Paul Emerson Leicht

No not a ghost...yes I finally rediscovered my livejournal page. Don't mind the ads....needed to upgrade to a plus account to be able to recover my old mood faces.

ENTJ - Commandant You scored 72% I to E, 36% N to S, 61% F to T, and 42% J to P!

The single word to describe your type is fieldmarshal or commandant. You also belong to the larger group called rationals. You love to organize others in matters of logic. Even as a child, you likely naturally assumed the role of leader in groups. You share your personality type with 2% of the population. When you lead, you are more concerned with policy and goals than rules and regulations. You have a tendency to become a workaholic. You are impatient with repetition of error. You are friendly and outgoing, though. You don't mince words and willingly share your many strong opinions. As a romantic partner, you are inspiring, but also somewhat challenging. You have a strong desire to be in charge and your clear need for an organized life and home can be overwelming to a partner. You like to confront conflict directly, discuss problems unflinchingly, solve them, then put them behind you. However, you can be too impatient or unwilling to take the time to listen to your partner and give them a chance to express themselves fully so that they also have a sense of closure. You are generally uncomfortable dealing with emotions, so you are apt to dismiss your partner's emotions as illogical. You feel most appreciated when your partner asks for your opinions, takes your adivce, and relies on you to get a job done right. Your group summary: rationals (NT) Your type summary: ENTJ

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 79% on I to E You scored higher than 41% on N to S You scored higher than 71% on F to T You scored higher than 34% on J to P

Link: The LONG Scientific Personality Test written by unpretentious2 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

How odd... some of these generalizations of course do not make sense for me but some are dead on. :P

Friday morning my dad woke me up via a phone message on my machine. My stepmom Anne, a few days before, fell down a flight of stairs and did grievous injury to herself and nearly died. She is recuperating in a mass hospital and hopefully we will be able to see her before the end of the holidays and give her some cheer. At the same time that I recieved this news I heard from Carol that our monitor was screwy. Sure enough I turned it on and it was blown. Thanks to hoganny and the helpful clerks at Circuit City I have a new monitor which I got yesterday. Friday morning and afternoon I spent cleaning up some stuff and rearranging my workspace so that it wont leak directly on my equipment again. Oh the reason for the monitor blowing up is that the snow on the roof came through the leaks in the ceiling. So anyway my throat is dry and feels not great, my head hurts and my chest and head are congested. That damn cold wont go away. Hopefully someday it will...the dust didnt help. Oh and there is no end of drama with my sisters family... Im just praying things work out there.

ripped from smckeown's journal. As a fan of Lovecraft I loved this meme.


Submit your own plea to Cthulhu!

I woke this morning with a funny feeling in my throat...Im sick so I went to the bathroom to spit out the gathered phlegm in my throat. Guess what? it wouldnt come out and I had a long fleshy item in my throat that I could touch with my tongue. It started making me want to choke and I panicked. Thankfully even panicked Im not a total freeking idiot and realized it was the thing hanging from the top of my throat that is usually the size of a pea or so. I called my dad (since hed just called and woke me up, hanging up before I could get the phone.) He told me what it was and that I should calm down. Alot. He said its not something that usually requires medical aide as it is caused by sorethroat, sinus drainage, irritation and dehydration. Actually he didnt tell me all of that... After I hung up I looked it up on google. Apparently it takes up to a day for the swelling to go down when it happens and usually occurs because people sleep with their mouth open, have a cold, or drink enough to dehydrate their mouth.

December 12th is my service ready date for DSL. Oh yeah did I tell you all Im gonna finally get DSL? Yay! I bet you thought I had it already but nope.

In other news...the phone company took 5 days to RECONNECT my phone line because the morons who are doing demolition (TMI demolition inc) for NYU (the biggest reality corp in the city...) so they can put up yet another Highrise Dormatory broke the cable connecting my neighborhoods residential phones. These inept workers are liable to hurt someone with their reckless and completely incompetant techniques. In addition my building has been shaking like being hit by 100 trains an hour since this damn stuff began a week ago. Some of the local businesses were really hurt by this fiasco and Im hoping NYU and their contractors get sued up the ass for their illegal activities. However I dont think this will happen as apparently no one has the gumption to do anything about it. We called 311 over a dozen times prior to last week to report their unpermitted deconstruction. Last week they got and posted permits finally along with wooden palisades to presumably stop passerbys from getting hit by debris but they continued to operate in an unsafe manner and have left unsafe hazards all around their site. Im thoroughly disgusted with them. Im also not to happy with the buildings department for the city who didnt bother to stop them from any of this activity. The topper of this story is that the major reason for the delay in repairing the phone lines had to do with the workers lying to the phone company. They told them they would not be working over the weekend (this started on friday) so the phone company wouldnt be able to get access to the site. This was patently untrue as they began work each day of the weekend at 7am sharp. In fact theyve been working every day starting at 7am. If I had to work a 9am to 5pm job I wouldnt be able to get enough sleep being woken up by the incredible earthshaking noises and vibrations. I cant believe all these yuppies living in this neighborhood are happy with this situation...Im hoping one or more of them will actually do something like sue the bastards. But its unlikely as people tend to be sheep.

Ive finally updated Chord Leicht so that it is crossbrowser (or at least for Moz/FF1.07/IE6.0

Chord Leicht v2.0
upgrade includes:

• redrawn images (background, and string gifs


• crossbrowser compliance (for Firefox 1.07 and Internet Explorer 6.0. should also work in Safari for Mac though no guarantees. Not sure at all about Opera for any OS, and Im pretty sure it wont work right for IE 5.0 for mac)


• more efficiently coded functions


• different layout based on 800*600 browser width

still needs:

• better descriptions


• sound files


• more accurate chord names.

What it does: allows a person to choose from a menu of chords in the keys of A through G. It displays the chord chosen in the graphic...showing the fingering, and gives an english description of how to place the fingers. It is right handed based so leftys must turn everything backwards to get the right chords. This list is not complete and does not include chords in sharp or flat keys. My feeling was that, I didnt want to go that far with it when I created it though I realize those things should be addressed before really declaring it complete.

What it doesnt: It doesnt let you position the fingers and reverse look up the chord name. Thats a nice feature but at the moment seems beyond the scope of my meager music knowledge and a little tougher to implement than I am comfortable with atm. Im not 100% positive that this feature is necessary for most people. This is basically for people who are learning guitar chords and need to see them displayed instead of just seeing the letters. and for those who know but have forgotten. In addition this visual aide is good if you dont know a chord voicing by sight but see it or hear it somewhere. I learned a lot of different voicings for the same chords over the years through trial and error. This hopefully will help cut short some of that for others.

Many moons ago I came up with an article layout that pleased me greatly but never bothered to transfer the articles on my site to the new layout, because reformatting is a pain in the ass. Well today since I finished BG2 and had some time on my hands before I plunge into another session of deep game immersion I figured Id get this task done and it is. So you can read my articles here. Next up, reformatting my old ng articles to this new format as well. :( yikes.

Yes...Trump fired 4 people instead of the usual one. I was not shocked because Ive been waiting for it. Some people in combination are just disasterous. I noted the poignant lack of comment from the 4 during their quite sojourn to whereever life leads them away from the Apprentice. Im sure there will comments made at some point but they were all thinking things about each other that was plain to see. Shadenfreuden I guess...it was fun to see people who are so arrogant and divisive taken down a peg...not that there arent bad apples left in the batch of apprentices remaining. But some of the worst offenders are gone. The three people Trump kept from Capital Edge seemed to me to be the nicest of the bunch but I wonder how likely they are to succeed...its a cutthroat game in a cut throat world.

Speaking of games I finished Baldurs Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal finally. My character Arwen Stonebreaker, a fighter 9 dualclassed to Mage 27 became a benevolent goddess...too bad they missed a boat here. If theyd let the player choose their portfolio at the end or even let their interactions shape their choices of portfolio in the end Id have been alot happier with it.

BG2 has some interesting things to note about it, if youve played through the 3 main Neverwinter Nights stories. You can see very clearly that the engine used in Baldurs Gate series (Infinity engine I think) is the same pretty much as the Aurora Engine used in NWN. Not only that but many of the stock characters and plots in NWN are stolen from BG2 directly with some name changes and sequences altered. Basically after having played both I can see the NWN stories (main and HOTU) are refinements of BG2 and ToB especially HOTU towards the end. Kicking the end bosses ass was insanely hard even after I figured out how to Wish Rest properly. Onto Temple of Elemental Evil I suppose. Finishing would be nice.

So I am still unready to work on the final parts to the Character generator which tells me I probably will never finish it. Its not that I cant do it but that I dont have any enthusiasm for doing so. I guess that proves my dilletant status as a programmer.

I used to be a more sociable person. But money is uber tight, I dont party and Im not doing the ego bruising music scene anymore. I dont even really socialize online anymore. I used to moderate a few games and that was instant popularity. As was my regular M:tg column on neutralground.net. I used to be on IRC alot and made friends that way, playing Apprentice and what have you. But I dont find any of those activities all that interesting. Ive been somewhat active in a coders community on siteexperts.com because alot of the people there seem to me to be misfits like myself.

The word misfit to me does not imply anything negative by the way. It merely means I dont fit into the norms of society with easy. In fact I dont usually even try unless it seems required for familial events.

The few people (aside from Carol) Ive counted as friends in the past have become strangers as Ive been marginalized for who knows what. In general my lifestyle has not particularly bothered me much until recently. I am a loner. I dont like trying to be polite to people whom I dont know or understand so I dont go out of my way to find new friends. I feel that society has become so shallow and image oriented there isnt a lot of point in engaging in it. BUT lately Ive been feeling very cut off. I am abrasive and curt with the friends Ive had, prefering truth over deciet and honesty over lies. I am loyal, steadfast, caring, and compassionate but I am not one to worry much about hurting peoples feelings (which might be a strange contradiction). I miss my old friends and wonder if my transgressions were really so unforgivable.

I know it has nothing to do with me really. Jose moved into the Army because that was the direction his life took him. Hogan had to get out of Manhattan and closer to his life upstate. Paul, well I dunno what happened to him. One day he was smoking a joint on my roof, jamming with me on my guitars...then I didnt hear from him again. My online friends have been easier to keep track of but generally the same pattern. Life beckons and people follow leaving me in their wake feeling sad and lonely.

This might not be the most appropriate forum for this as the readership of this blog is probably depressed enough without reading about my angst but Ive always treated lj as a sounding board. Why stop now?

borrowed this from amanda (pucker. )
Erase my answers & put in your own. Then REPOST.

1. What color underwear are you wearing now? White(off white really)

2. What are you listening to right now? nothing.

3. What are the last 2 digits in your phone number? 57

4. What was the last thing you ate? peanut butter on a saltless cracker

5. If you were a crayon what color would you be? Forest Green

6. How is the weather right now? Raining

7. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? My Dad

8. The first thing you notice about the opposite sex? Depends on the person. As an inveterate people watcher I tend to notice things based on what stands out (hair, breasts, eyes, skin tone, ass etc)

9. Favorite type of Food? Italian

10. Do you drink? no. 22 years of sobriety under my belt.

11. Do you smoke? no. been clean for almost 7 years.

12. Ever get so drunk you dont remember? no. Id get drunk and remember every last frigging detail.

13. Hair color?Brown, with a ton of grey.

14. Eye color? Hazel/Grey...sometimes they look green or blue depending on what I wear and the light.

15. Do you wear contacts?no.

16. Single? no.

17. Favorite Month? thats tough...I guess I like the end of May and June the most.

18. Have you ever cried for no reason? not to my knowledge. Being a typically repressed male means that if Im crying there are definitive reasons for it.

19. Last Movie you Watched? Sin City. Jessica was very sexy.

20. Favorite Day of the Year? thats also tough...I guess that varies depending on what is going on.

21. Are you too shy to ask someone out? no.

22. Hugs or Kisses? Both. But Im touchy...meaning I dont liked to be jumped.

23. Chocolate or Vanilla? neither.

24. Do you want your friends to respond? Sure if they can drag themselves away from their high priority lifestyles long enough :/

25. Who is most likely to respond? No one.

26. Who is least likely to respond? Id be surprised if anyone responded.

27. What books are you reading? Well currently Im slogging through this old book by Brian Aldiss called the Malacian Tapestry. Its good but torturous.

28. Piercings? not intentionally :/

29. Fav. Movie(s)? Movies are by and large pop culture with very little permanent artist value. A few notable exceptions would be:2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars (IV though I havent seen the revised version), Casablanca.

30. Fav. baseball Team(s)? Yankees, RedSox.

31. Any pets? Buffy the Vampire Slayer Aka bubba and bufffa (she answers to alot of nick names really) my overweight tabby.

32. aim? yes. I used to even be on a dart team in the ADO.

33. Butter, Plain or Salted popcorn? none...popcorn is crap.

35. Favorite Flower? Rose.

36. Ever fired a gun? no. *shudder*

37. Do you like to travel by plane as opposed to car? no. Both are invariably unsafe.

38. Right handed or left handed? Trained Righty. Born Lefty.

39. How many pillows do you sleep with? 2.

40. Who are you missing right now? A lot of old friends who have lost touch/fell off the face of the Earth.

41. Who do you think is gorgeous?Anyone who thinks they are gorgeous and who acts in a manner commesurate with their responsibility as a human being.

42. Do you think your ex misses you? no. my last ex has either moved on by now or isnt alive...dont know because its been 17 years since I was single.

Have you watched The Apprentice? Because Carol likes it, we tend to watch it both with Trump and Martha Stewart. I am appalled usually by the lack of common decency and just good sense Ive seen on those shows. It is clear some people have slept together or are doing so while the show is being taped. The catfights are usually nonsensical. etc etc. I could go on but what I loath the most about both shows is that the creative individualists seem to become marginalized while monster egos seem to be very good at keeping their status quo and knocking down their "enemies".

I realize its a tv show ("reality tv" even) and is therefore to be shown contempt but since I end up watching it I end up feeling things about it. Most of the contestants are very attractive physically with almost no grasp of humanity or social mores. Rather to say they seem like people who might be fun to sleep with (depending on your gender preference) but not to have as steady friends, or more. Being amoral might be good for business but it does not help your spiritual growth at all. That said I have noticed a few "nice" guys in the bunch who seem to survive by letting their buddies do all the nasty work and by being friendly with everyone. Last night Trump fired Kristi and despite the fact that I should not care one way or the other I cheered...that bitch had it coming. She cut everyone down whom she didnt consider a friend(Alla and Fran?) and did dirty politicking behind the scapegoats back.

That might be one way to play the game but it is clearly immoral. I was glad despite fearing that Trump would listen to his employee advisors. Both of them had good points about Jeniffer M. but I felt that after the way Kristi set up last weeks loser Toral she needed to be fired. Machevellian manuevering is one thing...this was just diabolical. She knew the lady was religious and had a cultural bias against certain types of demeaning work and she practically brow beat the poor woman and then used her refusal as reason to get her fired. Sadly, she wasnt even in the line of fire herself because her buddy was the Project Manager and wouldnt call her into the boardroom.

I seem to watch a lot more tv than I used to. I end up watching Extreme Home Makeover because its a fantasy come true type show and it fufills a need to see good done in the world. This is my counter balance to the shows with no moral center or even concept. Sadly this leads into Desparate housewives which Carol loves. I have to admit while Im not a fan of the storyline the dialogue is engaging and the actors/actresses very attractive and personable. Even the villians are a cut above, though their morality issues seem to be more about shades of grey mostly.

Then We of course started watching Boston Legal because it followed desparate housewives and has some great actors in it. Rene (cant spell his last name), William Shattner, James Spader, Betty White and more. I am not huge fan of David Kelly and I dont care for the stories Ive seen so far...except for the stories involving Religion vs State type conflicts. Im hoping they get rid James Spaders british gf as I think she is just horrid.

Then Ive gotten into Commander in Chief because it features two big name actors whom I like: Geena Davis and Donald Sutherland. The politic show seems alot like a rip of early westwing with a twist of Bartlet as a woman president instead of merely a feminist president. I like the concept of a woman president. The fact of the matter is that politics in the USA is very white and very male. That needs to change and from the top down. Oh and then there is eRing which stars Benjamin Brat and Dennis Weaver who are both good actors in a stale military drama. But somehow its engaging. And of course there is Veronica Mars which is a hipster modern Nancy Drew type show with a very cute smart and usually right female lead character and kind of Twin peaks plots which are very good and interesting.

Needless to say my life has become tv :(

Oh and I recinded my uninstallation of BG: 2 in favor of installing Throne Of Bhaal which turns out to be alot of fun. Ive been playing it for a week almost now and will probably finish it.

I made a preliminary spell list selection routine for my D&D character generator but havent worked on it much this week. Maybe next week? we will see.