Aspirations, thoughts, and Operator overloading

For a moment I’ll pretend I’m due my moment of whining, and unload what’s weighing me down.

A lot of things really. For one, the ever present feeling of midlife crisis: the watching of life fading before my eyes and knowing I’ll never have it back again. I’m dealing with that, but it’s always there nonetheless.

For many months now (years?) I’ve gone without good rest. This is partly my fault as I should have known better to quit playing games late into the night and actually go to bed. What I had counted on was my body recuperating at the rate it did when I was younger, and that’s not happening. Especially with allergy problems.

Until recent years I had almost forgotten just how much they bothered me. These days I barely feel like I’m getting any rest at all, and my right nostril feels like I’m breathing through socks; very congested.

That alone leaves me feeling depressed (lack of sleep grants that wonderful euphoric feeling), but then combined with a poor diet (not enough veggies) a lack of proper exercise (feeling like crap isn’t granting me the encouragement to exert more energy) and …

phft … I’m feeling much too lazy to even finish that sentence. Point is, I’m just wore out. Physically and emotionally.

My memory sucks, and I feel like a blithering idiot when I forget which road I live off of. I can recall days long past when I woke up feeling refreshed and my mind was razor sharp. I knew I was going to get old and feebleminded, but I just didn’t realize it was going to come so soon.

Yesterday was definitely a Monday. The gremlins were about at work and I received news that my decade+ old cat was crunched to death by a dog that was being looked after since it’s owners left.

I feel bad for my mother. She came upon my cat as she screamed in agony trying to get away, mangled by a dog that was attempting to catch cats from day one.

I was the moron who didn’t insist the dog be given away. Had I known that the dog was actually encouraged to catch and kill cats by it’s previous caretakers, I would hope that I would have taken her with me.

It’s not so strange, but it was more than just my cat that died yesterday. I suppose it was the last of my youth as well, as she’s been with me in the tough times of self-discovery, and the moments when I needed a good head butt. There were many of those.

This isn’t much of a tribute to her, but I’m not in much of a mood to attempt creativity. Really, I’d just like some sleep. Then a good shower, and then more sleep. Repeat for a few days, and then perhaps a day at the beach. I dunno.

Depression sucks.

How was it? I have no idea. I beat Titan’s Quest, but couldn’t make myself complete the last chapter of Immortal Throne.

The game has a lot of stuff to appreciate: Shadow effects, unique monsters, a solid cohesive theme of ancient Greece and plenty of action.

Action. Maybe it was an overload of that which finally got to me. I dunno.

When uninstalling it I noticed that I installed it June 2008, the same time I installed TES IV: Obivion and Sacred Gold.

I keep telling myself I’ll get back to them, but who knows when that will be. When you start to amass too many unbeaten games, I suppose you get more fickle about completing them.

Another find from my old backups. I think I must have used this for an English class back in my early college days.

I suppose coming right out and explaining my topic would be the best way about it, but I think I’ll tell you a bit more. In order to fully appreciate my kilt, you’d have to understand the journey. Sometimes the place you visit will rival any memories of how you got there. In my case, both were equally important.

I can remember quite easily the long summer months after school let out. We have always lived far from any large town or city, so in order to keep busy and away from yard work some creativity was in demand. So, me and several other friends always seemed to meet up and just sit around, and would end up being put to work. Either gardening or simply toting limbs fallen from the many oak trees about our yard. After awhile it got to be synonymous that with the door opening behind us, it was someone coming to find us something to do.

So, we began to walk and explore. We found places that quite obviously we hadn’t seen before. I can say I enjoyed myself quite well. Normally not a nature frolicking person, I learned to enjoy myself and take in the peace of my surroundings. It did wonders for my stress. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to let myself enjoy those days again.

The place that stands out in my mind the most though, is a place me and my friend Josh named ‘Paradise Valley. Perhaps it came from the ‘Great Valley from the Land Before Time, but it’s been so long I don’t remember exactly.
(more…)

I was rummaging through old backups and came across what appears to be a journal entry from years ago. I’m posting it here in case anyone wants to read it.

I suppose you’ve heard mention before of the little man’s paycheck. About having to make a choice of where you want to go once you’re out of school. What you may not realize is how important your decision is. You can either survive at a minimum wage job or you can live much happier with a lifestyle that lets you live.
(more…)

Speeding tickets suck. That is all.

P.S.

My fault, but still …

I was going through my stuff this morning trying to organize the clutter and came upon this quote:

It’s funny how momentous moments of your life always seem to occur without much fanfare

I jotted that down when I found out I was selected for my present job over a year ago. I still feel it was a big step forward, but reality has a way of killing the ‘buzz’ occasionally. When that happens I just keep moving forward and come out of the fog eventually.

That’s when I’m reminded that God has really been good to me.

Sometimes it’s just the result of loss of sleep, other times it’s a rainy day (which it is) and worse case it’s the sign of depression sneaking up.

It may very well be a bit of all. Life goes on …

Last week was interesting enough, and so was the week before. My little brother turned 16, held a movie ticket that costs $9 (wth!?) and had a haircut. Oh yeah, our hand-me-down dryer kicked the bucket. Not bad for 14 years.

Sometime this month or the next I’ll need to have my wisdom teeth pulled, get glasses and get a lot of good rest. Hopefully I follow through on at least one of those.

Last but not least I “really” need to get back in touch with a lot of people. Aside from my Mom I haven’t really talked to anyone in, well, close to a month now. I definitely need to get better at that.

Today was an interesting sort of day. I fixed the last remaining issue from the implementation yesterday of a Python script to configure printer settings and demoed a project to regulate volume levels for public access systems.

I almost couldn’t believe that I finally got the project working; albeit the code is ugly and error checking is scarce but I’m impressed that I finally managed to build something useful with C++. You can only get so far with Hello World. It was also great to see people nod in appreciation when I demonstrated it.

It’s nice to feel useful every now and then.

Oh yeah, I also ruined a batch of Cream of Wheat. It turns out I didn’t burn it – I just didn’t add enough Cream of Wheat. When it failed to thicken after 2.5 minutes I chalked it up to the lack of salt (a bonehead conclusion on my part). I didn’t realize that I grabbed a 1/4 cup instead of 3/4 cup. Oh well.

I also received a very thought provoking email reply from my brother. I’ll have to mention that again when I feel like writing more.

I rushed outside this morning (running behind) to find the air crisp and feeling very much like my favorite season on the way.

Work was “work” and progress seemed to crawl along. I managed to complete (let’s hope) a Python script to inject binary values into two registry keys depending on what system it runs on. The keys represent “mail boxes” for locked printer jobs.

The hex encoded binary string is 8176 characters long (only stating it because I’m sort of amazed at the length) and contains all settings for that printer. I wonder if the devs realized that breaking individual settings out into subkeys would be a good thing?

Oh well.

I’m also making good progress on an audio volume limiter (governor). It’ll run every X seconds and make sure that the various mixer volume levels are within a set threshold. If not the volume controls will be lowered to the maximum allowed.

The concept and pseudocode is pretty simple, but dealing with the WinAPIs is another story.

Thankfully I found an article showing how to set the master volume and I managed to get the waveOut code from there. I had no idea just how ugly working with ALL CAPS TYPEDEFS CAN BE. IT’S NOT LIKE IT MAKES IT HARD TO READ OR ANYTHING. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.