Paul Emerson Leicht

booo!

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:08:44 GMT

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.

Another meme borrowed from Sean :)

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:18:10 GMT

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

All things happen at once

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 16:05:10 GMT

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.

A lovecraftian xmas letter

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 17:06:54 GMT

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

Oh Great Cthulhu!

I have been an extremely industrious devotee this year.

Last week, I recruited stellar83 as a new cultist (30 points). When the stars were right, I legally changed my name to Randolph Carter (-40 points). In June, I exposed bethny to soul-rending horrors (250 points). In April, I rammed a ship into you (sorry Cthulhu!) (-1000 points). In October, I fed fuzzyfruit to a Shoggoth (250 points). Yesterday, I visited my relatives in Innsmouth (100 points).

In short, I have been very bad (-410 points) and deserve to have my body used as a host for one of your servitors.

Your humble and obedient servant,
peleicht

Submit your own plea to Cthulhu!

Enlongated Uvula

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:49:21 GMT

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.

woot!

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:03:57 GMT

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.

Chord Leicht

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:07:06 GMT

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.

some loose ends tied at last

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 21:01:35 GMT

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.

You are all fired!

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:35:46 GMT

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.

Missing people.

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 07:25:14 GMT

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?

Survey

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 04:34:33 GMT

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.

You're Fired!

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 00:48:18 GMT

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.

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 12:45:12 GMT

the latest version of my dnd character generator

grrr how do you frustrate an idiot?

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 09:26:21 GMT

I really don't know why but I get so flaming angry when I code. Everything goes wrong before I figure out the fix which is almost always something retarded. Like today I was adding in the bonus feats characters get at odd levels for their class. I had a standard for loop and was wondering why it kept skipping to the last number...duh...it had a semicolon at the end. This was clearly something that I did by accident but I didnt see it in the code until I blew my stack and threatened to murder my pc in several ways that Im sure had my neighbors thinking about calling the cops. I dont mean to lose it. I usually code because I am interested in seeing the outcome and its not supposed to be an emotional experience but rather an intellectual exercise but when I find myself inexplicably frustrated I go nuts.

The code for those curious:

For (var i = 0; i < somevariablearray.length; i++);
{
some code...
...
}

as you can see the variable i will always be equal to somevariablearray.length-1 (somevariablearray is set in the global variable declarations as an array = to a list ). this is because the ; tells the for loop to execute its looping without executing the code in between the { }s. This something you learn in C programming for beginners. I learned it 16 years ago? but somehow because my typing sucks and I dont scan what I am looking at correctly I end up angry, frustrated and feeling like an idiot. Let this be a lesson to the wise. Always check for stray semicolons and other out of place characters that might be causing your bug before trying anything else.

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 05:18:19 GMT

Sometimes when I try to sleep at night (usually because my clock gets turned around) I find that I wake up at the slightest noises. The clicking of Carol's keyboard/mouse, the cat scratching something, a neighbor coming home... ETC...except this AM when I woke up to the very loud noises of revelers smoking outside a bar half a block away out my window. I mean these guys were really loud. We called 311 and filed a noise complaint. I don't hate bars, and I don't hate drinkers or smokers but what the fuck happens when you combine them in nyc? a fucking cacaphony of crap through your window at 1am waking you the fuck up from a relatively sound fucking sleep! (can you tell my irritation from my caveman type words?)

One thing I do hate is the smoking ban in bars. Mike really blew it on that one imho. Our city does not have enough difficulities as it is without having a crowd of drunk fuckups queuing up outside for a smoke because they can't smoke in the bars. Sure banning smoking in restaurants and areas where children have to come is only sensible. And banning it the work place for most places makes sense. But its an addiction. As is alcoholism. You can't keep people from doing them. And when try you just get bigger messes. Sadly this means for me being up for a while because my body does not leap from wakefulness to sleep easily. Hence a midnight posting so to speak.

Cleaning up and othewise removing detritus

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 16:21:23 GMT

(subtitled: burning bridges with glee)

Something amusingly ridiculous happened this am. subbes Whom I have had on my friends list and who has had me on hers for several years mainly I think out of habit did not like a reply I made to her comment about her overweight cat. She said she woke up to him howling. I commented maybe the poor thing was hungry...and she assumed I meant that as an insult (she must be a bad cat owner if she doesn't eternally keep his bowl full?)...said so then removed me from her friends list (read: journals she peruses? though she's never commented on anything Ive written so I have to assume that is not really true.) I was annoyed then amused. This is after all the girl I thought was going to self destruct and whose lj postings inspired On A Bad Day. This all to say I once had great sympathy for this twit. I am glad she is no longer in need of said sympathy and has full fledged into an average american asshole. It means she will probably do quite well in the "real world".

Progress on my D&D character maker (coded in javascript)...

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 07:16:08 GMT

I got the skills done, got the feats done...but I didnt really finish the feats as my friend pointed out to me...I didnt do the class special feats. Nor did I do the feats each class gets for free. And now my enthusiasm has petered out. I love programming and I love the thrill I get from making things work, especially when other people find them useful or interesting but the writing of code can be a real pain in the ass. What I mean is I hardly ever write a whole module free of bugs. Usually the bugs I write arent big but they can be niggling. Especially since I tend to forget everything from the LAST time I did the SAME damn bug. Eventually I stop doing them. But I type very poorly...(one would think its pathological) which creates a large percentage of the bugs. But then sometimes I type perfectly with no backspacing or second thinking. So what the fuck? All I know is I have as many grey hairs from screaming at my screen as I do from being 40. Who else screams at their screen at age 40? Music is so much less stressful. Its too bad that business is fuxored.

Friendship

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 07:20:32 GMT

I have never been one to collect lots of "Friends" though I am often friendly with a large group of people in a casual way. I just don't feel that its worth taking the time to be friends with people who's priorities do not allow them to have an interest in returning said friendship.

I realize this makes it easy for me to isolate. But my philosophy is is be loyal to the friends you have and be realistic when viewing the relationships you make. Most people, it seems to me are too self absorbed to be truly friends with others. Always there are a couple people who defy this mold though. Intriguing people. Usually as or more abrasive than myself. People who tend to value honesty and integrity over niceties. Don't get me wrong. I try very hard to be courteous and kind even but I do not practice politeness for politeness's sake. More its a matter of as circumstances dictate.

I know people who gather large circles of "friends" and I wonder if they feel more fufilled that way than I do. Or are they merely achieving happiness through being the center of attention?

All this is to preface the following: I do not like to find out that people whom I have bent over backwards to be a friend to are merely using me as a convenient ear in times of need. I am glad to be sympathetic to those in need but if there is no reciprocation there is no friendship in my opinion. This may make me sound harsh but I do not give my loyalties lightly or without thought.

On a slightly happier note I managed to get quite a bit done on my 3rd edition D&D character generator (in DHTML/Javascript) today. Up to skill selection. My plan is to be enable the user to be able to add a level of a class, add the appropriate skills, add whatever feats are available etc and then cycle adding as many levels as desired until they are satisfied with the character generated. I might even attach my random treasure generator for 3rd ed that is 2/3 complete. But that would mean scaling it for the level of the Character. Not sure how easy that will be.

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 06:59:21 GMT

I grabbed this from a watcher of the bardstongue community...jgkcmo seemed a neat exercise

art:
my parents are artists. I've been surrounded by the concept of art all my life. My parents are also Art teachers. I don't consider myself to be an artist... or artiste but rather someone who attempts to practice his arts. I dont claim high levels of skill or the undefinable (to me) mystical sense of "Oh Wow thats ART!!". I merely claim to enjoy making artwork.
chess:
When I was 6 my dad bought me my first chess set. When I was 8 I started playing chess with Bobby Fisher's cousin. When I was in High School I played on the chess team on the 5th board. As I grew older I played with the masters and gms in Washington Square Park and the Village Chess Shop on Thompson Street (in nyc). I read Nimzovich and I read others. Nimzovich stuck more than the others. "My System" in particular struck me as genius.
history:
The matrilinial line of my family has a definable lineage back to the early middle ages. This of course led me as a youth to a greater interest in history. It also helped that my dad had a complete set of the "Great Books". A publication of most of the classical histories and poems and stories by the best writers the world has ever known. Reading those books caused me to enjoy learning about history.
literature:
My parents are very literate. I grew up having to go to the dictionary constantly in order to converse with anyone in the family. I grew to love reading for enjoyment and for learning, as for me, they are one and the same.
magic: the gathering:
Combine Chess and Poker with some D&D fantasy flavoring and thats what M:tg is like. Except unlike any of the above the deck making rules lead to permutations of game play that are unpredictable by any who are not well versed in the game. It is not the sterile well studied environment of chess nor the well played and thus well known world of Poker. You do play your opponent but your deck must play your opponent's deck too. I have not played this much at all lately due to its rather expensive nature but the game has left its mark. Once I was fairly well known not as a player but as a writer of the game.
music:
Since I was little I've enjoyed music. When I was 12 I started learning guitar theory and practice. Since then I've written ALOT of songs and performed many in the streets and venues of nyc. Lately Ive mainly been performing in my own apartment for the sole amusement of my cat and my gf. And of course I record my songs for posterity and post them on my site.
programming:
I started learning about programming when my boarding school got some trash-80s at the start of 1980. My roommate at the time was a scion of the apple computer company and he initiated me into the secrets of BASIC. Then I took some more courses in HS. Zoom forward many years later and I inherited an old PS1 IBM that my neighbor no longer used. That revived my interest in programming and I started teaching myself ansi C. more years passed and I met my friend Hogan, a programmer with a masters degree in CS. He lent me more books and eventually gave me another computer and I started learning C++. Zoom to the year 2000 when we finally got a 'new' computer and I started learning about web design and coding. For the past 5 years Ive been tinkering with HTML, DHTML, javascript, and various other languages in order to make my site what it is. I also have developed and maintained several sites for my Dad and a friend.
roleplaying games:
When I went to Oakwood boarding school for 1 year I was introduced to this game that Id never seen before. Ever since then Ive been playing, writing about and dming for rpgs. crpgs are also interesting.Though not quite so much in the social interactions department. Ive partaken of most table top game systems and some LARP systems, as well as having some partial credit for developing an early Mage: the Ascension Larp rules set.
strategy:
As well as Chess and M:tg I enjoy most strategy games. Though I particularly do NOT enjoy RTS's which on modern computers generally seem more about the dexterity of the user than any amount of serious thinking.
writing:
My mom in particular interested me in writing from very early on. Sadly though I have always been verbose and have had a very high level of vocabulary for my peerage, my writing skills have been until recently barely proficient. In particular, I did not develop any real sense of prose until I began using text editors on computers to do most of my writing. What I lacked in skill I made up for in shear volume and enthusiasm. I have written thousands of lyrics, many modules, alot of short stories and quite a few articles. Slowly over the years I have honed my writing until it's legible. Sadly I tend to be overly verbose and some people who are put off by lengthly discourse have commented to the effect that I should perhaps...shut up. :) Most recently I wrote some peices for a game that has since gone under due to the developer switching gears and making an entirely new game out of the wreckage of the old. Sad to say that stuff is now just an archive. Also archived are my old neutral ground dot net magic the gathering articles. And the few FAQs I have written. Writing is fairly easy for me, but I do not do it enough to be as fluent with it as I'd like.

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moo?

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 05:48:40 GMT

One of the weirder phenomenons of the internet experience is the following:

Occassionally when I get a bee under my bonnet I express an opinion/rant/etc and wait anxiously for a reply and the desert winds quietly inform me that not only is no one listening, there isnt a living soul miles around. This from someone living in the heart of one of the most populous areas in the world. It is rather tragic in a petty way that a person can feel perfectly ok isolated physically from people and be ok with it but cut them off from conversation and they mourn as if a pet just died and treat any response at all (aside from echoes) as a cool drink of water.

Which tangentally leads me to wonder why people reply to some things and not others. I know why I do/dont. Generally if someone replies to me with anything resembling polite conversation I will respond. At times when flamed I will reply in kind. But when I dont have an appropriate response I might put it off until I think of something better to say than "yeah" or "right on!" or "duh!" or "huh?". All very conventional caveman responses but not the wittiest of reparte.

Then of course there is the fact people are busy living and dont have as much time to peruse the miles and miles of text that is the internet more than once in a blueish moon. Which leads to the question why is my life empty enough to be able to afford the time to peruse said jungle of verbiage? Well sometimes it isn't. Sometimes (like my weekends every week lately) I have things to do that keep me from my coveted keyboard and mouse equipped spelunking and I have to go through withdrawal. Which is funny because sometimes (huge chunks of time really) I dont pay the least bit of attention to the internet at all but to read the 4-6 emails I get a day that arent viagra and penile implant ads and perhaps AIM someone rarely spoken to.

I have to question the source of all this cultural confusion...Do other people experience these things or even think about them if they do?

and in other news there is a new song and new art on my site for those who care of such things.

Tired...

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 21:08:43 GMT

Hok!...home again...*collapse*

Another weekend spent babysitting the tots at my sisters house. Ok they arent exactly tots anymore. Nor did I get to visit them when they were that age, what with their mom and pop moving around the world so much. But now my time has arrived. Let me tell you it is tiring. I love them but they stretch my patience far and wide.

Im concerned for my sister. I think she is spread thin and people just keep on demanding more of her. But thats her business I guess. I said my peice and let it go.

Sunday Night, a friend was supposed to come over to stay with them and take them to school this morning. And because of this I changed my plans to come home early. She didnt arrive. Thankfully I did not leave early as I had planned to and was able to stay over one more night to perform this function. Getting them up is hard...and they do not take commands the way most of my computers do. They need to be coaxed, wheedled and threatened and finally praised when they manage the simple tasks set for them (get up, washing your hands, put your school clothes on, underwear too!, here have some hot chocolate, hurry or we will be late, shoes!! dont forget the shoes, oh and backpack (making sure the lunches are within each one)

I got them to the school at 8:02 am but thankfully the door lady? (dont know her position in the school) was waiting with a gaggle of stragglers as we approached along with some other children and their presumably parental escorts.

more frustration...gotta laugh

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 23:46:29 GMT

In the past when I was learning css and html I eschewed doctypes and never even bothered trying to code for Firefox or Mozilla etc concentrating solely on making pages that worked in IE 6.0... my reasoning which was fairly sound but not actually a good idea now that I know better was if I spend time making things crossbrowser compatible, I'll be working for the 12% or so of non ie browsers and that didnt seem to make a lot of sense. Once I realized the standards would eventually be caught up to by modern browsers and that by designing for a noncompliant browser I was making more work for myself eventually, I changed my tune.

Now my frustration stems from IE not rendering things correctly even with a properly written doctype.

my evidence: a mock up of my dad's Calendar.
Works fine in firefox. Falls flat in IE.

If anyone knows why this is so feel free to post your ideas in the comments section.

Edited:
After much head shaking and keyboard smashing it occured to me to test my hypothesis that in ASP pages (not ASP.Net btw) the doctype tag screws up the page. I removed the offending tag and whalah every thing works fine...go figure?

Speaking of Negative feelings

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 04:24:19 GMT

I am so angry at stupid shit including:

1) live journal starts its edit journal in simple mode...when I want the wysiwyg mode. its not like they support firefox/gecko/mozilla fully anyway.

2) I had a conversation on AIM with emzy1284 whose great uncle just died. I was angry about #3 when it started and then felt angry that I couldnt find anything comforting to say about her tragic loss (Though I do care alot about her, at that moment I was unable to summon my usual empathy due to being extremely frustrated.) Then she left without saying goodbye which made me feel angrier not that she should have said goodbye but irrationally I wanted her to.

2.5) because of my needs for certain kinds of food and prohibitions on others I tend to eat a very similar boring variety of food everyday. Today I had a subway and then lo and behold I requested food and got another one. grrr. I should be happy to eat at all but eating the same thing twice in a row makes me unhappy unless its a food I love.

3) before #1 and #2 occured Ive been struggling first to fix my dads site (#4) and then trying to figure out a weird idiosyncracy in dhtml/css positioning. I made two different but similar layouts using this technique and the first came out exactly as per expected and the other with only very minor modifications but a different number of child nodes came out completely wrong using virtually the same css. *screams and pulls at his very short hair*

4) My dads site which I am honored to have designed and maintain was experiencing a problem with its calendar and I was scratching my head as to why once I opened up the code and started trying decipher this very old script which I wrote 3+ years ago and then amended as time went on. Then it hit me half way through a useless change that the reason it wasnt working is because my dad using the editor I made for him used quotes in a field that can't deal with them properly. I had asked him before to use the " html thingee but I guess he forgot...so I spent about 15mins writing more validation to keep him from being able to use quotes and a reminder if he tries to use the html thingee instead. Then he told me some of the dates he had from the year before were showing up in this years calendar. So I spent a fruitful hour hunting down and killing that bug.

Song

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 04:04:43 GMT

Ok so I said I wasnt going to be able to write a song about what is currently topical and that was clearly not true because here I am with a song called The Wickedness.

The lyrics:

In oh one I was happy to go with the flow
when disaster struck back then
a whole lot of people brought low
by the wicked lies of fanatical men

oh oh woe is me oh oh woe is you
oh no no no this cant be true
yes it is its all too real
no one told me how bad it would feel

back in oh three I was crying no no no
we dont need another vietnam again
a whole lot of people brought low
by the wicked might of dishonest men

oh no no no how can this evil be so?
oh woeful tidings I sing, I sing
how can people with a living conscience
allow such a thing, allow such a thing?

back in oh five I was still happy to be alive
when catastrophe struck again
a whole lot of people brought low
by the wicked neglect of greedy men.

oh if I could give a blessing for
every tear thats been shed
I could buy a miracle to
raise up all the forsaken dead

oh oh woe is me oh oh woe is you
oh no no no this cant be true
yes it is its all too real
nothing can prepare you for how bad it will feel

the music: verses are as follows - Am B7 Em, Am B7 Em, Am B7 Em, Am B7 and the choruses are as follows - C G F Em, C G C7 B7, C G F Em, C G C7 B7 the bridge is as follows - C G F Em, C G F Em, C G F Em, C G C7 B7. The lead line is something of a pentatonic/minor scale in E.

The Enemy...

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 08:17:37 GMT

the day of 9.11.01 I wrote this which was posted on neutralground.net at the time.

Those who know me will attest that I am not religious. But despite that. Despite the fact that I am fairly agnostic, I have often felt that Evil has a presense in this world. I don't ascribe to an intelligent evil enemy. But nonetheless I feel there is a pervasive force(call it "entropy" for lack of a better term or "the devil" if that fits) for ill working to undo us, physically, mentally and spiritually. This enemy doesn't care if you are religious, or athiestic whether you even acknowledge a human soul. This enemy cares not for righteousness or selfrighteousness. It is within us, in the form of violence, hatred, greedy, fear, prejudice, apathy, lies, delusion, pettyness, politics, injustice, jealousy, disregard, insensitivity, alcoholism, cancer, aids, etc. Unfortunately the nature of THIS beast doesnt always allow for a neat surgical solution. For we are the sum of our parts not able to separate them into bits and peices easily and exterpate the unwanted or corrupted parts. I wish we could. I find myself angry at times and I dont know why. I can not reason "why" while angry because it blocks my mental accuity like shade blocks sunlight. I am frustrated because even in my young neice and nephew I see the pattern renewed and it is only the fact that they also love and play and have fun regardless of the hardships they face that allows me to face my despair and keep hope.

To my mind we as human beings no matter our religion, culture or ethnicity need to stop aiding this entropy and start loving each other a little more. Even when its harder. My dad asked me if I had written a song about the sinking of New Orleans yet and I replied that I couldnt imagine writing a song about something so enormous that would be anything but a horrible dirge. I guess that might happen as I gain perspective. But in the meantime Im going to try and get what joy I can from the little things in life.