A friend of mine posted a story about a 12 year old who spends his days in fear, and the days not in fear he spends getting the shit kicked out of him. What are the school officials doing to stop it? Not much. Public school is a breeding ground for the assholes of the world, not that they need help to achieve their objectives, due to the uselessness of attempts at discipline. We’ve become such a pussy, nanny-state of people who are afraid to discipline their kids, due to fear of jail/lawsuit. Add in, school administrators who are powerless thanks to the threat of lawsuits and a PC legal system that rewards whining and the bully who plays victim.

The gluttony of this society is amazing. When is it enough? When is there enough pain dished out, violence meted, suffering put forth? Is there no seal to close the souless abyss of this society? I say this not out of wrecklessness of thought or deed, but in all seriousness: I’m thinking that most of the members of this world society would have immediate qualification to burn in the seventh level of hell for all eternity.

And what will it all be like in 20 years? I hope, by then, to have amassed enough resources to buy some land in a desolate area, build a house, secure a couple of guards, and withdraw from society. If I had the money, I would do it now. Some people would say that is letting the assholes win, but I disagree: If you don’t give a troll the spotlight they want, they wither and die. In real life, you do that by leaving their realm/sphere of influence.

When society values a culture of ignorance, the society will become ignorant and mirror it’s masters and idols. The day is coming, soon. And the worst part? I think it’s too late to stop it. Just because you can walk upright and talk, does not make you an educated man, or an enlightened man. The enlightened man realizes the value of life, especially the life of others.

Change is constant. Life moves on. Nothing is forever….

As we prepare to leave downtown, I’m sad. This is the only home I have ever known in the ATL, but the crime and noise have combined to make it a far cry from what it was when I moved here. Johnny’s and P’Cheen only have so much to answer for, and then the ignorant humans have to answer for the rest…they won’t though.

A lot of memories here, good and bad. A lot of time passed by the wayside. I hope the next stop in the journey builds even more history for us, and in a good way.

As the time nears that we leave, I am glad to be going. I care less and less for this place, and the reasons for leaving become clearer.

You don’t want it, but you don’t want anyone else to have it? They made a movie about that, didn’t they? The plot seems strangely similar. People with no lives are the most dangerous kind, as they have too much time to ruin the lives of others.

I have yet to find a cellphone that does everything I want. I’ve tried everything from a Palm Treo to a Windows Pocket PC to a straight out cell. I liked the Treo, but the call quality was awful. The Pocket PC was alright, but it’s call quality was awful. The regular phone (LG VX9800 at present) is great, but the internet capability is awful. Do I have to break down a buy a Crackberry in order to get corporate e-mail? No, I could go with the next gen of Windows Mobile devices, but the price is out of the park. And in truth, I always have a laptop/internet feed nearby, so I’m not desperate for a PDA. However, there are those times where no wi-fi is available, only cell signal, and you need to send an e-mail or connect to the net. For those times, a PDA becomes the sensible thing. I may go Crackberry 8830, if I can nail one for a price I like.

I priced building a new system, or gutting mine and rebuilding it on a PCI Express platform, and it’s not worth it. I would rather spend the money on a new Mac desktop (Mac Mini likely, or IMac). These days, for what I do, OS X/Apple is where I want to be. Vista is shit, I don’t game on my PC, and I’m sick of the way Windows does what it does. I have to admin it all day long, so when I get home: I don’t want to know it exists.

Speaking of Mac: Entourage. Outlook for the Mac. Good lord, it works in odd, odd ways. The scheduled send/receive thing, and the sig file for replies is a bit puzzling. The rest of Office on the Mac slaughters Office on the PC, but I have to give the edge to Outlook over Entourage. Entourage seems very clumsy, and is very confusing at times.

Football: Over, except Arena League. Rugby: No TV. Soccer: Coming to the cup finals, relegation battles end, and title chases. Hockey: Playoffs loom. Racing: Starting. Baseball: Not started in full. What does this all mean? TV full of basketball. Why god, why? I lost my taste for basketball some time ago, and it’s painful to see it filling my channel guide listings. February/March is the worst time to be a sports fan that hates basketball. Let’s get to April, eh?

St Patrick’s Day - Bangers and mash? Come hell or high water, yes.

Friday, I felt it coming. I never yawn all day unless I got like 3 hours sleep, or less, but Friday I was in full blown yawn mode and was exhausted. The lady was sick as well.

Saturday, take her to the doctor: walking pneumonia, double ear infection, and a nice hack.

Sunday: Veg. I feel like hell, but take care of her. By Sunday night, I have a fever and am aching from my hips down. I go to bed and am freezing my ass off. I manage to see every hour on the clock, for the whole of the night.

Today: Wake up, burning up, eat a breakfast bar, and drink some water to chase it down. Bad move. I spend the next few minutes on the bathroom floor, broken out in a cold sweat. My stomach aches to the point of feeling like it wants to jump out of me, and I would have gladly let it. It passes. I fire up the work laptop, and try to work from home. No, my friend.

I was falling out at the keys. My eyes were closing every couple of minutes. I took a shower, to try and wake up, and passed out in the shower. I always told you I could sleep standing up. I sit back down and realize I am too damn sick for this. The aches won’t die, so I wait for my west coast colleague to come on. When she hits, I drop off, take some pills, and crash.

I’m still hurting from the neck down. All joints ache like hell. My throat is sore from on and off hacking. I’ll get on a good hacking roll, give myself a headache, take some pills, lose the headache, and then do it all over again. The nausea comes and goes. TMI? Yeah, sorry about that.

The lady is resting. There’s still an audible wheeze, and her ears still hurt. She does seem to be improving, even if by small degrees.

For those of you who like being sick, you’re bloody masochists and sick, sick puppies. I hate this.

A Saturday with only college basketball on. No thanks, I would rather watch Ninja Warrior. Oh, I’m sure the NBA has a game on somewhere, but I couldn’t care less. The NBA lost me a few years ago. Hockey? None to speak of. Soccer? Nothing on from Mexico, MLS hasn’t started up yet, and the games are over in the UK. Racing? None until the 500 tomorrow.

As video games get more lifelike, let me register a complaint: I don’t want lifelike. I live in the real world. When I play, I want to remove myself from the world at large and float in fantasy. Why did Crackdown grab me so hard? Take the real world, twist it up, and let fly. The same thing with Bioshock. Would I want to live in those worlds? Incinerate plasmids would be fun, as lighters would no longer be necessary. However, I don’t want splicers banging around my neighborhood.

Unbeatable Banzuke = Ninja Warrior on crack.

The cold weather is receding and spring will be here soon. I am not looking forward to it. I like warm weather about as much as I like most movies: Only if I have to.

Trying to find a decent apartment in Atlanta is about as much fun as a colonoscopy. The good apartments are either way north, way south, or cost a firstborn and a testicle. The house thing just didn’t work out like we wanted, and was not the original intention of our search anyway. I have no idea how this is going to turn out. We’ve got time though, so this is not going to be a search of desperation.

So many houses, so many of them are in areas I wouldn’t sentence my worst enemy to live in.

Taking school off this summer, so I can recharge. Accounting, I knew going in, is a hard subject. I’m good at math, so if I can learn the formula I can make it. However, the math is precluded by nonsensical ideology with regard to form of the function. Two weeks to go. I wonder if this is where my streak of consecutive A’s dies.

You never know how many users you have until you have to collectively switch them to a different platform. I have the utmost admiration for Exchange admins, especially the ones who do desktop/networks in with that. Exchange will suck your soul, if you allow it.

Hardware is easy. If XP blue screens, there is a given reason. You track the error code, you find the reason. If you aren’t running ten tons of 3rd party apps on your server, it is just as easy. I may deride Microsoft for Windows flaws and the status of driver interaction is no better than it was with 2K, but: Diagnosis of hardware issues can be easy, if you know the signs. Software? Don’t even get me started.

I used to love the idea of having one system of every flavor and OS. Not anymore. I want two systems at most: laptop and desktop. Speaking of desktop, I hear a dying bee in mine. I wonder which fan/HDD is about to die.

Of all the gifts I was given, healing other humans was not one of them. It’s no fun to watch a loved one sick/suffering.

I grew up watching the Braves lose, year in and out. I watched Dale Murphy, Steve Avery, Maddux, Smoltz, Pendleton, Jones, etc. It’s hard to respect some of the athletes I used to. Clemens? Loved him with the Sox and Jays, hated him with the Yanks. He’s made an ass of himself. Bonds? He was always easy to dislike, as he was always an arrogant asshole. How many players juiced? How many cheated? We’ll never know, and it pisses me off. I know people cheat in all sports: Diving in soccer, stick blade in hockey, dirty play in the pile in rugby, etc. However, aside from cycling, baseball has the worst black eye. You could have cleaned it up. Why didn’t you? Because the home run is sexy, because it sells, and what did you get for it? 20 years of the game, if not more, that no one will trust anymore. Thanks MLB, thanks for ruining the game for a generation. Maybe my children will trust you, I’m skeptical.

We get a lot of spam into the old ghost’s mailbag. This morning, we got an interesting item which I marked spam and thought no more of. A couple hours later, the fiancee messages me angrily over an e-mail I supposedly sent with words I sure as hell didn’t say to someone I don’t even know…or so I thought.

So, we compare the e-mail that went from my account with the one she was forwarded and guess what: they don’t match. About that same time, AIM starts messaging me that I’m logged in elsewhere. A huge fight, a lot of accusations, a lot of needless drama, and we figure out that the enemy is not within and start comparing notes. We know the enemy after all.

I don’t need drama. I don’t need petty ignorance. You crossed her, and by doing that you crossed me. You owe us both an apology for the last incident that happened in this neck of the woods, and for this bout of utter bullshit. It’ll never come and even if it did, I wouldn’t give a shit. Now hear this: Leave us the fuck alone. Happiness? I don’t know about that. This day, you brought drama and ill will, and for that you can fucking burn.

You know who you are.

Where is there a place one can go, away from the rapists, murderers, robbers, idiots, charlatans, and hypcorites? Does such a place even exist anymore? I’m no proponent for a G rated Disney world. I lead, and want, an adult existence. Jesus though at the degeneration of the human condition, or maybe it was always degenerate and it’s just been given more room to mutate, breathe, and expand.

The weather is spring-ish here. Supposed to be 70 tomorrow, tornadoes today in the mid-west, and storms like come in spring. Next week, it drops back down again. Mother nature has either gone senile, has lost a cog, or this is the result of the industrial revolution. My only thing about global warming is this: If we had data, like modern data, stretching back for thousands of years and that data could prove it was a cycle…Still though, it’s clear something is going on. When the polar bears are having to swim more than walk, something unnatural is happening.

We can research the nutritional value of sperm, but not find a cure for cancer? Modern society/technology never ceases to amaze me.

Dell’s new line of all-in-one PC’s…making me think twice about an IMac. One thing is true: I think I am finished building systems for personal usage. It just costs too damn much money to build a good one. I remember the days when AMD was eating Intel’s market share, and the days where I didn’t want an Intel processor in my systems. Now, the tide had turned and I’d rather have an Intel. Go figure.

So, the man last seen with our missing hiker told cops where they were likely to go find the body…is anyone surprised by this? I’m sure the family was hopeful, but when the bloody clothes were found and her dog found wandering…here’s hoping old boy has a run in with the electric chair.

Obama leads the Dems, Huckabee/Romney for the Repubs. Vote Ron Paul, that’s my advice.

Thumbs down of the week: Rock Band’s hardware. My strum bar on my guitar has gone intermittent on recognizing down strumming.

Thumbs up of the week: Guitar Hero II for the X360 and added content.

and no one was there to hear it…so, I’ll stop being vague for a second:

I took the link off the front page for sound/podcast. For a long time, I had told myself I would start doing it again, but it just never materialized. So, rather than leave a dead link up, I took it down. I may tinker and do it again in the future, but only if I can actually “do” it. No half assing it.

For now, it’s all about photography and writing.

“Being President is easy, you just point the army and shoot,” - Homer Simpson.

Truer words were never spoken, in this era.