opinion, the least obvious of the ways that my musical gift glorifies God. Since I have not been given a verbal or rhetorical gift to bring people to know God, I use the musical one that I have been given.

Review of Silent Hill

Just came back from watching Silent Hill. The story was quite a bit different, but they did a really, really good job on the movie (in my humble opinion).

In the game, Dahlia Gillespie was the leader of a cult in Silent Hill. This cult wanted to bring the demon Samael into the world to do whatever evil they pleased. In order to control this demon, they decided it would be best to bring him into the world in the form of a child. So, through some science and rituals and whatnot, Dahlia had Alessa Gillespie.

When Alessa was seven years old, Dahlia burned Alessa in a fire because she believed that the tortured remains of Alessa (the essence of Samael would not allow her body to die) would be better able to project her horrible nightmares into the physical world. In the process of burning Alessa, the whole town caught on fire. Alessa ends up in the hospital of Silent Hill with the nurse Lisa Garland tending to her. Alessa did end up engulfing the town in her nightmare, decaying buildings and creating monsters. However, during the fire, the tramatized Alessa had created a projection of herself as a baby somewhere outside Silent Hill. Harry Mason and his wife found this baby, named her Cheryl, and raised her as their own.

Once Dahlia found out that Samael was no longer whole, she cast a spell to try to lure Cheryl back to Silent Hill. Without both halves of Alessa/Samael, her powers would be weakened and useless to Dahlia. When Cheryl was seven years old, Harry's wife dies, and he decides to go with Cheryl on a visit back to Silent Hill.

Upon arrival, it's really foggy and he wrecks his jeep because he thought he saw someone in the middle of the street. When he comes back into consciousness, Cheryl isn't in the jeep any longer. He spends the game trying to find her, of course. During the course of the adventure, Silent Hill shifts between the normal, foggy, ash-filled one and Alessa's nightmarish, dark one. Dahlia sees that Harry is searching for Cheryl, deduces their relationship, and decides to play Harry as a pawn in her game. She tells Harry that darkness is engulfing the town, that Alessa is behind it, and that he can use a relic called a Flauros to trap Alessa/Cheryl and stop her. She didn't, however, tell him that she only wanted to subdue Alessa/Cheryl so that she could control her again.

Meanwhile, the cop Cybil Bennett receives a call from Silent Hill, and she goes to investigate. She ends up meeting Harry and getting caught up in all the nonsense, as well. She ends up getting possessed towards the end of the game, and Harry either kills her or cures her with a drug he finds on his trek through Silent Hill.

At the end of the game, Harry ends up meeting up with Dahlia and Alessa/Cheryl. An old cult member runs in and throws a drug at Alessa, causing Samael to come out. Samael kills Dahlia, and Harry kills Samael. Alessa approaches Harry and gives him a new baby, who he names Cheryl and raises as his own (again).

In the movie, Harry is replaced by Rose, and Cheryl by Sharon. Instead of Dahlia being the bad guy, it's a cult of witch-hunters that burned Alessa. Dahlia's just some crazy lady. Rose and Cybil meet up and work together to find Sharon. Towards the end of the movie, the cult finds out that Sharon is the likeness of Alessa and they turn against Rose and Cybil since they don't want to kill Alessa. Cybil is captured by the cult while keeping them from capturing Rose while she goes into the hospital to confront Alessa. While Rose is talking to Alessa, the cult also finds Sharon. Rose agrees to help avenge Alessa's torturous death by approaching the cult. The cult burns Cybil, and before they could do the same to Sharon, Rose comes in. She gets stabbed by the cult leader, blood spills all over, and the church that they're in changes into the dark realm of Alessa. Rose's wound heals instantly, and Alessa comes up out of the ground and totally kicks some bootie with barbwire tentacles. She kills everyone except Dahlia, Rose, and Sharon. And that's pretty much the end of it.

Yeah, I just had to write down the differences for my own personal satisfaction. Lots of cool stuff from the game was in the movie. Lots of familiar scenes and enemies. Pyramid Head, anyone?