Horse GIMPing

The scale is wrong. It's a big horse and she is a small person, so when the scale is correct, she is harder to see and this upset her. :)

Halloween 2008

This was my vampire this year.

Happy Birthday Morgan

Morgan;

You are 14 today.
I think about you every day.
Hope that you're happy, healthy and safe.

Happy Birthday, where-ever you are.

Love you 40-10,

Papa

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Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog!

Quick! Today is the last day

Traveling Man

It seems that over the next 5 days, I will find myself in the States of Michigan, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Just in case any of you who know me will be close to any of those areas, you can be warned.

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Old Poetry

Reprint of some old poems.

Antics of a Half-Elf

Through the woods he will walk and dance;
Others think he is in a trance.
Not quite human and not quite elf;
All the time though, he is himself.

Magic beneath the bright, full moon;
Into the Earth he 'scribes his rune.
Humming, singing, softly speaking;
Pranks and mischief he is wreaking.

An fair elf-maid he does espy --
A roguish gleam comes to his eye.
She suspects nothing is amiss --
'Til from her lips he steals a kiss!

He flies so quickly from the place;
The maiden too, with speed and grace.
Through ancient trees and moonbeams, bright
The elf-maid pursued him in his flight.

Whether she was fast or he was slow
The truth is that we'll never know.
She caught him though, of that we're sure
And faced him with a wrath so pure.

Her eyes were fire, her arms were steel.
Her burning anger he did feel.
His eyes flamed too, but with desire.
Soft grew her touch and warm her fire.

Light fingers on his face caressed;
Warm lips on his she softly pressed.
A sweeter kiss than the one he stole;
Given freely; so full and whole.

Now when the moon is full and bright
There dance two 'neath the trees at night.
The half-elf rogue without a care
And elven maid so pure and fair.

c.1989 --F. Williams



Change

All is lost and nothing gained.
Cannot even feel the pain.
Cannot love and cannot hate.
Nothing left but just to wait.

It seems there's nothing that isn't lost
and it's our hearts that pay the cost.
Choices that aren't really there.
Either way it won't seem fair.

Choose to work away your life;
lose your daughter and your wife.
Give all you can and do your best.
You'll never get a chance to rest.

Now there's nothing left to give.
Cannot work and cannot live.
I'm not who I used to be;
the way back I cannot see.

Friends who seem to care too much
for one too numb to feel the touch.
Nothing ever stays the same.
You lose your soul, you change your name.

All that's left is to survive.
Find a reason to stay alive.
Change will come, the wheel will turn
Will hearts rekindle? Passion burn?

c.2002 --F. Williams

Technology for me. Or: Ramblings while home, sick.

I'm working from home today. There has been some nastiness going around the office (and indeed, the area) in the form flu-ish illness and I've been going through the gamut of symptoms from head to toe for a week.

Since I am home, I'm sitting at my cool computer desk that holds my ancient 20" Trinitron monitor on one corner. It's hooked to an old P4 in a 26" tower tricked out for gaming. It's sufficient for my interests: Pulling up "Vampire, The Masquarade: Bloodlines" when I want to revisit the World of Darkness. The now rare (alas) foray to Albion in "The Dark Age of Camelot" or when the Terran Confederation needs defending in "Wing Commander: Prophecy". Yes, old games, but it's a P4 and it does the job. The monitor is currently powered off, because it's a beast and I'm working and not playing (OK, I'm also blogging but hey!).

On the opposite corner, I'm blogging from my Serval Performance notebook from those nice folks at System76. It's the older model 2 but it still rocks.

I read mail with Thunderbird and browse the web with Firefox. I modify pictures to make wallpapers using GIMP. I chat on multiple protocols using Pidgin. I can read documents, spreadsheets, power-point slides and the like with OpenOffice. I can even modify the same when forced to do so. I indulge myself by running it all under the Compiz window manger that supplies awesome eye-candy that is inspired, in part, by those great folks at Apple. Needless to say, I'm a huge Linux fan. Admittedly, I'm biased. I've used or managed just about every flavour of *NIX over the last 20 years.

Now for the best part. In front of the powered down Trinitron is the company issued Dell Latitude D820. This is the machine I have to use for work related computing. The hardware is almost identical to the aforementioned, rocking Serval, so that's good (costs more, but it wasn't my money). What's bad: It came with Microsoft XP pre-installed, of course. To complicate matters, all laptops with company information must be encrypted (a policy I endorse). Encryption Anywhere! was doing a fine job of that, but was hosing my standard attempts to dual boot.

The History: You can dynamically decrypt a disk that's using Encryption Anywhere! So after initiating that procedure, waiting the 2 days for it to complete, I was able to proceed with shrinking the partition (I used Partition Commander 10) so that I would have room for my Linux installation. I installed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 with the PC (Intel x86) alternate install CD. This allowed the creation of an encrypted container for my swap and root filesystems. I left a small, unencrypted /boot filesystem so the kernel would load. I installed the GNU GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) on the MBR and was able to boot both un-encrypted XP and encrypted Ubuntu with no problems. This was expected, however, as I've done this before. The real test would come when I logged into the network at the office with XP and it would insist on reactivating Encryption Anywhere!. It worked flawlessly.

When I power up the Latitude, I get prompted for the Encryption Anywhere! password and then GRUB takes over and gives me the choice of XP or Gutsy. when I choose Gutsy, I get prompted for the passphrase I used when creating the Linux installation.

I can use all of the aforementioned tools (with the addition of Evolution to connect to the office MS eXchange server for shared Calendar info) and Thunderbird's IMAP functionality gives me all of my eXchange mail folders. Combining gnome-terminals and OpenSSH allows me to connect to all of my Solaris 10 (the premier UNIX server) hosts that require managing. There is even a Linux VPN client that allows me to open a tunnel with my OTP credentials directly to the office network.

Finally, for the rare occasions that I still need XP for work (I haven't found a good way to create *server* side filters on eXchange without actually using OutLook), I have it handy.


So, despite being sick, I'm a very happy geek.

ObLaw: The mention of trademarks in the above is no attempt to infringe on the rights of their respective holders.

P.S. No, I didn't link to any of the Microsoft products. They are everywhere and if you haven't seen them, then the rest of my post is meaningless to you, anyway.

Gary Gygax died today

For those who may not know, Gary Gygax was one of the creators the the Role Playing Game (RPG) “Dungeons & Dragons”.

If you play any sort of video game that involves people fighting each other, the villains taunting you, attacks by minions that lead up to a “Boss fight”, please give a moment of silent respect for this man. These concepts evolved from tabletop, paper and pencil, polyhedral dice rolling RPG’s of which D&D was the first.

The man may not have been a world leader, or a spiritual icon, but he created a way for us to share our imaginations, our dreams, each other’s company and chance to behave as the hero’s that we always hoped that we’d be. If only for a few hours at a time.

I’ve spent many hours in the last 27 years engaged in that form or ‘recreation’. A form of play that teaches teamwork, cooperation, communication, standing up for what you believe and self worth. All of the ideals that we claim, as a society, to hold in high esteem. Yes, you learn the same things if you play team sports, but not all of us have the talent for that endeavor. Most of us, however, have an imagination.

I remember when a friend of mine asked me to join a game (1st Edition D&D) about seven years ago that she was running for her daughter (Kat) and nephew (Kacy) who were around 10 years old at the time. They were confronted by a town guard who was questioning them. Their first reaction, being children of the Poke’mon age was “We attack and chop off his head!”. So we explained that the guard was a higher level and that they would probably lose a confrontation. They determined that since there was two of them and only one of him, that they could succeed. We then mentioned that he was the town guard and that his job was like that of a modern policeman. We asked what would happen if someone attacked a policeman. I remember Kat’s response. Her eyes got wide and she exclaimed “That would be bad!”. They decided to talk to him, instead. I’ve been privileged to watch them grow into caring, creative, expressive young people over the years, both at and away from the gaming table.

So, from this old gamer, nerd and professional geek, thank you, Mr, Gygax.

Year of the Rat

So it's the year of the Rat. I expect Goodness and Riches and Health and twelve-thirty erections because Rats are compatible with Dragons.

I was surprised to get comments on the last post. So I'm posting simply so folks who may be interested know that I'm alive, employed, in stable health and such.

You can see a not great picture of a better version of my vampire get-up from last December's LARP here.

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