Never install Gentoo
Seriously, it's not as fun as you think.I finally got things up and running on my computer again, but I still have some things to reorganize before I'll be able to get things to a state of normalcy.Setting up Gentoo was a nightmare. It took all of last night to set it up the first time and it didn't work. It took all day today to get it set up again (on AMD64 architecture this time) and it still didn't work. I figured out the problem though, and now things are better than ever. However, I would not recommended doing a stage1 install unless you really have nothing better to do with your system. You might even want to be hesitant about a stage2 install. Stage3 probably isn't half-bad since the packages are pre-compiled (which is why it takes so long), so if you're a newbie, go with that.It was interesting though and gave me a lot of new information on the Linux platform that I might not have otherwise obtained. It taught me how to use fdisk (the non-Microsoft version) and to set up a basic installation. Now I gotta go and install all the packages manually by compiling them from source code, which I don't particularly look forward to right now, so I'm gonna spend time getting Windows in a state of decent operation.Or I'll just screw around and watch speed runs. Yeah, that's probably better, it's been a long day.
Remember to wipe
Well, I think it's about time I formatted this beast.
My computer has been running the same install of Windows XP since I got it last year, and I've done surprisingly little to keep it up-to-date. With the addition of Linux to my system, I feel it's time to do a complete wipe and start fresh (with all my data backed up, of course).
I just finished backing up the last of my important files. I'm gonna give things one last lookover before I reboot and reformat my hard drive. Hopefully I haven't missed anything, though I don't think I have. I've got Service Pack 2 on my 120GB hard drive so I can immediately get the latest Windows Updates without even going on the 'Net, and after I've done that I've got Gentoo to set up. I expect it to take hours, so I'm gonna use my laptop in the meantime to keep myself entertained.
Here I go. Wish me luck.
I have no qualms with roleplay. It's actually pretty fun. However, when you take it to extremes, perhaps you need to take a break for one moment and reevaluate where your life is headed.
Not that I'm saying "Don't cyber," because you're free to do whatever. My only advice is that you try not to do it in public places, since there's a 99% chance you will become a bigger laughing stock than the Star Wars Kid.
Keep that in mind next time you think about whipping out the virtual wang.
Let's Go! Off to adventure!
I thought that maybe I should elaborate on my desire to get away as mentioned in my previous post. It's been something that's been nagging at me for some time now, and I can't really ignore it anymore.
As soon as I graduate, I want to take a trip out west to see what it's like out there. My uncle apparently loves living in Vancouver, and my older sis loved it out there as well. Also, my buddy Sean lives in BC so it'd be an opportunity to meet him if he hasn't moved away by then to Japan or some game development studio down south or something after pimping his music at a show or something. It's definately a place I want to check out though.
The other place I want to check out is the UK. Now I don't know anybody out there, so I would probably at least visit with a friend to see what it's like out there, but I don't know if I'd move there unless I really, really liked it, but it's definately one place I'd like to go to at least once.
Either way, I want to move as far away from Toronto and Durham Region as possible, especially after seeing the pictures of the mountains that Kat sent when she moved to Jasper. There's nothing like it around here, and it's seriously fueled my desire to get away from here.
I've got two years to think about it though (and save up money), so I'll probably come back to this at some point after I do a little more research. One thing is clear though; I gotta go where the jobs are. No programming jobs, then it's no go.
Stop parenting me, Sis!
Something that bothers me to no friggin' end is when people arbitrarilly decide what you need to do in order to be a "good person", and my sisters rank right up there on the list of people I geniuinely hate as a result of such shit.
I don't know if it's the fact that their maternal instincts have come about full-swing or what, but I can't do a damn thing anymore without them trying to mother me and get me to do one thing when I'm engaged in another thing or telling me what I need to do before I do anything else.
For example, about a week ago, my older sister, Jenn, tells me that I need to start shutting off lights in the house because our mom got a $500 hydro bill. My immediate reaction was "Okay," because that's the quickest way to shut somebody up, but my thought process was more like "Okay, and why are YOU telling me this? Because you think I should shoulder the responsibility a little bit? I have a better idea; when our MOTHER, which isn't you, tells me that she wants me to attempt and conserve energy, THEN I'll listen. You, on the other hand, can fuck all the way off."
You don't say things like that though because you don't want to deal with an aggressive bitch in the middle of the night.
Or how about today, when my little sister, Liz, decides to tell me that I "need to get a job because mom isn't doing Misseds and Wants for Cathy anymore so she isn't getting the $1200 a month from that anymore and needs money from us." My immediate reaction here was "Whatever," a variant of "Okay." I also told her that with school coming, if she or mom thought I was paying any kind of rent, they had another thing coming.
My thought process, once again, was "Okay, and what? Tell me, what gives you the authority to act on our mother's behalf? Is it the fact that you're a woman? Is it the fact that she's forgiven your tired ass even after you've attempted suicide twice, put her in the hospital, and generally made her life Hell since you were 13? Or is it all kinds of other random factors that give you the authority to be my mother all of a sudden? If that's a concern of hers, she can talk to me about it, but you shut the fuck up because I couldn't care less for anything you say."
I don't say that, however, because I want to read my C++ Primer book in peace.
And then there was just hours later with Jenn. We were serving ourselves tonight's dinner and I was cutting up the meat.
"You know you're supposed to use a cutting board, right?" she said.
"No, nor do I care. It's falling apart anyways, barely needs cutting."
"Then why are you cutting it?"
"I said 'barely'."
I start piling some meat on my plate, when all of a sudden she chimes in, as usual.
"Save some for the rest of us!"
"Uh, there's another half in the crockpot."
"Yeah, but there's 6 of us. You have to stop being so selfish and think of other people, all you think of is yourself. We're supposed to be a family."
In my darker moments, the butcher knife in my hand might have gotten misused. Luckily, I've always known better.
I start thinking to myself, "Selfish? I'm selfish? Okay, maybe I am. But honestly, I don't care, because it's you guys. And family? I don't feel much of anything towards you guys, because I'm always the one getting the emotional shaft here. I'm the most misunderstood because, really, how many of you are gamers, or computer geeks, or roleplaying nerds, or are really into ANYTHING that I do? Oh yeah, our brother, Joe, is the one who I have most in common with, and he has a family to take care of now so it's not like we get to hang out anymore, not that we ever did much when he lived here."
I don't say that out loud though, because I don't need the drama right now. But really, it just pisses me off when people try to dictate to me what I need to do in order to be "non-selfish" or a "good person", because obviously these people haven't the slightest idea about how miserable I tend to be and how I get royally pissed at the fact that two bitches who tortured our own parents for years with their incessant drama before finally smartening the fuck up have the audacity to tell me what to do.
God, how I long to get out of here.
New Beginnings
First real post on a brand new blog. For those of you new to me, welcome to my page. To those of you coming here from my LiveJournal, welcome back.
It's been a while since I really posted anything, so I'll just try to keep things as brief as possible so as not to bore you to death with the details.
First off, and probably the most significant, is that I lost my job working for the Durham Contact Centre. The cause really wasn't their fault, nor was it my fault; the environment they were trying to create was simply one that didn't sit well with me. It was a sales-dominated environment, and I was more concerned with technical prowess, which wasn't rewarded too much. So I got out of that.
Second, I got another toenail removed. This one wasn't nearly as bad as the first one, but it did bleed a helluva lot the first day--so much, in fact, that I couldn't even soak my foot in epsom salts because it just kept going. Thankfully it didn't keep up the next day and things went smoothly from there.
Third, I've been trying to read thru a new programming book, C++ Primer, 4th Ed. It's been going slowly, but I've been making somewhat of an effort to read a bit everyday, or at least carry the book around to look semi-intelligent.
Forth, I got my laptop from Durham College finally. It's an IBM Thinkpad that dual-boots WinXP and Fedora 4, which is cool, but they said that the Fedora installation can't connect to the school network, which I personally think is bullshit and shitting on those of us who would rather use a Linux environment for our work as opposed to Windows XP. I think all I need though is a VPN client to connect to the school network since the WAP is already open and auto-connects.
Fifth, my family appears to be conspiring with each other to get me to find a woman. I told them it wasn't a concern right now--I seem to find lying easier these days--and that they needn't concern themselves. My mom brought up the waitress at Denny's who used to go to high school with me as a candidate. My immediate reaction was to blurt out "I've thought about that since 10th grade, but she's outta my league!," but my brain ordered that my voicebox be shut down at that very moment, so nothing really came out. Besides, she heads back to Thunder Bay in, oh, I don't know...a week to pursue her final year of teaching and then probably off to some other part of the country never to be heard from again. What I should've said to kill the conversation was "I'm fat, ugly, and have nothing to offer a woman," but my brain held a town hall meeting and concluded that the resulting pep talk was way more embarassing than the current conversation, so those plans were cancelled.
Finally, I'm breaking away from LiveJournal simply because I feel that I need to start at least somewhat fresh, given that it's been nothing more than one huge emofest. Besides, my journal is public, so it doesn't matter where it is, just so long as people can read it.
Oh, and Google is cool.
