Madness Dreaming of Normalcy

I am slated to move back to Florida soon. I'm gonna be living with the mom for a little while. (Trying to pay off student loans and such while being in an environment that doesn't require as much money.) So, to this goal I have been cleaning up the apartment. I'm not going to post pictures, because well.. that shit is embarrassing. Like.. Health Hazard embarrassing. Like... a strain of mold grown here might kill Cthulhu embarrassing. (Assuming the dark lord is effected by such things.) But while I was cleaning.. I thought of this humorous tale. Enjoy. [----------------------] The general walked up and down the line of soldiers. Mostly officers stood before him, ground soldiers trying to peak over their heads while staying at attention. They wanted to hear the words of this man who stood so talk and awe inspiring among them, the lowly scrubs who had been on the front lines since this war began. He stopped pacing in front of them suddenly and let lose a smile. "Men...

So in a previous post I know that I talked about not wanting to continue in the calling of being a programmer. And I still think that's 100% true. I don't want to continue being a programmer. But my problem now is being driven by still being a programmer. The truth is I'm bored. I hate the problems that I have to face sometimes as a programmer. No they're not problems of too little wage or the issues of being a wage slave or even some of the work. Some of the work is enjoyable in the same way solving a puzzle or figuring out a riddle is enjoyable. But it's not something I do everyday because it's fun. I do it because I want my paycheck. Something I know should be a driving factor (some would say, the only driving factor) but it's not enough, is it? I do this gig because it pays rather nicely. But I don't enjoy it every day. I don't go out of my way to complete my tasks, working for 12 hours a day doing it. I can sit in front of this computer an...

WUI. For those who are working from home, happily signing into remote servers or dropping their work everyday into a shared repository, these people get to do what they want when they want. See previous post. But is it unethical for someone under these conditions to work as they please? Put a different way: If I'm drunk at 4pm writing code (or blog posts or writing my current project) I'm not hurting anyone. I'm getting the work done under circumstances that may be completely ideal. I get to bring up my BAC so I can relax, get stuff done, making connects that I might not have made sober. But all in all... is it ethical? moral? is it ok? Whose permission am I seeking? Isn't freedom the ability to make my own calls? to make my own mistakes? And yet here I am wondering about the ethicalness of drinking on the job. I mean, I write drunk. I'm pretty inebriated right now as I write this. But who can really say that I'm not working my best? Is that me? Am I the...

Just before waking up I had two really weird thoughts. One was that I had millions of dollars to do with as I pleased. The other was something about.. pheromones and taking a piss.. but the first one was slightly more enjoyable. I dreamt about not having to clean my apartment, I could just throw money at an army of maids and get them to do it. I dreamt about getting to live where I wanted, whenever I wanted. I could visit friends and family whenever. I could use the money to further my career (as either an author or a software developer.. or both.) and I could have all these things. Then a strange thought popped into my head. There was a point when I had millions, and that's when I was playing diablo 3. I had more money than most of my friends had (lucky drop turned into about 6 million gold and I was on cloud nine for a while) And then.. I ended up spending most of it. I realized that.. in order to get more gold I had to invest in myself. I had to use all my resources to ge...

Well. May is over. I tried to write a story a day, but the challenge was a little above me. Ah well. Time to dust off and move on. This month in June I am going to attempt to write another novel as per Camp NaNoWriMo . I succeeded in writing my first (50k word) novel in November and now I'm going to try it again about seven months later. I'm already about a day behind, but I feel like I have a decently interesting story to roll with. That being said... I'm writing in my blog today instead of climb up the word count on the novel. Hm... I think I find the blog an easier writing experience because I'm writing what I see, what I know, what I think, what I feel. It's easy. It's like doodling in the margins of your homework in math class. It's not suppose to mean anything or do anything for you other than to have you use your creativity (the lightning bugs that flare into life on the surface of your brain) instead of using the logic centers. Some people ...

I love the comics on smbc. I'm not sure why, but sometimes I think of concepts for smbc comics that never happened. This next story spun off of one of those ideas. Lucy sat in the waiting room. She arrived early at the Bureau of Reproduction. "There's always a line at the BR. It's what hell must be like," some people joke. She's waiting for the numbers four and two to illuminate on the screen, signifying it is her turn to be served. Today is the day she gets to find out if her and her husband get to have a child. An elderly lady sits down near her. The people seem to be moving at a relatively quick pace. Every now and then she'd hear numbers being called out by an automated system. "Number... TWENTY SEVEN... Please come to the front counter to be served." Lucy turned to the woman next to her, "Hello." The woman nodded politely. "Hello." "So, what number did you pull?" "Forty six." "Ah, y...

Today is gonna be a short post. It's a tough one for me so, here goes. Today I honor the memory of a dear friend of mine, Timothy Lee Rackley, who four years ago today, at 6:30 A.M. CST (approximately one hour from when I'm writing this) took his own life with a bullet to the brain. In his suicide note he had said that he could not fit in with society or what it required of him. He ended his own life instead of living one of misery and/or torment, self-inflicted or otherwise. Sometimes I envy him. I haven't been feeling well since I got out of bed, today. I feel like shit, I'm going through the motions of my life, but I feel beaten and defeated. I feel that I am not where I'm suppose to be. I feel like I'm making the best choices I can but those choices aren't making me happy. I can't explain it. I've been trying so hard to find out what it is I want for my life, but every time I try it ends in failure and depression. I feel like I don't be...

Once there was a dead man. He died just as he had lived, working in front of a computer day in and day out. His heart had finally caught up to his sedentary life style. The smoking and drinking didn't help, at least not for his health. But what finally got him to the end of his life was the work. The work consumed him. Everyday he would roll out of bed. He would walk the twenty two steps to the desk where he worked and he would type. And type. And type. Until he was tired, then he got up, walked those same twenty two steps and slept. On weekends he would drink alone in his apartment and work drunk for as long as he could. Smoke breaks took away from his work so he began smoking from his desk. On the day he was to die he had just finished working, and moved to get up. He stretched his long fingers in a weave until they clicked. He started walking back to bed and on step twenty one he felt an ache in his chest. His mind reeled at the sudden onset of pain. He looked to the dresser n...

Ah Apple. The pinnacle of usability, ease of computing, and price. For a very long time I thought that apple was the opposite of the old phrase, "You get what you pay for." To which I mean, I was not convinced that such a high price tag was indeed worth the ease that the computer gave. I sat around dealing with the small tricks and hacks I needed in order to get windows to do what I wanted. I just accepted that having a development environment that was sometimes wonky, didn't have the power and flexibility of command-line prompts (like unix/linux) with a clean UI that just made sense. For a long time I sat around and hated Mac, blindly and ignorantly. Then I got a new job as an iOS developer. Naturally, I would have to purchase a Mac in order to work as an iOS developer. So, took the time to grab a Mac book pro and have been using it for two days now. ... Holy fucking hell. I'm fairly certain that there is no better computer for development on the market. The OS...