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August 31, 2005
Confusing woman...
Here is an example of a behavior from a woman. Yomiko and I like to get together every once in a while and just hangout. We had plan to get together Wednesday night to do some computer stuff. Yomiko said she was interested Photoshop, so I was going show her some cool Photoshop tricks and maybe play some RO later.
However, Wednesday morning, Yomiko gives me a call being all irate about the price hike on the of gasoline. Part of call was a warning about it costing too much for me to drive to Manchester. I though to myself that the warning was a obvious hint that she did not want to meet this evening but she did not want to be the one making the excuse. So I said that I would be thinking about whether or not I could afford to make the drive and hung up.
When the evening rolled around, I had made plans to run some jobs with SB and watch a DVD later. Then I got the call from Yomiko asking if i would be coming or not. I repeated back to her the excuse she gave me that morning. But for some reason, she sounded disappointed that I would not be able to make it. I am equal opportunity friend, and sense we are just friends, she will get no special treatment over any of my other friends. So I am not going to run off to Manchester after making plans to do stuff with SB. Especially if Yomiko is the one who fed me the excuse to call off the original meeting, effectively canceling the it.
By that time SB and I were at the DVD rental store and I say to him "I just used a natural disaster to get out of a get-together with a girl. I did not expect to be doing that today." I was just hiding the fact that Yomiko just confused the heck out of me.
So did she want to get-together or not? I think Yomiko needs some assertiveness training so she will just ask for the things she wants instead of playing these strange little games.
Posted by binhqx at 10:45 PM | Comments (2)
August 30, 2005
I just like the attention.
I got my teeth done today. One filling redo, and one new filling. I find myself oddly relaxed in the dentist chair. They can be drilling away, but as long as I have a mouth full of Novocain, I could fall asleep in the chair. I find it similar to having my hair cut. I have fallen asleep with someone else still scissoring my hair. I think I just like the attention.
Speaking of attention, do check out the responses to last nights post.
Posted by binhqx at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2005
Learning to live alone?
Sometimes SB gives pieces of advice that I do not agree with. One of them that really gets me is the standard advice he has for a person leaving a relationship. That is: "It is important to learn how to live without another person." Meaning that sometimes a person is constantly attaching themselves to another person and they forget how to be alone. I heard him say this after his younger brother informed us that he broke up with his girlfriend.
As if a person can forget how to not be in a relationship. This sounds a lot like like bullsh*t to me. We are missing critical factors here; How long will it take to lean to be alone? and How do I know when I have been alone long enough? I already know that his answer to these are "until you learn to enjoy single life as much as life as a couple." This makes no sense at all. If the act of being single could be made to be just as enjoyable and fulfilling as being with someone, no one would ever seek a partner. We would all just sit around becoming fat and not reproducing. There is a reason the human being desire to couple, it is critical for our survival as a species and we have been engineered to enjoy it.
His argument sounds more like "you should enjoy a life a celibacy like me because I think I am living life to its fullest without another person." Reeks of pure justification to me.
The only problem is that I am not the type of person to yell "That is total bullsh*t, you just want everyone living the same way you do; an otaku that depends on video-games and the internet to escape reality!" He can live anyway he wants to but when he starts suggesting other people do the same, it really pinches a nerve.
Posted by binhqx at 11:11 PM | Comments (9)
August 28, 2005
Communicating personal identity to yourself.
If you had to think of a words to describe your very core what would it be?
Would you use your personally traits toward other people? Worlds like kind, fare, selfless, selfish, mean, vengeful all describe ones behavior to toward other people. But does it say who you are?
Would you use your job or title to describe you? Saying that you are a plumber, lawyer, programmer, office assistant, or librarian describe what it is you do. But does it say who you are?
Would you use your dominant emotional state to describe you? That you are happy, excited, inspired, depress or angry describes how you feel. But does it say who you are?
Would you use your physical appearance to describe you? Describing your self as attractive, strong, ugly, fat, thin, tall, or short tells what you look like. But does it say who you are?
The point of this exercise is not to build a vocabulary of your description; the point is finding the areas of yourself that you pull these words from. These come from mental structures that where taught to us from birth. We find our identity by finding our location within them and attempt to describe ourselves by communicating that location to other people. However, before we can discuss why this system is flawed, we need to know more about these mental structures.
Human beings are complicated creatures. We build structures in our minds to help us deal with the complexities of contemporary life. Some of these structures are purely utilitarian like verbal and written language. Some of these structures allows us to operate smoothly with other people like morals, personal space, secretes, and lying. Some of these structures allow us to operate within a hierarchical society like social class, private property, jobs, and title. Over time, we see these mental structures as being concrete and unchangeable when in fact they are all simply shared mental concepts that we all believe in.
For example, if a man owns a house on a piece of property we believe that he has certain axioms that go along with it. The house and land are private property that outsiders cannot enter without permission. If he wants to, he can exchange ownership of the property for something of equal value, probably money. How much of the previous statement is physically real and how much is just mental structures? The man, the house, and the land are real. Private property, ownership, permission, exchange ownership, equal value, and money are just concepts. But in modern society we have been blinded to what is real and what is a shared concept.
I am not saying that shared concepts are bad. They allow our race to collectively accomplish things that we could not do otherwise. Rules of our society allow us to live together without killing each other over the limited supplies of natural resources. They offer a degree of protection to our physical bodies and those of our offspring. They allow us to increase the quality of our lives through the controlled acquisition of goods and services. In the end, it allows us to live and reproduces with much more success then our pre-societal ancestors. Making organized society a "good thing" to have.
So back to the original discussion about describing yourself. We tend to use these structures describe ourselves because they are common to all people within the same society. But they are also ambiguous and vary slightly from person to person. The structures only give a clue about the full story. We need to uses these word to figure out what you abilities are.
Lets start with a easy example. A person states that they are wealthy, what does this mean? It means that if they want to or need to, they can amass a larger volume of goods and services by trading in their personnel monetary value. Therefore, what if instead of saying that I am worth 2.6 million dollars, I say that I could have 2.6 million dollars worth of sports cars parked outside by tomorrow morning. Now we are moving from the ream of abstract mental structures to real physical potential.
Any of the descriptive words I used before are translatable into real-world potential. A selfless person will allocate personnel resources (time, money, services) to those who need it without expecting equivalent trade. A plumber will spend has the ability to repair broken plumbing and can be contracted to do so. A depressed person will not be fun to spend time with. A strong person has the abilities to complete difficult physical labor. These may seem like concussions that we make automatically upon hearing the descriptive word, but does a persons potential ability create their identity? No, because there is a big difference between what you can do and what you will do.
That is the missing part of the identity puzzle. The very stuff a identity is made from; your past actions and your future actions. The debate about what a identity is formed from is outside the scope of this blog entry. For this case, lets just use an easy definition for what a personal identity is: The sum of all actions performed within a lifetime. This means that your identity will not be complete until the day you die. Until then, it will be in a permanent state of flux.
So how can personal identity be communicated if it is uncertain until death? I am only 23, I have most of my life to live and there for most of my identity still to be formed. This is true there is no way to have a perfectly accurate identity in the middle of you life, but that does not mean that you can not make a best guess. There are the actions in the future that you want to complete. These are the important thing like having a family, a successful career, and a relaxing retirement. Other people may want nothing more then to bathe in opulent luxury having there cardinal physical need fulfilled constantly. These desires vary from person to person. You may not think directly about them every day, but they are there. These tasks and the subtasks required to fulfill them, get us out of bed in the morning, they pull us through the hard times, and keep us moving forward. This is the framework of our future actions. With it, you can build a identity that is accurate as of right now.
So how can this identity be communicated to other people? It takes a long time to verbally transfer enough information to form a identity. This is why to really get to know someone, you must spend a lot of time with them. However, the title of this entity is “Communicating personal identity to yourself.” You already have all the information you need right in your very own head, but most people have the problem of seeing the forest through the trees. They become jammed up on finding themselves within mental structures or finding physical potential that they never see the big picture until they have already played through most of it.
To beat this you must sit down and do a little organizing in your head. Find all the parts of your life that concerned with finding or changing you location within mental structures and put them aside. These are tools for achieving what you want, not the goal. Then find all the parts of your life that are concerned with creating potential abilities and put them aside. Again, these are tools you are creating for your benefit to achieve what you want, not the goal. You are left with are all the actions that you perform to actually achieve your goals. If you are still not sure what your goals are, use these actions as a compass. They will all add up to some goals somewhere in the future. It is in your best interest to find them.
Once you know your past, present, and potential future, you will now have the tools you need to discover who you are.
Posted by binhqx at 3:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Adding a little philosophy to the mix
I have decided to add a philosophy category to the blog. It will be a place where I can wax poetically of deeper issues of life, the universe and everything. To start, I would like give a dictionary definition of philosophy to provide a framework for this amorphous topic:
philosophy:
...the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence ...
source: New Oxford American Dictionary
I think that philosophy is a fun place to play. It is like a mental fun-house full of strange and exotic items that your mind can romp around with at will.
Posted by binhqx at 2:53 PM | Comments (1)
August 27, 2005
DDR is not enough?!
Let me give you a idea of what my current DDR training regiment is.
I try to do this at often as I can, which usually equates five or six days per week. I try not to go too long without playing as it affects my high scores. I start with a warm-up of 5-6 foot standard songs. Once I feel that my arms and legs have been properly stretched and my hart-rate is risen above resting, I start the clock. This part usually take two or three songs.
For the first 30 min. I play heavy songs, mostly 7 foot with a few 8 foots sprinkled in. Then I pick up a pair of 20 lb. hand weights and play normal songs for 20 minutes. During this part, I lift the weights to the rhythm of the song where it is convenient (whenever I'm properly balanced to lift the weights). So it does nor matter what level song I play, easy songs give me more opportunities to lift while harder songs give me more leg work. This is supposed to give be some upper body workout that regular DDR play usually lacks.
Next I put down the weights and play the next 10 minutes on 7 to 8 foot heavy songs. That gives me a good 60 minutes work out. After that I have "free play" where I just keep playing any songs I want until I get tired or want to stop. This "free play" time is a resent addition to the course. It used to be only 5 - 20 minutes. But lately I have found my self on the dance pad for an additional hour! I do not stop because I feel tired or my legs hurt to much but because I can no longer coordinate to get good scores or it is becoming too late and i need to go to bed.
This deeply concerns me because I have always judged my workout levels by how tired I became or how much my muscles hurt. But now I am not tired or hurting any more. If I wanted to I could just keep playing and playing (although my scores suffer as time goes on). Am I not getting sufficient exercise from this routine to increase my fitness levels and strength?
I may need to examine this closer. Part of the problem is I do not know that my body is doing during the game play. I'm thinking about getting on of those hart-rate monitors that can download data to the PC for analysis. I am also certain that the 20 lb. hand weights have become to light for me. So will will need to upgrade those as well. There are safety concerns about using hand weights. I am not just lifting them up and down in a controlled manor, I'm dancing with them. So i might see if I can find weighted wrist straps to wear instead.
Posted by binhqx at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)
Backfilling blog entries.
It is no big secret that sometimes add blog entries to dates after they occur. This usually happens because I sometimes do not finish entry on the same day I start it. Very commonly, i will start one and be distracted be for I finish. I later come back to those and wrap them up. Then I post them on the date I started it.
I say this because i just finished writing about the events of August 19 - 21. It can be found at "One night I spent a weekend in Hartford Connecticut."and I did not want any one to miss this.
Posted by binhqx at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2005
Someone ate my road!
I was driving home from work last night when I discovered that someone ate the road I live one. Literally, every last chunk of asphalt has been striped from the roadway leaving nothing but a bumpy dirt road. I was like "WTF! There was a perfectly good road here four hours ago, but now I'm down to a dirt track."
I am guessing that the town us planing to rebuild the road from the ground up. Re-grading the soil then putting down new asphalt for a smoother road. I wonder when the town was expecting us to find out about this? When we got to the end of our driveways and discovered that there was no road there to drive on?
This whole thing is a reminder about the impermanence of the physical world. When half mile of road can just vanish in a few hours, it makes a guy think.
Posted by binhqx at 11:49 AM | Comments (1)
August 25, 2005
What to do with a spider dream?
(Then I reached for the albino tarantula... continued)
I did a little research on the following subjects in dreams: albinos and spiders.
Spiders:
The spider is usually symbolic of an unkind and sneaky individual ... A spider's web represent[s] entanglement and the general complexities of life" and "The spider and his web may be calling for an integration of the dream[er]'s personality leading to greater self-awareness and resulting in feelings of completeness.
source: http://spiderdreams.tripod.com/spiderdreams.html
Albinos:
To see an albino in your dream, represents purity or eternal life. You need to be more accepting and tolerant.
source: http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/a2.htm
The second part of the dream involved a allegory of being bitten for attempting to help. Then I prepare for the next one and am bitten a second time, repeating the same mistake.
I think somewhere in my life there is a albino tarantula. A person who is both sneaky and evasive who I pursue as pure. I am intolerant of their faults this person has and attempted to help them. But in return they hurt me for my actions. The second tarantula is a premonition of the future. This time I will be prepared for the fangs, but it will prevent me from being bitten again. Someone I want to help will be the one to hurt me.
I think I know who the first albino tarantula is, but I have yet to find the second one. So how do I fix this? I could wear thicker gloves to stop the bite. Or I could stop picking up tarantulas.
Posted by binhqx at 7:49 PM | Comments (1)
August 24, 2005
Then I reached for the albino tarantula...
These are just some interesting topics that my brain has been pondering in its free time:
## Dreams ##
I had another dream with a prominent animal in it. This time it was a pair of albino tarantulas. It is strange, because from everything I read, albino tarantulas do not exist. Anyway, these two tarantulas were as white as the new fallen snow and were sitting on a bed. I decided to move them because they would likely be crushed by anyone getting into the bed. I picked up the first one and it promptly bit down on my hand and injected some type of venom. I thought to my self, "you dumb spider, I'm doing this for you!" I shook the tarantula loose and put on a glove to pick up the second one. This one did the same as the first and managed to bit right through the glove and inject more venom into my hand. And again I thought to myself "you dumb spider, I'm trying to save you and this id how you repay me?" My now my hand was completely numb and the numbness was crawling up my arm. When I woke up my hand was still numb, but it was because I had rolled over on top of it and pinched the nerve.
I'm not sure what this dream means, I will need to think about it some more.
## DDR ##
I recently found that a hour of DDR is not enough to tire me out. Now the session goes for a hour fifteen minutes to a hour twenty minutes. I wonder if this is because I have developed more stamina or I'm better at conserving energy when playing? Sense the entire purpose of me playing DDR is to burn calories, if I'm using less and less to play the same amount of time, it is not beneficial to me. It would be interesting to see how efficacy DDR can be played and how that effects the level of exercise.
## Self knowledge ##
I have been thinking about exercises that could help people become more aware of themselves. I need to write some more about what I believe to be important self knowledge and how to attain it.
But I'm sleepy now and want to go to bed.
Posted by binhqx at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2005
I, for one, welcome our new Jabber overlords
Tomorrow is a big day for the instant messaging community. Google will be launching their public Jabber service. Most consumers will see this as just another IM network, but it really means so much more. This is the end of the proprietary IM protocol era.
That is the coolness of Jabber, one can connect to as few or as many Jabber hosts as they want. You no longer need to be running a clint for each IM network you run on. Any Jabber server can communicate with any other. Additionally, anyone can create a Jabber client. If you have seen the latest versions of AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, you will see tons of ads cluttering up the interface. A global Jabber network will get rid of that. If you do not want to see the ads, just use a different Jabber client.
I foresee all the major IM networks being forced to create Jabber gateways to their clients or else their population will start to shrink.
In the end, we will get a highly distributed IM network similar to email. Actually, the evolution of IM has been very much like email. Years ago, AOL, Compuserve, and Applelinks could only send and receive email on their own networks. It was not until the standardization of the smnp protocol that allowed mail to be transfered between networks that email became universal.
Some people say that we should not be so trusting of Google to handle all of our communications, but all long as they keep there services good and priorities open, it is hard to dislike them.
I see Jabber and its protocol descendants to be the path to ubiquitous realtime communication over the internet.
Posted by binhqx at 9:16 PM | Comments (3)
August 22, 2005
SIP frustrations
Some times this VoIP stuff can get me really frustrated. Handsets, ATAs, proxies, and gateways from different venders that all do everything a little differently. I am stuck in the middle trying to integrate them with a budget of $0.
When my stuff breaks or is in-compliant, I can fix it. But most of the time its other people equipment that is not working. When I notify them of a problem, they ether do not care or will fix it in the next release months from now.
I hate telling customers that their phone system is broken and there is nothing I can do to fix it. Grrrr...
Posted by binhqx at 6:21 PM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2005
One night I spent a weekend in Hartford Connecticut.
I just got back from Hartford Connecticut. We had a really fun single night even though we spent the entire weekend there. I'l let you know why a bit later.
We left from Manchester. In attendance where Jack, Darrell, Nick, Heather and myself. The drive is about four ours depending on the traffic. We past the time with lively conversation and good company. Usuly on trips like these we can always expect to get a little lost in the city. But this time there was no problem finding the Crowne Plaza Hotel. It is clearly visible from the highway so it almost felt like cheating when we got there quickly. Checked in, settled down, pre-gamed, then headed to find some fun.
The Crowne Plaza offers a shuttle service that usually brings people back and forth to the airport, but if you ask, that will also drop you off at various places around the city. The drivers are very knowledgeable about the area and can help you find what you are looking for. A friend of a friend suggested a place called a bar with no name, but the driver said it was a kinda hip-hop place. The driver suggested that we might better enjoy a rock/sports place, so he took us the Brickyard Cafe. I give made props to our driver because he picked the right spot for us. The Brickyard Cafe is a really cool place with three floors of different activities; lounge, dance, music/sports.
We got there around 9:00 PM, which was still early by their standers. The place was empty of customers, so we grabbed a pool table and listened to the band setup and warmup. Getting to a bar early is a really good idea. You can grab the best spots, talk to the bartender about the goings-ons, and generally explore around. By the time other patrons arrive at the establishment, you are a experienced veteran of the place.
The bartender working at Brickyard must have been one of the most knowledgeable one we have ever met. Heather's favorite game to place whenever we go to a new place is called "Stump the Bartender." She comes up with these obscure mix drink names and challenges the bartender to make them. She usually never losses because she knows a few zingers of mixed drinks. But this guy seemed to know them all. Not only that, but he would make the drinks with such theatrics (throwing glasses, crazy poring, and he never spilled a drop) that you felt you should give applause after every drink. The quality of drinks where superb as well. For example I ordered a Grateful Dead that absolutely knocked my socks off. It is great when you can spend a entire evening getting "nicely drunk" from just one drink order.
The band playing that night was Tenet. There music was not superb, but there function was to keep spirits high and they did that just fine. At the back of the third floor where we had free-throw baskets setup so we could show off some mad basketball skills. Of course the quality of these skills went down hill as the night dragged on.
I was enjoying my drink, and my pool game, and the company; when Jack came back from the bathroom saying that he took at swing at somebody and knocked them down. You have to know that while I was going for "nicely drunk," Jack was going all out on getting "absolutely smashed"and by that time he had achieved it. We got worried at first that Jack had just knocked out some local gang leader, at least that is what he had made it out to sound like. But we eventually found out that he had just taken a swing at the bathroom attendant who wanted to know if Jack wanted a paper towel. We apologized to the attendant and gave him a big tip in the hope that he would forget the entire incident. At this point we all felt that we had overstayed out welcome and we should be moving on.
We pushed our way into the street and stated playing the inebriated street wandering game. That is where we wander about for a bit asking good good Samaritan where we could find other interesting venues to visit. At some point during this, I was having difficulty understanding a current conversation. So I turned around to face the others while continuing to walk backwards. I did this for a little too long because I had not noticed a large flowerpot on the sidewalk and ran into it with the back of my knees. I feel onto the pot and looked like a complete imbecile doing it.
The next place that we graced with presents was another restaurant/bar called Mohegan Sun. The whole place had a faux native american theme to it that was mildly amusing. I wrote my impressions about the casino here. In one of the gambling rooms there was a animetronic wolf perched on a rock. It would occasionally look around the room or wage its tail with stilted mechanical motions. On rare occasions, the wolf would look to the ceiling and produce a sickly howl. This even was supposed to convey the animals wild spirit, but to me it looked as if a air-conditioning malfunction had frozen the wolf's reproductive organs to the rock and he was howling in his eternal torment.
I will admit that I'm a terrible gambler. I only make bets on things I am sure to win. So when I saw the odds of all the games, I could not find any that I could bring myself to play. Nick had some moderate success on the slots and Jack made thirty dollars in blackjack, so some good did come out of it. The biggest mistake of the afternoon was the decision to eat at the buffet. The food was on pair for the price, but by the time we got back to the hotel we all felt a little funny. The effects where worse for Darrell and Nick who where sill suffering the maladies of the previous night.
We did not leave the hotel again till quite late. Around 9:00 PM we though a light diner would do us well before bed. Jack and Heather had started drinking their "pre-gaming" supplies earlier and where well inebriated by the time we got to the restaurant. We choose City Steam for diner, it was close to the hotel and was pretty good on the previous night. The menu advertised a chicken sandwich that they calmed was their most popular item. We thought a chicken sandwich would make good comfort food for those of us who where still not feeling well. So we each ordered one, but when the sandwiches arived, we found that they had battered and fried the chicken in something that did not taste that good. We could have sent them all back and got something else, but we had lost the will to fight and made due with what we had. Jack and Heather continued to get smashed while we sipped on our diet cokes.
I did not realize it at the time, but I was getting angry at Jack. He was drinking more and more even though the rest of the group did not feel well enough to drink with him. I realized that he was not drinking as a social activity with friends, but instead he was drinking to get drunk. This behavior violates my personal morals and watching a close friend do it was upsetting to me. I could not verbalize my self so clearly at the time and instead just did not say anything.
After dinner Darrell was feeling really bad. The light diner did nothing to help his constitution. He went strait back to the hotel with Heather. Nick wanted to find a convenience store to buy something to settle his stomach, I wanted to get some fresh air, and Jack was falling of his buss and started to become grumpy and disoriented. Nick and I decided we would hit the streets to find a convenience store and keep a eye on Jack. I may have been angry at Jack, but I was still concerned about his safety.
We hit the streets of downtown Hartford. Right way, Jack's agitation started wearing on us. He kept wondering off or trying to loose us. After a few blocks, he just sat down on the curb and refused to walk any further with us. We had a bit of an argument, but his senseless complaining eventually frustrated us. The street where brightly lit and there where still many people around, so we caved and let Jack be by himself. Nick and i called back to the hotel informing them of the situation and made sure that we had a accurate description of Jack we could give to the police if necessary.
Nick and I never did find a convenience store anywhere in the downtown, so we returned to the hotel. Nick found a vending machine that dispensed Tums. After taking a few of them he sauntered off to bed. I stayed up and watched some television.
Eventually Jack returned to the hotel. His head had started to clear and was a bit more coherent now. Apparently while he was wandering the city, he was forced under duress to buy something he did not want to. I am not at liberty to say what that was. Perhaps now he understands why we did not want to leave him on the side of the road. We talked some more, and he admitted that he was not angry at us. Next summer he will be getting married and moving where ever the army sends his significant other. Jack was felling afraid of all the unknown life changes this would bring with it and this fear manifested as anger toward us this evening. Perhaps that is why he was drinking alone, to escape that fear or to confront it. Eventually Jack went to bed and so did I.
The next morning everyone was feeling much better. But it was now Sunday, and we had to get home. We checked out and started the car ride home. It was a fun and education weekend over all. I'm sure there is a moral to this story, but right now all I can think of is "don't eat at the Mohegan Sun buffet."
Posted by binhqx at 4:14 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2005
Live from Mohegan Sun Casino
(This blog entry was prerecorded live at the Mohegan Sun Casino on the back of a napkin from one of the restaurants.)
I never knew of what "a place that was designed to suppress all conscious thought" was until a came here. Everything about this place in muted, the lights, the colors, even the shapes of the faux native American architecture. No mater where one goes, there is a constant background noise of hundreds of slot machines mumbling out of synchronization. Each one being powered by the feeble will of some old woman.
This place is packed to the hilt with old people, their smell permeates everything. The noxious miasma that fills the rooms can only be produced by bus loads old people being packed into a building with a unlimited supply cigarets. I'm sure some where in this building there are sacks of social security checks that have been signed over to the Mohegan Nation. These people do not have many years left to live and are vulnerable to ideas like "wining it big" and "fabulous prizes" without knowing the odds involved in playing. To me, this casino is tantamount to organized grave robbery.
I, myself, an a terrible gambler. I do not make bets I am not sure to win. So far, I do not like the odds on any of the games. I do not think I will be playing any of them. But I am glad I came here, I have always wanted to see a money mill in action. If I ever want to make a ton of money, I will not go to a casino, I will build one.
Posted by binhqx at 1:32 PM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2005
Party weekend!
I am going out with friends for a weekend of debauchery. So there will not be any more entries till I get back.
See you knuckle heads later.
Posted by binhqx at 1:07 PM | Comments (1)
August 18, 2005
Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?
I find when I write and speak that I enjoy using simile, allegory, and hyperbole. I find these writing tool can make dry or uninteresting topics more fun to write and read. They also give a bit of a poetic feature as they better convey complex sets of feelings and emotions.
But I recently found that sometimes a allegory will just break down. For example: Yomiko was asking me how my search for a new girlfriend was going. I told here that I had no luck yet but was taking delight in the process. She did not understand why, so I gave her the brief allegory "The joy of traveling is the journey, not the destination." I was trying to get across that it is important to enjoy the process and not be fixated on the result. But that statement did nothing but confuse her even more. I realized that our current state of mind was so different that the entire concept would need to be explained verbosely and I did not feel like doing it right then.
So what I am wondering is how do you make sure that a allegory will function properly? Is there any way to make sure that a statement would create the same image in two peoples minds. Or is that just the curse of trying to be poetic? I will need to think about these thing some more.
Posted by binhqx at 4:15 PM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2005
Managa discussion group, part 2
What if you had a discussion group... continued.
I am happy to announce that the second meeting of the Barnes & Noble of Manchester NH Manga reading group was a success. We got the required six people to continue this monthly reading group.
The topic of this month was Cowboy Bebop. These groups are supposed to be centered around the books, but because Cowboy Bebop is a franchise we expanded our dialog to include the television series and movie. We had lively discussions about favorite characters, why the series is so popular, and the greatest Bebop mystery of all; what was Spike's fate at the end of the series? Overall it was a lot of fun and I can not wait to do it again next month.
I found the age ranges of the participants involved to be interesting. They ranged from a pair of high-school freshmen to 28 year old working class guys. Manga's diverse appeal becomes obvious when common ground can be found amongst these people. This broad range is the factor that is allowing manga sales in the USA to skyrocket. It is easy to track these types of marketing trends just my watching the week to week content if the shelves. For example, I recently counted the the number of CLAM titles on the manga shelves. I found no fewer then ten series being sold from this one shouju publisher. For this I can ascertain that the greatest buyer of manga are female. This is not a terribly surprising statistic. It is just interesting to see it reflected by the market so quickly.
So speaking of shouju manga, next months topic of discussion will be Saiyuki. It is a little outside my usual reading habits, but I think I can wing it. If any one is interested in attending just be at Barnes & Noble of Manchester NH at 7:00 PM on September 21. Everyone who is interested in manga is welcome.
Posted by binhqx at 11:54 PM | Comments (2)
August 16, 2005
Marvels of Modern Dental Hygiene
Earlier this month, I had a appointment at the dentist for a routine cleaning. When I go the the dentist, I like to play a little game with the hygienist. She will ask me if I have been flossing, and I will pretend that I never hear of the concept before.
I will admit that I am a habitual non-flosser. Any time I floss I see an image of the wood-shop scrollsaw easily slicing through a pine board. The floss feels just as coarse as the saw blade, just imagine what it would do to my soft gums if it where pull to quickly against them!
On this dental appointment I was being verbally chastised by the hygienist for my poor brushing habits. In my defense, I explained that earlier this week, some one had borrowed my usual toothpaste. The only toothpaste left in the house was the watermelon flavored children's kind. When the package says watermelon, it is just a description of what its creators wanted it to taste like. The bottle should be labeled "Surgery, gooey syrup flavor that only children under the age of seven and hummingbirds will enjoy." So with that in my mouth, I had a difficult withstanding the usual thorough brushing I had been accustom too. I could tell from the look the hygienist gave me, she was not felling much sympathy.
At the end of the aggressive tooth picking session, instead of once again demonstrating the proper use of floss, she suggested I try one of the latest breakthroughs in dental hygiene. They are called STIM-U-DENTs and could effectively remove plaque and daily food buildup just as well as flossing. She swore by there effectiveness and there ease of use compared to flossing and they can be used while doing other activities such as watching television!
Well I had to try them, with a sales pitch like that who would not? The hygienist gave me a sample box of twenty five STIM-U-DENTs. I could not tell from the front of the box was that they where mint flavored and little else, so I immediately opened it up to gaze upon this amazing dental technology. Inside I found twenty five little sticks of wood. Yes, that is what a STIM-U-DENT is, a small triangular shaped stick of balsa wood with a tapered end.
I wonder what genus Johnson & Johnson came up with this idea and more importantly, who was awarded the patent? I can imagine that human beings have been picking food out from between their teeth with bits of wood for as long they had opposable thumbs to do it with. But now the the ADA has stamped it with their seal of approval, these bits of wood are now modern dental hygiene devises!
Or perhaps this is just another example of a technology coming full circle. What is old is new again.
Posted by binhqx at 12:53 PM | Comments (2)
August 15, 2005
Open Directory and Windows Server in harmony?
Sometimes we do things for friends that we would not normally do for our selves. From time to time a friend will ask for a favor like "could you hide this in your bag if the cops come by again?" or "All I need you to do is help me move the body from the trunk to the ditch" or "can you help me setup the Macintosh lab at the middle school for centralized management?" Next time I will pass on the last one.
That was the plan, setup all the iMacs in the lab at the middle school to authenticate and mount home directories from the server. It sounded easy. We would use Open Directory on a OS X Server to act as password and directory host. Then we found one small proviso, they wanted to host the home directories on a Windows 2003 host. I thought "Okay, OS X has native SMB support, this should be easy once we figure out the Open Directory stuff."
The first task of the evening was to setup a proper OS X Server host. Normal procedure, take the existing broken OS X Server, backup all the files, and remake it properly. I tried to maintain as many of the old settings as posable. One of them being the appletalk host name being "EES_Server." The server took EES_Server as the appletalk host name but it wanted another name for the overall host name. I attempted to use EES_Server again (no need to give the same machine different names) for that but it rejected the underscore. So I just dropped underscore and made it EESServer. That decision would haunt us later on.
A quick study of the Open Directory documentation proved to be enough to setup our single domain system. We set that part up and were perfectly happy with the results. User accounts could be setup on the domain hosted on the server and the iMacs would happily authenticate against them.
The next step was to setup the accounts to mount up a SMB share. A little Googling found this info. We tried a test setup using the directions from the site, and it worked well using AFP. So all we would need to do is change the "afp://host" string to "smb://host". But no matter what we did, the iMacs would not connect to the Windows host.
Evenly it got late and we threw in the towel for the night. One the way the to the ranch, I remembered that host name of the windows box was EESServer, exactly the same as the OS X Server. It had just been a lingering thought earlier but I did not pay much attention to it. The two systems had the same host name, but where on completely different network protocols. I did not believe at the time that the two could possibly conflict. But then I remembers the schema OS X used to automount server. All servers are attached to the /network/Servers/
But it is too late to fix it now. We will have to try again later. I retrospect, the system should be able to work, it just needs a little better forethought then we had at the time.
Posted by binhqx at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2005
There is nothing more boring then listening to other peopls dreams.
Dreamy Saturday Afternoon continued.
I do not know if I will be posting any more dreams. Everybody says that is is boring to read about other peoples dreams, and I do not want a boring blog. I am taking a vow to never post a entry containing just a dream description. If I do post about a dream, it will be part of some other message or contain some critical analysis providing insight to my personal psychology.
Now to find out what that last dream meant.
The dream its self appears to be a standard lycanthrope(Werewolf) archetype. It has all the elements of losing ones humanity and taking on beast-like physical and mental attributes. But I did some searching around the internet to see if other people had similar experiences and found that my dream lacked one common element: fear. Many people dream about being chased by werewolfs, others dream about becoming werewolfs and being afraid of own animal nature. These are synonymies with the Eastern European version of werewolfs. In these regions, wolfs and other larger predators are feared and associated with evil.
My dream is contextually closer to the Native American view of wolfs and other large predators (coyotes, cougars, bears, hawks, etc. ). This was probably because the natives had to share resources with their predatory neighbors. In this relationship it was most important to understand them and learn from them. Instead of fearing them, they respected wolf's predatory skills. They became objects of admiration and respect.
Perhaps this is the the meaning of this dream. I believe myself to have some type of inner power. Not physical power, but the power to travel across the world and effect the individuals I come in contact with. As master of my domain, I move without fear of conseqences. Perhaps I seek admiration from other people who witness my actions.
But one dream interpretation is just as valid as the next. I will have to get other peoples interpretation and see what they think.
Posted by binhqx at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2005
Dreamy Saturday Afternoon
Sometimes when I have noting important to do, I like to spend the day just dreaming. I just lay in bead with some unobtrusive music and let my mind drift. I think of all kinds of things, but eventually I slip into that area between sleep and awake where whatever I think of becomes real. I call it recreational dreaming. It is a ability that I have worked on for quite a long time. I find it can only do it if I am completely relaxed and have urgent need to do anything, so I usually save it for slow weekend afternoons.
It is like traveling into ones own mind where reality can be constructed and played out like a game. It starts out as a idea, then that idea manifests its self visually, and then the world takes on a life of its own and I am just a part of it. It is a lot of fun really.
I remember one I had to day: I was thinking about running and soon found myself running along a road. I still new it was a dream, so I wanted to know just how fast I could run. I ran faster and faster until I could not push hard enough angst the road surface to propel me forward any faster. My shoes just could not get the traction and slid across the road.
So took my shoes off and dug my toes into the road surface. It was like I somehow had the strength to push right into the asphalt like it was soft soil. I kneeled over like a sprinter on his mark. I then dug my finger into the asphalt and grabbed hold of it. Then like a sprinter starting a race, I leaped forward at amazing speed. It was as if I was not the one moving. Instead, I had grabbed hold of the ground and was now pushing it beneath me.
On hands and feet, I galloped, grabbing hold of the ground pulling it beneath me. But it was not just the road I could run on. Walls, buildings, cars, anything I landed on I could dig into with my hands and feet and push behind me. I traveled for miles, down roads, through houses, across buildings. I traveled down a crowded highway, the car roofs crumpled in my hands like tinfoil as I leaped from one vehicle to the next.
By now I had forgotten it was a dream and I was caught up in a reality where I was stronger and faster then anyone else. No longer a man, I was a beast driven by instinct and hunger. I was being chased (probably because of the trial of destruction I left) but I felt no fear. I could keep moving for ever without tiring. No one could ever catch me.
Dreams about having personal power are nice.
(Update:2005-08-14)
I would just like to say; that was a weird entry.
Posted by binhqx at 8:26 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2005
I'm back from CT.
The trip went well, we got done everything that needed to be. The trips back and forth where long. We practically had to drive to New York City and back. I did the navigation, so there was no chance of getting get lost. Some of the maps I was using did not have the resolution to tell exactly how the highways connected together, so that made for some hairy situations.
But I was perfectly content to just sit back and watch FireFly the entire time. I must say, having a few hours of video to watch really helps to pass the time. The only thing you have to deal with is other passengers who think they are having a conversation with them. When in trueth, you have them entirely drowned out with your head phones.
The motel room was "nice." It had all for walls intact and air-conditioning permanently set to the comfort level of penguins. The one big plus was free wireless internet. So we could get online, but we were too beat to use it. We checked in just after midnight and had to get up at 8:00 am, so there was little time for recreational net usage.
The strange thing was, the motel was very basic (no frills at all), but the parking lot was filled with expensive looking yuppie vehicles. I guess after spending all the money on the cars, they needed to skimp on temporary accommodations. There must have been a game in town or something, the motel was booked solid with people wearing all kinds of sports logo emblazoned clothing.
There where three of us and only two beds in the room. We had accounted for this by bringing one of those inflatable aerobeds. I must say that it worked surprisingly well. It inflated from a rechargeable pump and then the pumps spins around to suck the are out when you are done. cool! This products get my seal of approval.
Posted by binhqx at 7:30 PM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2005
Going on a business trip.
I have been drafted to go on a busness trip with my boss and friend/co-worker SB. I am not at liberty to disclose the reason or content of the meeting, but I can say it will be held in lovely Greenwich, Connecticut. It will be an overnight, so we are books in a luxurious, two star, Super 8 motel. I think we will be lucky to get basic cable on our room.
I live in New Hampshire, so Greenwich Connecticut will be a bit of a trip by road. But I have a little something to fill the time, the entire FireFly series! So with a laptop and pile for DVDs I'm happy for hours.
I never got to watch FireFly when it was on TV due to its bad time slot and subsequent early cancelation. I saw pieces of a few episodes, and what I saw looked interesting. Everyone says it it a space western in the spirit Cowboy bebop. Now I am more excited about the trip then I am about the meeting,
Posted by binhqx at 2:04 PM | Comments (1)
Small change to my workout program.
I am trying a small change in my workout program. Up till now I timed my entire workout session to be one hour. Now I will start the one hour only after I have achieved 60% to 80% of my target hart-rate. So now my entire workout is an hour five minutes to hour fifteen minutes.
I think maintaining the level of output for the entire hour will increase my energy utilization significantly. I am hoping to see accelerate performance results (better high scores) over the next month or two.
Posted by binhqx at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2005
Why I do not play Worlds of Warcraft much anymore.
In the pseudo religion of Church of Scientology there is a concept known as a Suppressive Person. A suppressive person is someone who impedes ones personal progress. It is an interesting concept. I bet we can all think of one or two people in our lives that we would be better off not interacting with. Sometimes they annoy us, sometimes they wast our time, and sometimes they get us to do things that are not in our best interests.
Note that once a person has been identified as a suppressive person, they are now Fair Game, which means that all Scientologist should go out of there way to harass and damage them anyway posable. That is just the tip of a very strange iceberg that is Scientology, and just one of the reasons I think Scientologists are crazy and dangerous.
But I am not sure Scientology has it right. It is not the person who is being detrimental, it is the actions you take because of them. Unless you are forced under duress, no one can make you do anything you do not want to. So I propose that instead of identify suppressive persons in you life, instead one should identify suppressive behaviors that one exhibits. These are the things we do on a day to day bases that hurt our personal growth in the long term. A good example of this would be alcohol or drug abuse.
I would like to identify on of my suppressive behaviors right now, Worlds of Warcraft. This game appears innocent enough, a simple strategy role-playing game. But what they do not list on the box is:
WARNING! This game will consume every waking hour of you life. You will play it anytime you can and sometimes you can not. You will work only to support the monthly fee and internet connection the game depends on. You will no longer have time for friend in real life. You will find their nagging for attention to be a constant annoyance. You will alienate the people closest to you because they do not fit into your new in-game reality. You will sit on your ass for hours on end, skipping proper meals and getting fatter on junk food. The game will enslave your mind to toil with its incomprehensible mechanics. In the end you will find the game to be no fun what so ever, instead you will play only because the game has a unbreakable hold on your entire reality.
I am not kidding about this. Now when I look back and think about all the hours I put into it, I realize that Worlds of Warcraft is nothing more then a enormous time sink. You feed it your time, energy, and life; and it gives you nothing in return. This would be okay if I really had nothing better to do, but the truth is, I do have better things to do. I could be reading or drawing or creating new ideas or score some chicks or anything that produces something that benefits me.
I will admit that Worlds of Warcraft ate an enormous part of my life that I will never be getting back. If I had the choice, I would have avoided it entirely. I will still play socially, pick up a CTF game with friends for a few hours, but I do not let level or item acquisition control my life any more. This is one suppressive behavior that I am taking control of, it no longer controls me.
Posted by binhqx at 12:52 AM | Comments (4)
August 9, 2005
Internet Television, Take two.
If you are a OS X user, do I have a treat for you. Check out http://participatoryculture.org/ and download DTV. The software is a simple video downloader, but it is really something more then that. It is a application of a new idea in what internet television will be.
The old idea was users would sit back and watch the same video stream. It totally did not work. The bandwidth limitation and poor quality content prevented it from ever being widely accepted. But now we live in the world of Tivo and video on demand, where the end user chooses where and when to watch. Now that is something the internet is good at.
So we use RSS for announcements and bittorrent for distribution. We end up with a way to quickly distribute new video media to a enormous population. This is the first of its kind, but I doubt it will be the last. There is big money to be made here, fame and fortune will go to whoever makes this work the best.
It will certainly be interesting to watch.
Posted by binhqx at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
August 8, 2005
DDR, video gaming for better heath.
It is no big secret that I have been playing Dance Dance Revolution (or more specifically StepMania) now for for about five months. When I started, I desided, I would not do it just as a weight loss activity, I would do it for fun and overall physical fitness. In keeping with that paradigm, I vowed to not weigh myself until I absolutely had to (which will probably be at my next physical).
I have been really happy with my progress. After only five months, with a few setbacks, I am playing seven foot songs in heavy mode.
I suggest anyone who wishes to play buy a foam dance pad. I have purchased three of them from Komusa, and they have worked splendidly. Any dance pad that can withstand a 220+ pound man jumping up and down on it is good in my book. I use StepMania because I can load it up with song from throughout the DDR library. With 360+ songs at my disposal, it is hard to not find something fun to play.
But I can not exactly hide from the fact that I am loosing weight. I end up hearing comments almost on a constant basis that I look better. I also keep hearing about the "old binhqx" and the "new binhqx," as if there is some outdated version of me sitting in a closet some where. But the most stunning difference I have seen is in my wardrobe. I have always worn baggy shirts and pants so, I did not think much of it when I found I needed a smaller belt to keep my pants from falling off. It really hit me when I found my underwear no longer fit. I have thrown out underwear for many reasons over the years but never because they were too big for me.
I also like to spread the word of DDR's effectiveness to other people who are in the same situation I am. Over weight, terrible diet, hate to exercise, but some how DDR is different. It really is a game that one can play each day, and see analytical proof that you are getting better. And as you get better, the difficulty and physical requirements increase. This keeps the game fresh and challenging for a long time. But I will not say that it is easy. DDR is a hard game to master. It takes physical and mental discipline to reach the highest levels. And that is where I am aiming for, to take pride in my DDR playing ability.
Perhaps it sounds silly. But it gets me off the couch and onto the dance pad, and that is what really maters.
Posted by binhqx at 10:13 PM | Comments (5)
August 7, 2005
No entries today.
I like to pull excuses out of various religions to justify my selfish actions. So today, I am not writing because it is the lord's Sabbath. So to be more god-like, I am going to take a nap...
ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz.........
Posted by binhqx at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
August 6, 2005
For whom the blog tolls.
I interesting discussion at a favorite site of mine sparked an interesting question: Who are blogs written for?
Sometimes, it seems that blogs are like mental sewerage of the internet. A place where all the uselessness and cognitive rubbish flows down to when it has nowhere else to go. It is that images that can give blogs bad reputations. But I have also seen blogs used as a powerful tool for the rapped distribution of information from any source. It is really just another tool for anyone to put out there words for the world to take.
I can only answer this question for myself; this blog is written for me. I write it for a variety of reasons. I use it as a place to vent my frustrations that occur in my day to day life. I use it as a place to show off my works. I use it as a place to practice my underdeveloped writing skills. I use it as a place gather my thoughts. I use it as a place record interesting events. And lastly, I use it to express myself freely.
But if it was only for me, why post it in a place where the world can see it? It can be used to keep track of what I am up to, or things I think are important. Some times instead of explaining a situation to somebody new, I can just direct them here and they can brief themselves. It can help me not need to repeat myself when I am trying to spread a story.
The truth is, I like the idea of other people taking interest with my life. Or perhaps the things I do and learn can be helpful to other people. But in the end, I just what to effect the minds of other people in a positive way.
The next question is, who should be reading this stuff?
It is in the wired, so anyone can read it. But the internet provides a thin the cloak of anonymity that keeps me just another faceless voice. If someone wanted to, they could probably figure-out who I am. Actually, I would like to meet anyone who would put that level of time and energy into learning more about me. But I am mostly boring, so that is unlikely to happen.
But what about the people I know in real life. The ones who know me and read the blog. Should ones parents know the intimate details of ones love life? What would your boss think if he found out everything you do at home? There is a very careful line to walk, too much information given out could lead to disaster.
On the other side of the coin. Letting other people see all sides of you lets them understand you better. Then we communicate with other people, we show them the face we want them to see. But that gives a only partial image of you as an entire person. Giving others the ability to read and comprehend the entire person allows for a whole new level of understanding.
So a blog in like a sword with a few shat edges sticking out here and there. It is so new, no one actually knows how to wield it. So right now we all need to be a little careful.
Posted by binhqx at 1:54 PM | Comments (1)
August 5, 2005
Mutiple VoIP devices behind the same NAT, oh the agony!
VoIP and Network address translation (NAT) are two technologies that are at odds with each other. Any VoIP devices that wants to receive incoming calls must be able to receive signals originating form the outside. While NAT is designed make the best of the limited availability if IP numbers by hiding network devices from the out side.
The way the world has found to get around this conundrum is using protocols like STUN that allow a network devices to know the public IP address of its NATing router. Then it opens a UDP port to the VoIP host and notifies it of how the VoIP client can be reached. By occasionally "tickling" the UDP port, the NATing router will leave the port open for the VoIP host to send signals to the client. This, of course, only applied to NATing router that actually supports STUN.
The system works well and is deployed very wildly. But what if two VoIP clients are behind NATing router? Remember that all UDP/IP ports have a originating port and a destination port. The originating port is what is opened on the NATing router. The standard port for SIP signaling (the protocol I use) is 5060. So when two SIP VoIP clients attempt to open a UDP port to the host using the default port, only one of the clients will be allowed to keep the port open. So in the end, one phone will work, and the other one will not.
The easy solution for this is to configure each SIP client to use a different originating port. But that would involved walking a customer through a procedure where they are most likely break everything. An alternate solution would be for the SIP client to randomly chose a hight number UDP port to originate from. The ATA that we had previously used supported port randomization. But that ATA became deprecate and unsupported by the vender. When I finally got a hold of the new ATA we will be using, I found out that it did not have the ability to port randomize, and the development team had never even heard of that feature.
So I made a strong argument to one of the dev team members detailing the feature and the scenarios it comes into play. They said they would add it to the feature request list. I will report back when they add it. This will be their support test.
In their defense, the port randomize was the only missing feature I found. Everything else is just hunky-dory.
Posted by binhqx at 2:21 PM | Comments (0)
And more site updates.
I added a new category called personal to the site. There I can live out my personal drama without tainting too many other categories.
Here is something funny I found:
blog
noun a weblog : blogs run by twenty-something Americans with at least an unhealthy interest in computers.
( source: New Oxford American Dictionary OS X )
This was what I found in my OS X 10.4 dictionary. I thought it was just a easter-egg in the PC version. But when I went to the book store to verify that, I found it in the text version as well. I guess the New Oxford American Dictionary do not like bloggers very much.
And I added more pictures. These are from Boston.
Posted by binhqx at 9:32 AM | Comments (0)
August 4, 2005
Getting back on my feet.
I maybe saying "Oh, I'm over her" and "we are good friends now", but I'm still finding Yomiko is on my mind a lot. I guess I can not "just wash that girl right out of my hair." So I find myself in a bit of a quandary, do I go out and immediately and find someone to fill in the hole? Or do I keep to myself for a while and let this thing heal over?
A hole is something that the universe and myself both hate. The second law of thermodynamics describes how the universe attempts to fill in all holes. Who am I to argue with the universe?
I am trying to keep this blog from becoming Binhqx's Personal Drama blog, but it is the contents of my current mind in literary form. So if I'm experiencing drama, you all are coming with me.
I also added some new photos to the gallery.
Posted by binhqx at 10:09 PM | Comments (8)
And the result is ... REJECTION!
Speaking of "someone special." continued.
I gave it my "all" and was rejected. I am a self acknowledged "late-bloomer" so I had the opportunity to experience a incredible new emotion. It was like anger, self loathing, and jealousy had manifested into a blunt instrument and knocked me right in the chest. It felt bad, stupendously bad.
Luckily for me the girl, who from now on will be known as Yomiko Readman, made sure that we where cool and understanding about the new structure of our relationship. We would just be friends. After a little time the feeling wore off and we started to talk.
Then something amazing happened. I found that I could talk so freely to her. No longer was I restrained by some image to maintain. I could express myself freely in front of her and say all the things I have ever wanted to say. It was as if I had just broken out of my shackles and had become a free man.
I thank Yomiko for giving me this experience. Although parts of it really hurt, I am now a better man from experiencing it. I also gained a new ally on the opposite side of the gender divide with whom I can speak my true self too. That is what it means to be a friend.
So in the end I lost a girlfriend who was not really there, but found a new true friend.
Posted by binhqx at 2:08 AM | Comments (2)
August 3, 2005
Speaking of "someone special."
I have a confession to make. As cold and analytical as I portray myself, I am a human being; a homo sapien with all the rights, responsibilities, potentials, and fallibilities that come with it. Today I act on the behalf of my humanity, particularly the need to be emotionally close to other human beings.
There is a woman I know, who is very special to me. Today I will attempt show her just how special she is, and how strong my emotions toward her have grown. I find my most human parts driving me forward, compelling me to seek another to share myself with. This is what it means to be alive, to fulfill expectations of our genetic programing and find contentment within our selves.
Perhaps I am making mountains out of mole hills, but this is all so new to me. Incorporation of all aspects of the human condition, both mental and biological, into a individual identity is the core of self understanding. To deny ones self any part is denying ones own nature within this universe.
Interesting justification for the act of telling a girl that I like her. But there are parts of me that need that justification. That is just one of my little quirks.
Posted by binhqx at 12:47 AM | Comments (4)
August 2, 2005
Photo Gallery Updates
I have been going through the old photograph collection, and adding the ones I like to the photo gallery. These first ones are from my 2004 Canada trip. When I travel, I'm a bit of a shutter-bug. I am interested in discovering the base eliminates that make up the identity of a place or objects. I keep that in mind when I take photographs, It is also why I have an entire collection of pictures of walls, door knobs, and lighting fixtures. But it seems that no mater how mundane they all reveal something about the creator intentions.
I will attempt to add more photographs each day.
Posted by binhqx at 1:38 PM | Comments (2)
August 1, 2005
It's the start of August
Its August first! You know what that means; its time for end of the month site statistics!
So here we go for the month of July 2005:
Total Hits: 18574
Total Files: 7710
Total Pages: 5947
Total Visits: 1321
Total KBytes: 99808
Now I would like to admit that those are just from me, but I can only account for about 60% of it. The other 39% is bots and the last 1% is probably people who accidently linked here. It was a good month over all. Lets see if I can get more people here next month.
I also did a few minor color changes to the site. After posting all those pictures on the front page, I realized how little contrast there was. So I made the darks a bit darker. This should help with legibility in the future. I additionally set up a site-wide top banner. Having a consistent look gives the site less of a amateur-ish feel. Thank you templates and CSS!
Posted by binhqx at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)