Archive for January, 2007
I have wonderful friends.
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007My turn to cook again.
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
It was my turn to cook again so I whipped up some Fettuccine with Alfredo sauce and chicken. I was a little worried the marinade I used would overpower the Alfredo sauce but it turns out I was happily wrong and everything worked out yummily.
Creativity is creativity, even if it is lame I suppose.
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
So I just reinstalled my testing Laptop at work with Ubuntu 6.10 after a failed attempt at 7.04 Beta 2 and in doing so I needed a new wallpaper. For some reason I was feeling creative today and fired up the Gimp. Click the screenshot to see the finished product.
Nekomi In a Box – DJ-Neko <3
Ubuntu Logo
Cherry Blossom was traced and reworked from an image on google image search.
Edit:
Glorious source files in various resolutions for those that really liked it, all bearing the Ubuntu logo!
“When someone else needs it, return the favour. You pass it on.”
Friday, January 26th, 2007I admit that I have been a bit melancholy of late but life shaking changes will do that to a person. We went out to dinner tonight and spent some time together tonight including shopping for some art supplies. I miss her dearly but it is getting easier, yet I still very violently believe in her and I know deep down in my core that I will do anything within my power to ensure that she sees her dreams.
Farscape quotes seem to be popular lately….
“…I have people who rely on me, people who I care about, people who mystify me and people who have become allies, friends. And people who teach me patience and people who teach me… other things.”
John Crichton, Farscape S1, E22 “Family Ties”
There is no one else in this world whom I wish to fight for, to protect, to care for, to support or to see stand out in this world than her right now, and for whatever part it is my lot in life to play I swear that I will to the best of my ability play it to my last dollar, heart string and breath until such time as it is no longer my part to play. Anything less is weaksauce and completely unacceptable.
Apropos
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
Only I know why I suppose, but this feels wholly apropos at the moment. I suppose with myself as John…
Dominar Rygel XVI: Look, I… I know I can be selfish, but given a chance I can usually…
John Crichton: Do what? Do the right thing?
Dominar Rygel XVI: Yes.
John Crichton: Rygel, I figure the right thing starts at the beginning of the day, not after you’ve been caught.
^]:wq!^M
Another new experience
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
In other breaking news it appears that our hero of the day got domesticated! Yes yes folks now that the ex has moved out I can no longer rely on her to provide me with sweet sweet sustenance so I have had to learn to cook… OK well not learn so much as remember, but still. More pictures of dinner in the gallery.
Tie Tuesday!
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
So some of the gang at work have dubbed Tuesdays as “Tie Tuesday” so I felt like shaking up the place today so I participated. Proof is in the gallery.
In other news work is really busy, but that’s good because I don’t like being idle and it’s keeping me focused on what I have to do. It is really nice to be able to be working on applications that is going to make the service we provide better and will hopefully make more money for the company. I’m not really a business man, so the bottom line isn’t ever my concern. I strive to do things right as opposed to cheaply.
Anyway, off to try and get more of my life in order… since there is no food in the house and I have become the cook, cleaner and whatever else.
What the freaking hell.
Saturday, January 20th, 2007So friday morning I woke up and moved my right leg wrong and really tweaked the muscle out in the back of my lower leg. I have not had anything hurt so much in a while, even when I popped my jaw out of place a month ago didn’t hurt quite this badly. Well for some damn reason just now I did the same thing to my left leg. I really am a damn mess.
Burning Crusade is fun and Anorak is almost 61 but I feel like an outcast in my guild and yet she is the guild leader and I helped her run the guild until a few months ago so I don’t want to leave.
With her gone it feels so alone here, so cold here. I have to find the strength to fix my failings because I never want to lose someone as important to me as she is again. I don’t think I could bear to love anyone again if I have to endure this pain again.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Wednesday, January 17th, 2007Since I’ve noticed alot of hits from google for Burning Crusade I think I should probably show off / explain some stuff. First and foremost my laptop is a Lenovo 3000 N100 which equates to:
Hardware
- Intel Core Duo T2500 2GHz
- 1.5GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
- 100GB 5400 RPM SATA Hard drive
- nVidia GeForce 7300 GO 128MB integrated video with Turbo Cache (PCI Express x16)
- 15″ Widescreen (16:10) LCD, 1680×1050 Native
Software
- Slackware 11.0
- Dropline Gnome 2.16.2
- Kernel 2.6.19.1
- nVidia Binary Driver 1.0-9746
- Cedega 5.2.3, Engine 5.2.9
- World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade 2.0.5 Build 6320 (Release)
Prior to Burning Crusade I got about 30-45 FPS indoors and 15 FPS outdoors while playing with this Config.wtf. Now with Burning Crusade the performance has not really changed at all.
My Cedega settings are here:
General
Video
System Info
Screenshots of the results of course are available in the gallery.
Errata
Two things to look out for:
- If you have the Collector’s Edition DVD, there is no visible installer on it. Copy the Installer.exe and from the first CD and use that to install.
- Most likely the patches will not run under Cedega, I used Wine 0.9.24 to run the patches. The installer was run through Cedega without issue.
It BURNS us PRECIOUS!!!
Tuesday, January 16th, 2007
The wait was worth it, the lack of sleep will be worth it. We infact were successful in procuring two copies of the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Collectors’ Edition expansion. We got home just before 12:20 after waiting in line at GameStop for about 2 hours. The line was out the door when we left and they had precious few collectors editions but I got mine! The other is for the ex, so don’t ask! :)
Off to zone into Outland folks! And then…maybe sleep…. maybe.
(Edit: 1:20 AM EST)
Wow… Experience again… Crazy stuff.
Tons of screenshots in the gallery (clicky the thumbnail above to be taken there). It is totally awesome stuff! The Netherwelp is so neat looking and the particle effect trail!! Amazingly the servers stayed up and I could run around Hellfire!! Go Blizzard go!
I have an early meeting so I should be going to bed I suppose……….
Changes
Monday, January 15th, 2007Day two (three?). People have been around all weekend so today will be my first day alone here. Saturday night Clayton, Mary and Luke were over until god knows what hour of the morning. I was a lot less social than I could have been but I just wanted to be alone and to figure out how the hell to live alone. I’ve always had her to support me, I guess I’m starting into a withdrawal of sorts.
Anyway, Sunday Luke was over most of the day and we just kind of lounged around which was nice since that morning I scrubbed the bedroom and the bathroom down as well as the kitchen. The house is getting there. More vacuuming to do around the house and the ‘den’ that I lived in for a few months is in serious need of love since there are piles of my things in there.
In other news we switched most of the house over to Compact Fluorescent lights over the weekend. It cost us about $40 to do it, but they are all 26 watt bulbs replacing mostly 75 watt bulbs. The light is a much cooler white (6500K rated) so it looks somewhat industrial in here, but we’re getting used to it. It’s starting to seem more like daylight the longer we have them. I don’t expect HUGE cost savings on the electric bill, but every little bit helps. Mixing the few regular bulbs left (in the living room there are two lamps which the CF bulbs won’t fit in) with the CF lights seems to help cut the industrial look a lot, and we still get the benefit of the energy savings.
Pictures of my mostly-cleaner room can be found, as usual in the gallery.
Gone gone gone
Saturday, January 13th, 2007She called me around 5pm today to tell me she was done moving. I got home about 5:30 and started cleaning and moving myself back into ‘our’-room-cum-my-room and now (8:00pm) have most of my stuff up here and am just kind of relaxing. It’s really sad to see how empty the whole place is without her. Despite all the unplesantness lately it really isn’t a home anymore… not without her.
I know it will get better, it’s just really hard to be here right now.
Cowering
Saturday, January 13th, 2007So I spent the night at Mom’s house last night (and am still there currently) because today is the big day. Today she moves out. We went to dinner last night at Outback and had a good time eating some really nice rare filets. I helped her pack some stuff when we got back home and then we layed around a bit and talked. I forgave her last night. I don’t know why, but there is something intangable about this girl that makes me want to be a better person, be a stronger person and do whatever I have to to keep her in my life. Even if it is just as a friend. It is going to be so hard but I know in the long run it is worth it and it is something I have to do. Just like how I felt that our relationship was just a natural extension of our friendship I think that after 9 years our friendship is just a natural extension of who we are. I don’t really believe in ’soul mates’ or anything like that persay anymore, but there is certainly something between her and I that I cannot ignore, something that has caused us to find eachother time and again.
That said it is not without a good bit of fear that she leaves today. She has been my roommate for 1 year and 363 days, and we have been inseperable for nearly 3 and a half years. I know that we need this time apart, that we have to grow and figure out what we want out of life. I know that we’re both going to try very hard to remain close friends. She is my best friend and I am hers; that isn’t something either of us take lightly. But we truely are throwing our fates up in the air and letting the wind take them. I don’t know what our chances are, it isn’t going to be easy for either of us to live without the other, we have depended on each other for so long and on top of that we have to grow for our own sakes during this time.
So I am scared, and I’m hiding because I can’t watch her leave. But I think this is well and truely our only hope for true happiness.
Even though she doens’t read this… I think this sums up the best part of our relationship:
“To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.” — Lao Tzu
Every day is a winding road…
Thursday, January 11th, 2007So last night was a pretty good night. I helped her pack for a few hours and got most of our bedroom done which is something that I’ve been trying to do for like a year now. Heh. It wasn’t too bad either. After that we went and ate dinner at Tully’s and chatted a bit. Once we got back I cracked open my two new bottles of scotch and I convinced her to share some with me. It really meant a lot to me that I got to share something I love (scotch) with someone I love (her) as sort of a parting ritual.
So I gave her the choice of which she wanted and (I am so proud!) she chose the Laphroaig 15y Islay Single Malt! I warned her that this is bound to be a woody, peaty bastard. And boy did it not disapoint! It started off dry and smoky, like charcoal and peat and then warmed up and developed the salty sea taste that defines the Laphroaig. The finish was smooth and warm, it stayed with you for a while but didn’t burn like younger scotches would. All in all it was fantastic. She remarked that “it’s not bad, but I can see how it is an aquired taste” to which I giggled and opened the bottle of GLENROTHES. The GLENROTHES I’m on the fence about still. She liked it more than the Laphroaig which I can understand because it is much more mild on your palate. It has sort of a fruity middle and a mild quiet finish. I am certainly not taken with it right away like I was the Laphroaig but it is quite good in its own right.
Of course since I drank my glass of the Laphroaig as well as hers and most of her glass of the GLENROTHES along with a pretty large Guinness over dinner I was pretty well lit last night which lead to some rather candid banter. It was good times and I have a lot of faith that we will make it. Maybe not together, that is still to be seen, but we will make it and I still firmly believe that I personally wouldn’t change a thing.
Everyone should share good scotch with someone they care about, it makes the world a better place!
The end is near.
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007Sunday was pretty good, pretty emotion filled but otherwise good. She and I ended up sitting up and talking until shortly after midnight drinking plum wine and looking at pretty Japanese things on the internet. Last night she pretty much just packed until she couldn’t move anymore and appears pretty frustrated by the whole thing. It is tearing me up inside to see the house getting taken apart like this. She is 1/3 of the family that I felt we had here that built this place into a home and her leaving is really hard for me both because it’s the end of our relationship but because it’s the end of this place being the home that it has been.
It also feels that our chance for friendship after this is tenuous at best. I want to keep my promise to her that we would always be friends so badly, but something just feels off in this whole situation. Like a force is looming in the shadows outside of my field of vision that is pulling us… not unnecessarily apart, but pulling us in a direction that I can’t quite make out. I feel that we’re going to be apart for some time while we try and nurse our wounds, I just hope that it’s in the cards for us to find each other again.
At least the plum wine was good!
State of the Union
Sunday, January 7th, 2007So all the kit that I ordered from Target so far has arrived and is in use. I’m super thrilled because the room is coming together wonderfully and it is almost feeling like a home again. I have a batch of stuff coming in from Japan to flesh out the living room / kitchen with some nifty knick knacks. The colors are really working well in here and the deep greens and browns are offsetting the eye laser effect of the apartment white walls. The black and silver home theater setup is a nice contract to the warm tones of the furniture. If ever I had a creative side it is in stuff like this. I told her the other day that I just don’t think like she does; I can’t see a finished product in my head and get there like she does with her art. But somehow I can do that when putting together a room — almost by complete chance. Anyway with the living room I have a few ideas for some wall hanging stuff and I want to find a set of nice curtains and this room will be done.
Then I have the unenviable task of taking the bedroom that her and I shared for nearly two years and making it somehow transform from ‘our’ room to ‘my’ room. I have a few ideas on what I want to do with it, but somehow I think I’m letting her influence still bleed in to what I’m coming up with. I know she has changed me, but I want to make sure that this room is for me and me alone at this point. I will never get better if I can’t have a solid foundation and if I let the bedroom seep with her influence I will always be living in the period between 8/2003 and 11/2006 where we were together and everything I did was tempered with my firm belief that we would never be apart. Now that we are apart I have to continually remind myself that I have to do things for myself alone.
I think the Asian influence I’m introducing into the living room is probably 60% for me and 40% for this shadow of her. I think that inside I want her to like the room and want to ‘live’ there and at the same rate it is something that I enjoy and in my heart I know that it looks good to me.
I hope to be done with the house by March so I can get down to the business of living.
Life never works out the way you hope…
Friday, January 5th, 2007So the first batch of furnature showed up today and I got the kitchen table and chairs setup and for the first time in nearly 2 years (1 year 355 days) I did two things that have never been done since the three of us moved in here.
1) I cooked dinner
2) We ate at a table
See, until now we didn’t have chairs for the kitchen table so we have always eaten whereever. Be that in front of our desks or on the couch or on the floor. Pretty much wherever. So tonight I put together the chairs, set the table with my new table cloth and place mats, even lit the oil lamp we have and made dinner.
Of course she didn’t join us for dinner. Now I know things have been uncomfortable for her and it’s not exactly easy for me either, but I’m still mad. I know we’re not dating anymore, but she’s supposed to still be at least my friend and roommate and I just hoped that since we started this journey together that we could finish it together.
I guess that is too much to ask.
I know I shouldn’t be mad and I really shouldn’t expect her to play along with my desire to have the last few days of our time together here be anything like normal, but that’s rational thought…. and I’m not really all that rational at the moment.
Anyway, I’m excited about the new stuff that came in and I’m off to put together my new coffee table.
Here’s a picture of the new kitchen table setup. Other pictures of the house are in the gallery.
Edit:
Coffee table is together and one of the end tables is together. Pictures being added to the gallery at a furious pace!!
Changes
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007So the ex is moving out soon and as gut-wrenching as that is on a personal level it also means a whole lot of things are going away and the roommate and I are in a mad rush to replace them. I don’t know why but it kind of excites me a bit to get to redecorate. I think for the living room I’m going to go with a modern / Asian type theme, with modern furniture and Asian art. I ordered the coffee table, end tables and kitchen chairs today. I’m not 100% sure how everything is going to fit together yet, but I’m excited.
The bedroom is going to be the hardest because I want to setup a little sitting area under the window (where the bed currently is) with some button back stuffed chairs and a nice side table where I can sit and sip scotch and read. I really am trying to change my life in a rather drastic way because of all of this and I think part of that is going to be spending less time with computers and television at home and more time reading and being personable. I also think that if I can take the lessons I’ve learned and build on them it will make me a better person in the long run, which is always a good thing.
I will probably end up spending close to $3,000 in my quest once all is said and done. I’ve already spent probably $700 and I’m still working on the living room. Hopefully she will come through on some artwork that I can hang in the bedroom. I so do adore her art and would love to have some displayed. I figure I probably have another $300 to spend in the living room / kitchen and then I know I have at least $1,000 to spend in the bedroom and that’s if I still get a full size bed set for ‘my birthday’ that I was promised.
Man I love my friends
Tuesday, January 2nd, 200717:04 < stevie> man I’m sitting here making a list of my favourite albums,
listening to advent children’s soundtrack, and talking about
fuckin’ panties
17:04 < stevie> what a year
17:04 < matt2> great way to start 2007 I think
New Years Day
Monday, January 1st, 2007Happy New Years everyone. Last night was fun, I hung out with some people I havn’t seen in a long ass time. Mary, Clayton and Luke came over and we hung out and enjoied ringing in the New Year together! We played terrible video games and watched Pi! It was a blast. My buddy who lives in CA texted me to wish me a Happy New Year and the room mate and I walked around in the rain for a while. All in all a pretty fun night. I skipped out on the work party which I kinda feel bad about but I think this was better for me and I had more fun. We don’t get the chance to entertain here all that often so it was nice.
I hope the ex had a good time this weekend. I shot her a text at 11:59 but it has as of now gone unanswered so I can only assume she was enjoying herself.
Mary is a bit anti-camera so unfortunatly I have to bear the mantle of being the official 2007 dork.
enjoy my pain