Naked Singularity

Crossroads

2008-08-16T23:38:17Z

I've never heard this version of Someone Else . . . but I like it.

Breathe

2008-08-14T01:25:33Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IqqCRNzYlU

Say it with strings

2008-08-14T00:37:04Z

I never get tired of listening to Vivaldi.

Epitaph

2008-08-14T00:16:13Z

Even though we may think we know when life is done with us, it is only in those final moments that we can be certain. And what that certainty reveals, none can say.

Reflection

2008-08-13T23:24:01Z

This.

Speech

2008-08-12T23:38:36Z

There are no words . . .

SNAFU

2008-08-12T01:48:03Z

So work today wasn't as bad as it could have been. I was mostly right about several deploys having issues on DEV that appeared to work on developer systems. Some of those were cleared up right away, but one in particular caused me to work almost an hour after quitting time and then consumed some more of my time remotely after I got home.

Tomorrow the DEV system is supposed to push to QA for testing, but we don't have hardware for some of the QA machines yet . . . . wonder how that's going to work out. I'm also expecting some conversion builds to come through.

I'm really tired of my line of work and would love to do something different. Unfortunately, there's little chance now for change, unless I do something drastic. My job makes me wish I was terminally ill . . . .

Toast

2008-08-12T01:32:18Z

I just wanted an excuse to use this new icon - cockroaches partying to a nuclear blast.

Dial up your favorite movie

2008-08-12T01:23:59Z

Stolen from Geekend - someone made a Stargate Home Theater System

Wear Science

2008-08-12T01:13:36Z

Makes some great T-Shirts - some of my favorite images here. I made several of the images into LJ icons as well.

Vat Man

2008-08-12T00:41:15Z

Tom the Dancing Bug examines what it must be like for a brain in a beaker - guest starring God-Man himself.

A Plan

2008-08-11T02:27:39Z

Does having a plan really help? I had a plan for tonight, but it turned out differently than I had expected. I had planned to be asleep by now . . . a deep sleep. So what do I do now? Try to get back on track, or scrap the original plan and play it from the hip?

I'm not tired (now), so I'd probably have to take something to wind down for sleep. But there are things that have to be done before I can turn in and timing is everything. At this point, I guess I should be focusing more on what comes tomorrow. There's no telling how bad it will actually be, but I can prepare for the worst. And that would be multiple build requests come in at the same moment - but all I can do is handle one at a time so everyone is just going to have to live with that.

I can make it through Monday, even if it isn't pretty. And tomorrow night I'll sit here with the same concerns and questions and going over the same decisions. Who knows, tomorrow night could be different. Or maybe I'll be kicking myself tomorrow that I didn't have a better solution.

One thing at a time. . .

dakyon @ 2008-08-10T20:05:00

2008-08-11T01:01:59Z

Does having goals really help one with the apparent pointlessness of large parts of life? Maybe there's something to being able to cross an item off of your list, or maybe some of us just need more proactive direction. I did laundry and shopping today, yet I don't feel accomplished. If anything, I am more aware of those things that did not get done today, whether on a list or not. I also can't help but think about those things that I must do tomorrow, or a week from now. The Dogs need to get to the vet for annual shots. Dress code policy has changed at work and I need to go clothes shopping. Dragon Con is 20 some days away and I need to plan for that. Mom's Birthday is 11 days away and I without a gift or a card at this point.

Perhaps that's part of my problem, my focus is in the wrong place. It just feels like there's never rest between things that need to be done . . . no sense of a break.

And work is starting to get busy again with ridiculous amounts of things that can go wrong such that it's a wonder anything gets done at all. Yep, new deploys with new requirements . . . the exceptions to the rule. I'm dreading tomorrow because I'll have 5 pans in the fire and something will be wrong with one or more of them. The programmers will state that the project works on their machine, but the one deployed to the DEV system will have problems. But there will be something funny going on even though I'm building the same code they are and it will consume large amounts of time trying to figure out what.

Meanwhile I'll have several other builds coming in that I also need to tend to, each of which may have problems of its own. Happiness is completing a build and putting it through to QA for TEST, even if it comes back with errors, for in those moments it is in QA it is out of my hair.

And these are systems that are designed to work together and it will be glorious when they do, although not perhaps as originally designed. And I will keep building and deploying them until they do.

Should I keep playing the game and pretending to give a damn? Pretending to have specifications and requirements in advance and time to comply? Or stating the obvious - I cannot do what you ask given such short notice of this. And OH, here's another system that has non-stadard deploy practices making it that much more difficult to manage or operate.

Maybe I should make a list . . .

Dear Dr. Papazian

2008-08-09T00:19:04Z

Everything you taught me never prepared me for this!

Until it Sleeps

2008-08-08T22:42:28Z

The Apocalyptica cover of Until it Sleeps is rocksome!

Queen of the Reich

2008-08-08T02:00:46Z

Normally, I would be asleep by now, but since I slept pretty much all day, I'm not tired. Maybe I'll stay up late and hope that I get into a creative writing mood. I could use the creative output.

I've been thinking about how influential Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime was when I was 19. There were classic lyrics such as:

Religion and Sex are powerplays
manipulate the people for the money they pay
selling skin, selling God
the numbers look the same on their credit cards

Politicians say no to Drugs
while we pay for wars in South America
Fighting fire with empty words
while the banks get fat,
and the poor stay poor,
the rich get rich,
and the cops get paid, to look away
while the one percent rules America

I had a friend who always gave me a hard time for listening to OM because he said it made me politically crazy - which is probably true to some extent. But I found QRs lyrics to be pretty spot on for how I felt about such things as religion, politics and government. And Geoff Tate's delivery on the vocal side of things was pretty amazing. It's no wonder that QR became my favorite band.

Brain Dumb

2008-08-08T01:04:32Z

Free-IQTest.net - IQ Test

Edit: It's only 20 questions and so probably not very accurate.

Don't Panic

2008-08-07T23:52:11Z

I get anxiety over the stupidest little things. Ordering food. Pumping gas. Basically any public action, whether or not I have to interact with people. I'm under a constant fear that I'm going to screw up or do something stupid, and these thoughts are my obsession. In the back of my mind it would be catastrophic for this to happen, but just the thought of it makes the emotion of it real. Because of this I find it extremely difficult to just go with the flow and relax. I feel like I'm always being scrutinized . . . It's ironic that with all the obsessive worrying I do, that at my center is apathy.

I don't like being this way, but I'm not sure how to break out of this cycle. I have years of CBT, but even though I can recognize and admit to most of my negative thought patterns, I'm still stuck when it comes to taking that assertive leap. I find this frustrating to no end. I'm always miserable, and I'm tired of always feeling this way.

I'm also suffering from anhedonia and acedia. I don't look forward to things anymore. Today I could not bring myself to get out of bed, so I took a personal day off of work and all I did was sleep. This is precisely what I am not supposed to do, but I did it anyway.

I'm just going through the motions of life, pretending that I give a damn, and marking time waiting for that point where it either ends or somehow becomes meaningful. I'm just a fool on a dark melancholy journey. And damn I don't want to be or sound emo . . . I certainly don't want that kind of attention, which is why I'm not up to confiding in friends, or bringing the matter up directly very often. But I try to write about it to make myself feel better . . . to air it out.

Simulation

2008-08-07T21:59:12Z

"Is it possible that our mix of small, rocky worlds, ice giants and gas giants in circular outer orbits really is an exception in the galaxy?"

Neural Synchronicity

2008-08-07T02:13:49Z

"The study also demonstrates how neural activity can spike periodically or rhythmically. When researchers introduced a specific rhythm to the model, they discovered that the model could learn and repeat the rhythm. Scientists have known for 50 years that the brain could do this, but the mechanism was unknown until now. Thivierge said the mechanism is based on how the neurons come together to motivate each other to fire in a specific, periodic way, following the rhythmic stimuli."

Qubits outside of a vacuum

2008-08-07T02:08:55Z

"Previous research has only succeeded in creating some building blocks for a quantum computer by using atoms suspended in a vacuum. However it has not been possible to make enough for a whole computer as scientists can only hold a limited number of atoms in place for a short period of time. Using atoms trapped in a silicon crystal, the research team, which also involved scientists from University College London and Heriot-Watt University, showed that the quantum waves oscillate long enough for a computer operation, and now hope to produce a higher number of computer bits."

Quantum Chaos

2008-08-07T02:05:47Z

"The evolution of disorder into order by the xenon atoms' nuclear spins is a signature of chaos theory, which, contrary to the popular notion, does not imply complete disorder. Instead, chaos theory describes how weather, certain chemical reactions, planetary orbits, subatomic particles and other dynamic systems change over time, with the changes often highly sensitive to starting conditions."

Reversing the collapse of Psi

2008-08-07T02:01:08Z

"Because theorists had believed since 1926 that a measurement of a quantum particle inevitably forced a collapse, it was said that in a way, measurements created reality as we understand it. Katz, however, says being able to reverse the collapse "tells us that we really can't assume that measurements create reality because it is possible to erase the effects of a measurement and start again.""

Leaving on a Red Hill

2008-08-06T00:24:23Z

Dead Zones

2008-08-05T01:01:10Z

And the air had a brush like quality in the way that it moved. It was most visible in the tree tops among the many waving leaves. Perhaps there was a pattern there? If there was, I could not see it right away, but the motion reminded me of the sort of randomness you might see and hear in a congregation or a live audience. In this sense, the trees seemed to orchestrate the wind more than simply react to it.

And then I noticed that in some of the frames of my dream, the leaves did not move even though there was wind. Some part of my mind in the dream-state recognized this as a failure to update, but where the blame was, I could not tell. These areas in the dream were like dead spots where one could not get any cell phone reception, and they were persistent. If I moved around the dream-geography, a region that was previously dead would still be dead if I came back later.

So inside the dream, I am wondering the significance of the dream anomalies - locations and times that no longer update . . . that appear to be cut off from whatever creative essence the dream would normally have. And if this has a physical manifestation or is purely metaphorical.

It was from my home town which I have only visited 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years. My memories from my recent visit told me that the town had changed more than I would have expected even though large parts of it still remain the same.

Change . . . there is the concept that I struggle with apparently even with dead zones within dreams. Some dream elements are so recurring, that I begin to wonder what significance they have, even if it's just meta.

Also, in this dream I was riding a motor bike, which I am unable to do in real life, thus the dream's state of not being fully in control in getting from A to B.

And more - there was one frame that was like a giant picture so it was hard to tell in the dream whether it was a dead zone, or simply a picture depicting a dead zone.

Now if I could only make good on that process of writing immediately after dreaming so I could capture even more details of some of these interesting lucid dreams.