Art by MeddygonThere is a fine line \ Between genius and madness. \ It is called timing.

I’ve finally updated to the latest version of wordpress. In doing so, I also decided on using another theme and putting some distinction between private and public posts. So register if you haven’t already, and you’ll get to read EVERYTHING.

For those of you who don’t know what to get someone for Christmas, get them a Something. I first heard about the Something Store on NPR earlier this year and bought something just to see if this place was real, and that the somethings were as varied as they say. During the interview with the creator, he stated that the most expensive thing they sent out was a $450 emachine, though the majority of the somethings range from $2 to $20. Each something costs only $10, and that includes shipping.

The first something I ordered ended up being a wind-up toy from Kikkerland ($15 value). The second something was a mini magnetic dart board ($2 value). I was still impressed by the variation. The Something Tracker also gives you an idea of what people are receiving. I think that the only lie on that page is where they are going. I ordered 25 somethings this for my relatives this Christmas, and the majority of what I received is on that list.
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I signed up for Twitter. This could be very, very lame.

For a while I’ve been using two lcd displays. My first one, going on four years old or more now, has a crappy contrast ratio and really makes it difficult to deal with colors properly when making arts. Because of that, and because I’d just bought a computer that could hand dual display, I bought a second monitor under a year ago. That second monitor crapped out on me over he weekend. It doesn’t surprise me, though, it was $100 cheaper than most monitors at that time and came with no warranty. It did display dark colors better, tough, and now that it’s gone, I’m really missing being able to differentiate darker shades.

So I spent just under $500 on getting two new monitors for myself. This old one I’m using now I’ll be giving to my parents. They’re still using a viewsonic CRT I bought them eight or nine years ago.

In 2000, a movie called “Pay It Forward” came about. In it, a social studies teacher gives his second-grade students a task for extra credt: come up with an idea to make the world a better place. The main character, a student, comes up with the idea he calls paying forward. Person A does three favors, for Persons B, C, and D. Then each of these people does three favors for three different people, so after just two tiers of this idea, twelve people have had their life made better in some way. The favors are to be done unasked and without any expectation or return: the person helped must simply pay it forward as well.

In the movie, the student starts his idea by taking a vagrant home and lets him clean up and get food. The child explains the PIF idea to him. The vagrant then learns that the child’s mother takes a taxi to work every day because her truck is broken down. The vagrant pays forward by repairing the truck. The vagrant noves on, and the idea spreads as he does his remaining favors. (Do watch the movie some time, the whole thing is wonderful, even if it is a bit long.)

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I have a headache. It started last night. It’s not a headache I normally have, and my medication doesn’t seem to affect it. It hasn’t gone away or diminished, no matter what I’ve taken.

So I watched it snow a bit in the middle of the night. Fuck. Snow. Means I have to shovel the drive in the morning, with a headache and little sleep. I got back in bed and put my earplugs in. I stared at the ceiling for a few hours, thought about tf2 strategies, social engineering at work, and other things.

I got up and looked at the clock. Two hours had passed. I pulled out my earplugs and heard rain. Fucking rain.

My driveway is two inches of ice.
Didn’t sleep.
Headache.
Coffee.

Some time last year, I got a spam email that has managed to live in my inbox for a long time simply because of the title above. The content is just as wonderful.

Do you like Jerky? Do you like money?

from Clint.

AMANDA,
Do you love JERKY? Would you like your JERKY to pay you money… I know it sounds silly, if not unrealistic, but let’s look at the facts:
1) It sells. It is literally sold in every convenience store, grocery store, and is in prime locations within these stores, all because it does sell!
2) It is consumable – people eat it (often within minutes of purchase).
3) It is naturally preserved (if it can last long enough to put into storage)
4) Is a great protein and low carb food source

yay or gay?

The real reason I finally got my driver’s license is because I’m starting a new job tomorrow (Dec 17) and my husband has to go out to California for a business trip. Even though the place I work at is closer than the school I used to ride my bike to every other day, it is now December, and that means lots of snow and cold.

Hopkins airport isn’t too far away, but I still felt uncomfortable driving home after dropping my husband off. I decided to not go on the highway for two reasons: I’m not comfortable surrounded by many cars and it was windy. There’s a large bridge crossing the Cuyahoga River Valley (hereafter referred to as “The Big Fuck-Off Bridge,” as that is what I titled it after seeing it for the first time). I’m terrified of it. TERRIFIED.

So I took some side streets. I had planned to go a particular way, but this morning it was raining. It had snowed last night, so there was double the water trying to go through the drainage system of the area. Even with normal amounts of precipitation, the way I wanted to go floods. I decided to go another way instead, a way I’d never been before to get home. I followed the signs out of the airport and just went north.
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I feel so lazy.

The building … it was a mansion, a home …

I found it difficult to navigate. To get to certain floors you had to first go up, then down, then up a flight again. None of the stairwells were straight up or down. The walls of the place were mostly an off-white with wooden doors. The only floors with any real signifigance in this game were three and five. Five was my room, and it contained everything I, whoever I was, owned.

I was a mother – no, a step mother. There were two boys, not mine, but my husband’s. He was there, but I don’t think he was dead. I was constantly in fear when my husband wasn’t home. The boys were not my own, and I was the second wife, and younger than their mother.

I think they felt I was an embarassment to the family. The boys were 18 and 15, or somewhere around there. They never called me mother, except when their father was around or they were saying it sarcastically. They knew that they frightened me, and they’d tease and torment me when my husband was gone.

I was constantly searching the mansion. It was such an interesting piece of architecture, and that’s why I loved it. The boys thought I loved it because it had a secret. If it did, I didn’t care for it. All I wanted to see was every room at least once.

There was something preventing me from this, though. On the fifth floor, which contained my room, there was a locked door the size of a cupboard. I’d drawn up plans of the entire house from what I’d seen, and, if I were correct, this door should lead to the third floor, which I’d yet to see the main room of.

Perhaps it’s a ballroom, I’d think, and he’ll take me dancing . . . I would stand in front of the small brown door and think of all the things that could be behind it.

I closed my eyes and saw the stairs leading down, down to the third floor. Wait! What’s this? The stairs don’t reach the floor, there’s a five foot drop to the floor . . . if you can call it a floor, it’s not yet finished. But they’re working on it! Wonderful. I can see that it’s supposed to be a wooden floor, large, open ceiling – so it is a ballroom! Or a music hall, at least. The windows in front have just been installed . . . yes, there they are putting in the final touches to the beatiful stained glass . . .

I see my husband standing there, along with another woman. They’re admiring the new glass just as I am …

It all happened so fast. I didn’t know how to react. I shrieked as the pane fell from the workman’s hand and onto the woman. So that’s how his wife died . . .

Someone’s calling my name . . . I turn to see the younger of the two boys, the one who knew his mother less and me more. He didn’t love me, but he didn’t not care for me.

Yes, I’m alright, son, just having a bit of a daydream. As I said this, the elder son came, carrying a key. A bit of paper attatched to it was painted with the design of a setting sun.
He handed it to me, and he said, “This key is to the room that our father wished to give to our mother.” He said the final word with bitter hatred and shoved the key into my hand. He guided his younger sibling away, and left me there.

I turned over the key in my hand several times, and finally pressed it into the lock. The stairs were just as beautiful in the vision – the walls were painted in a panning view of a sunset. I looked at the signature on the paintings, and they were by my husband’s first wife. I continued down, and reached the unfinished bottom of the stairs. Everything was left as it was before . . . the floor unfinished, the glass covered . . . there was dim light coming in through one small hole in the window where a pane of coloured glass was missing. It also made the room quite chill. I jumped to the unfinished floor and walked across support beams toward the window.

Her blood was still there.

“This room was her design,” the elder son said, still on the stairs. “In fact, the entire house was. She always had grand designs in her head, and she married my father to be able to afford them. Ten years ago, and I still remember it as if it were yesterday . . .”

“I . . . know what happened,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to see it . . .” In the vision I’d had, there was a young boy next to me.

I shook my head, trying to clear my mind. I looked up again, at the outside of the building.

I walked inside, back to work again. The designs to the headquarts, they had told me, were based on that of a mansion design by the founder’s mother.

Well, that explains why the third floor isn’t finished.

amiZRAVEN (8:58:00 PM): this is the best 404 ever
amiZRAVEN (8:58:01 PM): http://www.homokaasu.org/errors/404.html
Schroe Dot Org (9:00:53 PM): indeed

I’ve never felt so off the norm in my life. I don’t know what it is.

It’s been seven months since I’ve moved to Chicago. I’ve been fine with the distance . . . maybe it’s the holidays, but the holidays never affected me before.

I find myself crying a lot. This isn’t something I normally do. I miss Jorenko, I miss my family, I miss my cat … I’ve never really cried about it until now.

I call Jorenko just to hear his voice. I don’t care what he talks about, just as long as he talks.

Love is the most amazing thing. It’s making me cry even though I’m still in it.

HOORAY! Spent the evening with Q.

We started out meeting downtown – she was supposed to be at the Virgin Megastore waiting for me, but she wasn’t. No biggie, we met up next to WGN and walked to the AMC theatre on Illinois.

We get in line, and they won’t take sodding credit cards. Bugger that, we went to the ABOs to get tickets. We wanted to see Harry Potter, but, unfortunately, the next showing was 1.75 hours away. Neither of us wanted to wait, so we went to the next showing of Die Another Day, which was in 10 minutes.

Whooosh! Prieviews. Whoosh! Movie! They should pay their dialogue writers a fuckload. Q is now addicted to James Bond.

The comes the Virgin Megastore. Q bought the DAD soundtrack, as well as Tomorrow Never Dies on DVD and some other stuff I wasn’t paying attention to :P

I snagged Daft Punk – Discovery.

We stopped at a starbucks and I filled out an application. The coffee upset my stomach, though.

Then we went to a Thai place and had some bubble tea and din din … and the best crab rangoon in existance.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH! We were so hyper and giddy after the movie.

She just keeps fucking talking and talking and talking and not saying anything …

She even attempts to mimic people and gets the meaning of a statement completely wrong…

I really hate it when people defend their stance in an argument with the idea that “I’m older therefore I know more.”

I plugged in the hand vac and the charger about 10 minutes ago. It’s spent very little of that time on the charger.

And maria wonders why it keeps dying on her.

She though she broke it at first, and started defending herself by insulting the product.

Q, we need to hang out more.

“I’ll leave you alone with your detachable penis.”

She was refering to my music. I laughed, then she said, “It sounds like a strap on or something.”

Hooray for Maria actually making me smile for once.

I was on the red team.

“The Red Team has lost,” the blue team leader called out to his crew. Bullshit, I’m still here, so we’ve certainly not lost. Besides, Sandra’s carrying out the other part of the plan. Just so long as she doesn’t get her arse caught – aw, Christ, there she is. She’s dressed in a blue and black uniform, trying to fit in with the blue team.

“Er, hey guys,” she says, waving. She puts her gun on the ground and then places her hands high in the air. The blue team takes her gun and sits her next to me. I give her the most hurtful look of dissapointment that I could muster. I want her to hate herself for her mistake.

“We still could have won,” I say to her, “He was bluffing. How many times have I told you to never give up?” I place my emphasis on the last three words. The simulation around us fades and the instructor’s voice is heard, stating that the simulation is over due to trainee simulated death, and the next capture the flag simulation will be starting shortly.

We take our positions as the holographic world forms around us. A bell rings to signify the start of the game, and I send Sandra off to capture the blue team’s flag. I stay and guard our flag. While she’s out collecting ammo instead of completing the object of the game, I’m swarmed by blue team sims and taken out.

Sandra returns to share some ammo and guns with me, speaking before looking in my direction. “I grabbed you a few… Oh dear,” she says, and the items she had in her hand cluttered to the floor. I don’t know if the color left her face because she’s staring at her dead partner, or because she knows it’s only simulated death, and she still has to face me when I come to. While she’s fretting over what to do next, a blue team member shoots her, and the simulation ends again.

I get up from the floor without a word. I say nothing to her as the simulation starts again.. The truth is, I’m embarassed about being taken by surprise, but Sandra thinks I’m pissed at her. Once the buzzer rings again, I say to her, “Stay and guard the flag.”

“There’s weapons right down there, can’t I go get some m-”

“No.”

“Will you at least go get them? You can get a pair o-”

“No.” I leave, exiting into the hall opposite the direction toward the enemy flag. I rush down some stairs, picking up various weapons on the way. I hear the blue team soldiers coming my way just as I pick up a RCP120. There was enough ammo back here to power its cloaking device and allow me to fire at them. The soldiers are modelled after real members of the armed forces to which I belonged, so one of the people I’m shooting at looks like Jorenko. This doesn’t stop me, because that would go against the code of conduct.

Sandra hears the shooting and panics. She calls out for me, partly to see if I’m alive, partly to see if I’ll come back and protect her.

The vision breaks. I look in my hands to see a water pistol, and the simulated area is now a subway station.

Sandra calls for me again, and I look. She bounds up next to me and asks, “Amanda, are you alright?” I look around me and see no threatening figures, other than the man with a rather wet face. He walks off, slightly peeved at having been shot with a water pistol.

A voice in my head speaks, “There are no wars, Amanda.”

I respond, “Then why was I trained?”

Just so I don’t forget to tell the joke when it’s appropriate:

My New Year’s Resolution is 1280×1024.

http://soap.schroe.org/cg/Amanda%20-%20Spectre%20Uniform.jpg WORK OF ART YAY

What the fuck is wrong with me? I never cried for anything like this before …