Fated to End Sometime

For those of you who keep up with this blog, I've decided ultimately to ditch OpenWYSIWYG in favor of Drupal FCKEditor combined with Image Browser - Image Browser is a much more intuitive image insertion tool than the one that was included with OpenWYSIWYG, and quite frankly I add a lot of images to my posts and don't want to have to spend up to five minutes navigating folders on my server to find the one I need without even a thumbnail to help me.

It's been bubbling in my subconscious for a while now.  A short story.  It needs to be written.

Then I found this today from the Penny Arcade website:

How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later

This was written by Phillip K. Dick in 1978, and is the second time in my life that I have come across a better understanding of the nature of reality, in that writers are a significant part of it.  Even though he is Episcopalian and focuses on the Bible, it doesn't matter - the core is still there and very important.

I'm not a big fan of long sweeping emotional dramatic movies.  The main reason I'm not a big fan is because I put myself into the shoes of the characters involved and end up getting very affected by the film as a direct result.  For this reason I was reluctant to see the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button starring Brad Pitt, because I knew that it was going to be difficult for me emotionally while trying to watch it.

[img_assist|nid=804|title=|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=150|height=150]Last night I got a bug up my butt after my slim Sony Playstation 2 refused to play yet another DVD.  This time it was the new Journey to the Center of the Earth starring Brandon Frasier, which we had rented from Netflix, and just the night before it had been The Cat Returns.  We were also having trouble with a few other discs as well, and Gran Turismo 4 was even starting to act up, refusing to load occasionally.

What makes this particularly irksome is that all of the DVDs that refused to play and generated the Disc Cannot Be Read error message worked perfectly fine in a generic $23 DVD player that we've had for longer than the slim PS2.  I had initially fixed the problem about 6 months ago or so by cleaning the lens with some cleaner fluid and a camera lens cleaning cloth.  That technique was not working this time, and since we can't exactly just go out and buy a new game system right now, I decided to do some research on the net and see what other people were experiencing, and whether they had found a way to fix the problem.

[img_assist|nid=537|title=|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=150|height=113]As usual, we are not being told the truth by our media regarding the Somalia pirate situation.  And as someone who holds the truth of piracy rather close to my heart, I in particular feel for the men of Somalia who are basically doing the only thing they can to try to protect their land, their loved ones and themselves.

Here's the article I finally got a chance to read this morning.  Brigitte told me about it last night, and I spent a few hours last night reinstalling my copy of Sid Meier's Pirates - Live the Life, because although technology has improved things since the "golden age of Piracy" there are still core similarities between what was going on then and now.  History is repeating itself as we spiral down to the end-time of our program.

http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/somalia-you-are-being-lied-to-a...

[img_assist|nid=801|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.no-ip.com|align=left|width=150|height=51]I just renewed fatedtoend.com today, even though it doesn't expire for a couple more months.  I'm typically a procrastinator, but seeing as how there are currently 4 different websites that operate under the *.fatedtoend.com domain, I decided it would be wise to be proactive instead.

Simultaneously, I finally disabled the following addresses that were still pointing to this server:

fatedtoend.servehttp.com, meatmud.servegame.com, and dakini.servehttp.com

These were the original free domain names I used from no-ip.com when I was first getting started.

So what makes no-ip.com so special?

[img_assist|nid=794|title=|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=49|height=150]So Brigitte pointed out that I have this serious problem of just spastically doing something.  Case in point - when I was in High School, the only extra-curricular activity I participated in yearly that was directly tied to the school was the Ski Club.  Skiing was great and all, but after a couple years of it I got bored and wanted to learn how to snowboard.

Being in a family of eight with a mom and stepdad on teacher's income meant that I generally didn't get new things that were expensive.  My violin was given to us by my Aunt & Uncle, they had found it in their attic when they moved into their house and nobody in their family played.  My skis were second-hand, as were my boots and poles, although I did have a new ski bag to carry them in.  And when I asked for a snowboard, I got an early generation Burton, almost identical to the one in this photo, although with better boot bindings that would actually keep the board attached to my feet.