Trying out a new system called Anima, gonna need some players unintimidated by a rather complex and involved rule system.

Quick Status:
I am enjoying the new car, and in general life was minimally impacted by that whole incident. I'm about halfway through my final rotation and I hope against hope that my final placement will be back at Sikorsky. That was my dream job down there. (Sort of)

Decided to update the title and subtitle of my LJ to something a bit less angsty and dramatic. I presume most of you just read my entries though your Friends List so probably hardly even notice it but I figured for those few comments I'd make it seem less pathetic.

In other news, woo-hoo new laptop!



Alienware m11x, atticdoor and I each got one for our on the go computing!

So I have acquired a new vehicle.




2008 Hyundai Elantra, thinking about naming it, just haven't decided.

I'm getting enough to pay off the rest of my loan, but not much for a down payment. Shit...

Long story short, I'm an idiot.

Here's hoping my insurance comes through for me.

UPDATE
My car is totalled, the airbags alone exceed the value listed for my car. Apparently the pay out I will be receiving should be able to knock out my Car loan still in payment. I'm without a car but not completely screwed.

That’s it, I’ve had enough. Honestly I sometimes have to wonder if its just a coincidence that no matter what sector of my personal life I look in I see the same stupid shit happening. There seems to be this very common idea of what it means to ‘Grow up’ and ‘Be responsible’, yet these same people exhibit some of the most extreme immaturity in the process. To make it clear I’m going to spike out a few things that are an example of being grown up. Followed by some kind of bullshit people try to use these for.

Be Responsible
Honestly, from my experience this is really the cornerstone of acting like an adult. You follow through on commitments, when you can’t you let those who are depending on you know you can’t. This so fucking fundamental but seems to be the biggest fucking hurdle for people. What’s worse is that they use this as an excuse for why they were irresponsible: “Sorry I didn’t reply to that email, I’ve just been too busy with work and school.”
Bullshit, 9/10 emails can be answered with 1-2 sentences, you’re going to tell me that you didn’t have time to write 1-2 sentences and send it in? Fuck you, go to jail. The real reason was “I didn’t reply to your email because I either forgot or didn’t feel like it.” People forget things, nobody’s perfect, but don’t fucking lie about it too. This also applies to phone calls, and other forms of communication.

Follow through on your Commitments
For the love of everything unholy, if you say you’re going to be somewhere, be there. If you say you’re going to do something, fucking do it. If you fuck up, don’t go prattling off 101 reasons why it wasn’t your fault. You apologize and you make damn sure it doesn’t happen again. Maturity doesn’t mean never making a mistake, it means you’ll actually realize you fucked up and try to do better. Honestly I think this is probably one of the weakest areas I see from people around me.

Treat People with Respect
You don’t have to like everybody or be everyone’s fucking friend. Maybe you’re not the type to get close to others; fuck it, that’s not important. Unless that person is intentionally destructive to your life in some way common courtesy and respect are considered ‘Par’ for the course. These aren’t some ideals, this is basic shit. When you need to cancel plans or what have you, common courtesy dictates that you tell others this. Blowing off people, even if it’s to do something you deem more important, is never OK. See, believe or not other people make “plans” and will often put other plans on hold when they have a pre-existing arrangement.
When a group regularly gets together to do some activity that’s collaborative in nature, even in the name of recreation, its considered disrespectful to them to decide you just don’t feel like it. Call ahead! Fucking give some kind of advanced warning! Most people can roll with that, but don’t wait till everyone’s trying to get together and decide ‘meh not feeling it today.’

Real Life Comes First
This phrase is used over and over again when related to most fun activities. It’s very relevant, when you have shit to deal with that’s not the time to be logging onto WoW or pulling out the dice for some gaming. When real life comes up, however, that doesn’t give you license to just flake out of these activities. This should seem obvious, but you should probably let the people who will be waiting for you that some issue has come up.
Oddly enough this phrase is also very commonly abused, in a shaky grasp at what real life is. When you have a planned get together for gaming with a group of friends, and another group of friends decides to spontaneously get drunk the ‘Real Life Comes First’ statement does not apply. Despite what you might think, the people in your regularly scheduled gaming group also exist in real life, and you’re blowing them off at the last minute. Obviously compromises can happen here, but don’t act like the whole thing is self-explanatory.

With Age Comes Maturity
Shut the fuck up. I assure you this is not the case. Day-in and day-out I watch people quite a bit older than me act like fucking children. Seriously, age matters a hell of lot less than you’d think. It doesn’t make you more mature inherently, it can in fact just take your immaturity to new levels.

Yeah, I know, growing up is hard.

I like facts, when making my decision about something I work on facts. When you try to persuade me, use facts and logic. More importantly, when citing an incident as supporting evidence, I need specifics. An approximate date, and a description of what happened would be good. If you can't come up with this, don't be surprised if I think you're argument sucks, and don't just believe your argument on good faith. Also to those who do decide to engage me in a debate, if you try to prove your argument using unsupported facts, cited incidents with no details/dates, or by the virtue of you being smarter and more informed than I (without facts to support this statement) be assured I will seek to end this argument quickly.

If I ask for the argument to end, that means that I'm not convinced and will not be convinced. If you continue to argue the point, I will get rude and dismissive. People who clearly cannot be dissuaded from arguing with me, and have a past history of this can expect rude and dismissive from the gates. Its not pleasant, but I work with what tools I am given.

I'd like to invite a guest commentator, Morbo, to add to this topic:


DEBATING DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!

Its time!

Okay, so we saw JoCo in concert Saturday night, it was freaking awesome. I recognized only some of the songs but I enjoyed the whole thing. Out of all the songs though, only one really stuck with me.

Some time ago JoCo entered a contest where you had to write a song that was a tribute to David Bowie's 'Space Oddity'. This brought about the song 'Space Doggity'. Despite the cheeky name, its a sad and true story. Apparently when the Russians were working on space travel they sent a Dog into space as an experiment to observe the effects of space travel on a living mammal.

Apparently the shuttle was not built for retrieval, official press releases stated that the lasted a few days when in truth within hours of launch she had succumbed to heat and fatigue. For whatever reason loss of human life never hits me as hard as these things do. I guess I just really like dogs.

Anyways, here's a video someone put together to the soundtrack as there is no official vid:



Update:

Found a few images worth looking at:
This is a shot of Laika in her harness pre-launch:


Apparently in 2002 this monument was erected outside the facility that lead the Sputnik 2 project:


"Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it... We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog." -Oleg Gazenko, Russian Scientist involved in Sputnik 2

I've been toying with this programming project, talking to this person and that person. Most have disagreed with my original plan. A tabletop gaming framework to automate most of the system/mechanics/math involved in TT gaming these days. My goal was to use a completely object-oriented design, built in Java. Many have disparaged Java, I faltered, I've looked at other options.

Until last night.
I had a dream, in it I saw my project come to completion. Pages of code passed in my vision surrounded by gnostic symbolism that should not have fit the imagery was that of harmony. I saw my goal realized, how every page, every graphical user element, flashed by me. Every last one of them, designed and implemented with Java.

Is this a prophetic vision? Or just a coincidence? I have no idea, but I am going follow this vision, and see what I end up with.