When the alternative becomes mainstream…
It always diminishes the lure, creativity, and “special”ness of whatever it was.
Whether we are talking about case-mods, wardriving, “going green” or in the case of what irked me, body modification, it all tends to be the same.
Once the sheeple get involved and it is mundane, then everyone is an expert, every dumbass who has some money thinks they understand the point, or that they even *have* a point.
With body modification, any man who got an earring or any person who got something pierced other than ears as little as 20 years ago was a little bit off. military and criminals got tattoos. But as it got to be more accepted it all got…
cleaner
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I personally like not having hepatitis. I can appreciate the sterility of a clean and well run shop. But it also has turned everyone into pussies of a sort. If you don’t do everything the way the hive mind says then you’d better already be at the forefront of new creative techniques, otherwise you are just a dumbass tard. To quote a response to a post in which I was defending a girl’s choice to do things with her own body the way she wanted -
“however, if you’re just being a retard on purpose, you make the rest of us look bad.”
really? wow. When did what I did to my body ever have anything to do with what other people were doing to theirs?
Why the hell *would* you change your body if you were thinking about what other people thought? That’s an even scarier proposition when you consider the fluctuation of norms within a society. I’m curious - any of you who read this. Why *do* you modify your body? is it purely aesthetic? is it because all of your friends do it? is it for a spiritual purpose, or some other extravagant or mundane reason?
I’ll start - I put holes in and ink on my body for two reason. One - I do like it aesthetically. This is why I like shapes better than things in tattoos. I always love the look of a well drawn line - not so much for some band or movie. More importantly, it is a way for me to personally show mental dominance over my body. a 4 hour session of tattooing or sticking piercing needles through your dork may be easy for some people. For me it isn’t, but it is like my own personal gom-jabbar. I do it for me, and while I am pleased in a narcissistic sort of way if someone appreciates it, if someone *doesn’t* like it I’m not affronted.
So, how about you?
A little bit fresher
Since we were moving the employee co-located servers to a new vlan I decided to do a reinstall on the server. I don’t care much about Gentoo anymore, and Ubuntu server was nice and shiny. I tried reinstalling only to find that one of the procs died on the server and the harddrive was full of errors.
I found a nice deal on geeks.com
Rackable Systems Dual Opteron 246 HE 2.0, 4GB RAM and 120GB IDE drive for a nice price ($130 sweet) and got it within 3 days.
So now all of my sites and Diane’s are back online and happy with the latest stable versions of all software and I even upgraded WordPress to boot.
You just have to do these things every once in awhile so you don’t get tooooo crusty, ya know?
Was it worth it?
Well, I haven’t had to pay for it yet - student loan payback doesn’t kick in for another few months.
The last two months out of school have flown by. Yesterday I got my diploma in the mail.
Aw yeah - Summa Cum Laude bitches! Wasn’t even sure if they designated honors at WIU…
Still don’t feel like I learned much - but I am starting to do some research regarding a master’s program of study.
Of gates and Portals
So I gave my final presentation last night in class and all I have left is to finish up my final paper and exam - them I am done done done with my BS in IT.
Since I’m in wind-down-and-don’t-give-a-crap mode I’ve been playing a few games as well.
First off I’ve been playing Magic: the Gathering again. I can finally afford to get enough card to build more than one or two decks at a time and I’m finding that an abundance of cards actually makes the process more difficult! But I’m having fun and have actually got Dot to play now and again:)
Second thing I did was picked up the Orange Box and played Portal. Wow, that’s the most fun I’ve had on a puzzle game since Myst! Unfortunately it is rather short, but I did play an evening ofHalflife2 as well and that was fun.
Sunday night I went to my friend’s house and we played M:tG for about 5 hours, then he showed me Hellgate: London. It is open beta and man - this game is pretty. Basically a Diablo-type game with a bit of MMO thrown in (MMO common areas, and instanced adventure zones, like in Guild Wars). Hellgate: London releases on Halloween and I intend to play the hell out of it for a week or two. One thing that makes me happy to be alive right now is how the download of the installer went. Yesterday morning at 8am I saw I had my key to get into beta. 4.3GB download… So I set it to Download and went to take my shower. By 9:15 I had downloaded and unpacked the whole thing. Yay CDN and Dual Core processors!
Ok, back to work!
The home stretch
It’s been quite a summer, and quite awhile since I posted.
Since the last time I went to Comic-Con in San Diego, then Defcon15. Had a much better time than I expected, and after a rocky start, was able to talk to and meet a whole bunch of really cool people.
School is still progressing nicely. I have 1 month of my IT Management class left and I just started my Capstone class. It looks like it will be a fun end to the curriculum. Oddly, though they are supposed to be the last 2 classes you take, I’m the only one in my IT Management class who has taken all of their IT classes, and one of 3 people taking the Capstone that it is their last class. I guess the order doesn’t as important as they claim. For anyone interested - Western International University has an IT curriculum that is a bit of a joke. I learned things here and there, but for the most part, could have taught the classes. I’m told they have just overhauled the whole program, so I’m curious how that will play out.
In other news, I’m playing less WoW these days, and more EQ2. I like my little evil fairy - the graphics and game complexity are a lot better than WoW, but I’m sure I’ll keep both accounts active and neglect them both:). Haven’t been invited to play on the Warhammer Online Beta yet, but the elves were just revealed. The game still looks pretty bad-ass.
Yesterday was our 2 year anniversary, we celebrated with a weekend up north last weekend. We’ve decided to just celebrate on Labor day weekend each year. This time we went up to Jerome Saturday morning and ate at the Haunted Hamburger (which does not have a bacon and cheese filled meatloaf on the menu, no matter what Rachel Ray says) and walked around, then went up to Sedona and got rained on. We stayed the night in a cozy Bed and Breakfast between the two in Page Springs and had a nice breakfast served by the hosts. On the way out we went through Camp Verde, along the 260 and took the Rim Road all the way to the Young Heber Hwy. Driving down through Young we stopped at Alice’s Restaurant (yes, really) and got everything we wanted (exceptin’ Alice) then looked around at the area.
My hope is to pay off the revolving debt and vehicles in fairly short order. After that getting a plot of land, maybe 1-3 acres, up north where it is cooler, but not in a touristy place that will explode with population. Getting a bit of land and having a round house delivered in Young seems pretty do-able, but there’s a lot of logistical and financial planning involved. I’m wondering if it’s time to lay out our goals, and talk to a financial adviser.
Well, I’m off to class - still have a paper to write, so until next time…
Toodles!
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