The Wayward Path

blow to the ego, blow to the mind

illusions and delusion all lost in time

simple facts withered in lust

tap tap tap … gone with the trust

foolish and childlike the game is played

life long battles on an ongoing rain delay

obvious illusions logic precludes

ongoing delusion safe in fortitude

perhaps wayward is the path

maybe, just a bubble bath

An old essay…

Here is an old essay I had posted on a previous blog. I wanted to repost it here to ensure that the text was not lost.

The Notebook, originally posted on October 22, 2007:

I remember a notebook I had in high school that was filled with personal notes and drawings. Every faint imagination of a ticking or working mechanism was scribbled and doodled all over the otherwise vast empty pages. Notes and thoughts about an entire world of my own were scribbled in such poor writing no one would ever know it could be read. Cryptic, the words where, as the ink lines flowed like weightless drippings the end of a loose pen. Each corner of the notebook was as frayed as an accent rug laying threadbare in and elderly home just waiting for its turn to be retired. The thin plastic cover is warped and worn with signs of almost hourly use as the notebook provided far more entertainment then that of school work.

As the years of high school droned on, the pages of the notebook became increasingly saturated with the thoughts and ideas from my adolescent self. The more pages I filled, the more they resembled white bath towels stained with blue and black ink. Revisions after revisions of thoughts and ideas where compiled together like the archives of a library. Each carried their own edition and as the times changed, so did the ideas and drafts. From times of great happiness to times of utter shame and sadness, my notebook held all the feelings I held inside. Years of endless boredom were chronicled page by page, each with miniscule notes of the half-amusing thoughts my teachers had rendered with only but the most interesting remaining inside my head like little silver pin pricks in my mind. Many of the diligent students took avid notes in their classes, but I myself could not obsess over such droll topics; I had more important concepts to dream over in my notebook.

With the power I wielded in my pen I could make anything happen. The drawings spawned from that book featured numerous ideas and improvements I could make to the world. Some later realized by others but many still unfounded in the vast world of ours. Wild abstractions from my innermost mind could be laid out and designed with utter methodology as I sketched the designs. I could see everything I would have needed to build some of my most interesting projects, mechanical and electrical workings being my center-most masterpieces. I could use the pages of my notebook to scribble the new gear or gizmo that I had imagined that day. Everyday with my notebook was a day of invention and progression.

The outside cover of the notebook bore no label or identification marks of any kind; only on inside the front cover could anyone have identified the owner of such a saturated text. The binding, made by two larger folded sheets of paper that were glued into place, was rough and in shreds.  Near the end of its life, the notebook was held together with elastic bands and carefully placed strips of transparent packing tape. The covers of the notebook were a dull brown earth tone, a mud-like color that was modest and somewhat unnatural-looking to have been suspended in plastic. On the front cover, there was a glimpse of the name of the notebook’s manufacturer. The text was stamped on the cover it like so many thousands of other notebooks just like it. The name of its maker was outlined in a square border that contained smaller, lesser boxes along with stars. These stars where as dull as the rest of the lettering, and bore no shimmer of that in which they represent. Dull, as if they were along the side of an old and weathered army truck that had just been retired from battle.

Even though the notebook was withered and dilapidated, it served a noble purpose. For years under my arm and in my backpack my faithful subject stayed true to me. Never did it spill its secrets it held within despite it being crammed to the brink of death with my inner most thoughts. The ink inside was so overwhelming to it’s battered pages it may as well have been a filled water balloon swimming like an orb of ideas ready to pop. The notebook’s resolve to keep my ideas inside was only matched by my own. Together we kept the worn and tattered pages hidden from the preying eyes of the world. The inconspicuous vault that become the notebook sat in is normality on top of a stack of books or within the confines of my backpack. No key was needed to open the notebook but in is genius was its simplicity. No one suspected the deep contents from such a small shallow object. The notebook held the world within it’s tiny grasp.

Cold blah day…

Today has been a very cold and blah sort of day. We got some “snow” yesterday, if you can call it that, and it has really put a damper on my day today for some unknown reason. Yesterday was a very productive day despite the snow fall but something about turning it into ice overnight has really put me in a slow moving mood. I really should be finishing up cleaning my room out of all my childhood things and sorting them out based on if they should be donated or just tossed but I just can’t seem to get motivated today. I think writing this post will get me moving again.

In other news I keep thinking about doing cloud storage for work. Something about it is drawing me in but I don’t really know where to start software wise. Hardware wise I have a pretty good idea of how I could build some pretty large storage boxes on the cheap but I don’t really know where to go from there. I will have to do some more research on the subject. I would really prefer to use some open source software to set this up but I don’t know if any exists. I wish I had the coding talent to tackle such a large project.

Alright, time to go get the house in order. I must go back to work.

New iPhone Background

I keep taking pictures of this same tree for my background on my phone. Here are some recent ones:
Winter Grey Spring

I am currently using the ugly winter one on the left…

Just a photo

From time to time I get the urge to snap a picture or two. I am not really that great at finding a good shot or really know what to look for when it comes to being a photographer but nevertheless I still like to snap pictures of things. This photo below is from me standing outside my bedroom window on the roof. It has no real meaning and is just a so so shot of some random trees in my backyard. For whatever reason I feel the urge to start to share some of the photos I take even if that means I have to expose just how poorly I take pictures.

Random Photo

Maybe I will get better at shooting photos one day.

Twitter Archive

Ok, so the twitter archive posts where getting a little annoying on the home page so I went ahead and moved them. Now if you want to go back and read my old tweets you can just click on “Twitter Archive” and read away.

Other then that I have a slew of stuff I need to add here but I never can seem to get around to it. One day….

Twitter has ruined my blog

It is just simpler to tweet things…

A long time coming

I know very few (if anyone) will understand why this is important but the second to the last entry of this traceroute is a long time coming:

[root@status ~]# traceroute 74.81.xx.xx
traceroute to 74.81.xx.xx (74.81.xx.xx), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1  67.130.81.2 (67.130.81.2)  0.533 ms  0.497 ms  0.466 ms
2  67.211.160.65 (67.211.160.65)  137.160 ms  202.141 ms  1.264 ms
3  po6-0.ca02.tol01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.104.148.1)  0.720 ms  0.722 ms  0.621 ms
4  gi1-1.core01.tol01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.45)  0.770 ms  0.719 ms  1.681 ms
5  po10-1.core01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.153)  7.915 ms  6.731 ms  6.709 ms
6  te7-7.mpd01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.98)  7.897 ms * *
7  te3-4.mpd01.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.6.206)  6.932 ms  6.957 ms  7.069 ms
8  telia.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.11.66)  40.361 ms  31.419 ms  49.974 ms
9  dls-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.209)  40.312 ms  39.706 ms dls-bb1-link.telia.net (213.248.80.149)  37.049 ms
10  atl-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.214)  41.086 ms atl-bb1-link.telia.net (213.248.80.145)  36.562 ms  37.017 ms
11  globalnet-113073-atl-bb1.c.telia.net (213.248.91.14)  41.485 ms  37.062 ms  40.079 ms
12  atl-core-f-p2.gnax.net (207.210.95.254)  40.044 ms  38.571 ms  40.179 ms
13  core-a.atl.openreaction.net (207.210.95.82)  37.287 ms *  41.445 ms
14 *******

I have removed the customer’s IP I used for the trace just in case someone wanted to get ahold of it. All of the rest are publicly available so there is no point in hiding those.

Nikon CoolPix L100

Simply Awesome

Awesome

Virtual On

I got a Virtual On: Cyber Troopers cab at an auction for pretty cheap. The thing is heavy but it seems pretty fun.

I don’t plan on restoring this cab as I will not be making it part of my permanent collection. I will make some needed fixes to the boards and to the 2P start button but past that it will largely remain the same.