Ever have that feeling where everything around you feels completely unreal? The type where you question the very existence of the ground you walk on? The one where the very people you see around you seems like players in an elaborate joke? I guess you might consider calling this sensation “surreal” as it feels too real, kinda like a dream. It’s sort of like reality is trying too hard to convince you that it’s actually there.
I’ve been feeling this way for a while now and it’s starting to become very frustrating. I feel like everything around me is pressing in on me with such brutality, like it’s strangling me with the lie that presents itself as the world we sense. I feel like I’m on “The Truman Show” and around the next corner I turn I’ll catch reality “sleeping at the wheel” (so to speak) and unready to continue the broadcast. At that point I will see the universe for what it really is, whatever that may be. I’ll catch it out like Flip in “He Died With A Felafel In His Hand”, who covers his eyes and uncovers them really fast trying to catch out the stars for not doing their job when they thought he wasn’t looking. I think it was Plato who was first recorded to question the reality of the physical, and this same doubt is becoming so burnt into my consciousness that I am even coming to expect its monumental collapse to happen at any moment. What’s worse than feeling this way is that my expectation is not eventuating. Big surprise huh? 
It may seem silly, but feeling the way I do is making me so angry that lately I’ve felt like destroying property, throwing things, smashing stuff and doing just about anything to break free from this suffocating dimension into the liberated yonder. Of course my illustrious character and its self-control have convinced me that it is not in my best interests to follow through with such actions, but this is nevertheless how I feel.
Oh for a dimensional Lightsabre.
This morning in Church we sang a silly hick song originally done by Hank Williams (circa 1950’s). A real yee-ha foot stamping kind of a song (at least this rendition), one that would probably have been best reserved for a barn dance. I didn’t like it, but that’s not the point. While singing this song through I was paying strict attention to the lyrics, particularly to the chorus, which went like this:
I saw the light I saw the light
No more darkness no more night
Now I’m so happy no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord I saw the light.
I almost cried. I’ve never had an experience in my spiritual journey that even remotely resembles such phrases. No sorrow? No darkness? How? That’s the majority of my daily life. Am I missing something? Don’t get me wrong I am forever thankful for what Jesus has done for me, but seriously, the words in this chorus are so foreign to me that I fail to see how anyone living in the real world could possibly feel this way!
This evening :tom: sent me one of the funniest emails in as long as I can remember. It probably isn’t as funny to everyone else as it is to me, but I think some of you may appreciate it. Have a listen to this! It basically takes the mickey out of the outsourcing of call centre jobs by Telstra to India. I almost wet myself listening to this, well worth the minute or so it’ll take you have a listen.
Wouldn’t it suck to work for a company like this? Tehehe …. um … yeah. **innocent looks** 
Today really bit. Had to get up earlier than usual to do some shopping before work. On the way to work I encountered a few creeps that thought it was their life’s mission to run motorcyclists off the road …….. can you say blinker? Dealt with a couple of hundred drop kicks without the slightest clue on even how to use something as simple as a telephone, and rounded my day off with a few prank calls from kids who found the word “scrotum” simply hilarious …. go figure. Being an operator is so much fun **flowing streams of sarcasm**
Then I came home and it all got better. Melly surprised me with savory mince on toast! My favoritest of all favorites!!! Suddenly all was right with the world. Who said the way to a man’s heart wasn’t through his stomach I love my wife, she’s neat and stuff.
Listening to: Clear To Pass by Antiskeptic
OK, so I’ve been really slack these past few weeks. Yeah I hate it as much as you probably don’t care, but anyway, this is my attempt to give you something to read. There are a few reasons why I’ve been absent, the least of which was not because I’ve been messing with :mt: 3. Tinkering with this wonderful little program combined with setting up my own internal web server to practise with has left me with little time outside of work to be bothered wasting the few precious neurons I have left over at the end of the day on a boring and meaningless post….. especially one about geeky things that probably don’t interest the majority of others like they interest me.
I’ve also been a bit too angry to post, the details of which I’ve not yet formulated into anything coherent enough to mention in any detail, sufficed to say that life sucks, but you all new that anyway right? Stay tuned for a more meaningful explanation.
In other news something extraordinary happened the other day. I was roaming around Portage (the Gentoo Linux package system) and found a wonderful little program called “dosbox”. As you could have guessed this fantastic little app emulates a MS-Dos like PC (of the 486 era), marvelous for putting all my old dos games to use. For the first time in a few years I now have a system that I can play Wacky Wheels on, I love Wacky Wheels. I got this game when I was about 15 or so, it was the coolest little game ever. Dan and I used to play it all the time whenever he used to sleep over my place during High School. The graphics may not be up to scratch compared to modern day efforts, but it still has the same fun-factor. There’s nothing like racing around in go-carts shooting porcupines at each other in an effort to take the lead!
Anyway, enough of this meaninglessness. I’m off to have a walk with Gypsie.
Listening to: In The End by Linkin Park
This is just a quick little note to let you all know that I’ve been lucky enough to get the chance to apha testing :mt: 3. I’m not allowed to release any info on this new release as it’s all still under wraps, but when I’m allowed i’ll let you have a look. I’m currently in the process of uploading it all to my ftp server so I can have a play with it
This has just made my day! I like that Six Apart care about what their weblogging community thinks of their software, and especially that a small-time guy like me gets the chance to give my input. This probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people, but I guess this is my extreme nerdy side showing it’s true colors
Anyways, I’ll keep you posted and let you in on whatever I’m allowed.
This morning my wife did a very brave and noble thing. She sacrificed her lovely long hair in aid of the Leukaemia Foundation’s World’s Greatest Shave For A Cure. You can see the before and after shots here and here. All up she’s raised over $650 dollars to aid in the search for a cure for Leukaemia, a disease her own grandfather died from in 2000.
The event was conducted in Toowoomba’s largest shopping centre (Grand Central) in the centre court, and announced over a loud speaker with many on lookers. Thank you to everyone who showed their support for Melly by showing up to watch!
I’m really proud of her for making such a sacrifice, I would be rather scared chopping that much hair off my head, especially when I would be so used to having it there to shape my face, you couldn’t help but become attached to it… so to speak . I guess part of the process is being able to relate to people who have losted their hair by way of chemotherapy when fighting with this disease.
Anyway, well done Melly, you make me a proud husband!
I suppose the easier question is “why believe in anything at all?” Among the many competing belief systems on the market, one should probably assess what basis there is in believing in anything to begin with.
Ok, it’s official, I’m finally running Gentoo Linux. It’s working really well, infact I am having a great time at the moment fiddling with stuff and tweaking the system to exactly how I like it. Still got quite a lot to do, but I should be blogging again at regular intervals from today forwards. Thanks again to Tom for all his help over the past week.
The past couple of days have been pretty busy, but then again what’s new. Gypsie got her own little house the other day, and so now when I get in Mel’s bad books I really could find myself in the dog house. Funny thing is it’s big enough to fit Mel and I inside it a the same time, so Gypsie has plenty of space to lounge around.
Melly got bitten by a green ant tonight, she isn’t real good with green ants, she reacts quiet badly to their bites. I wasn’t really sure what to do when the pain started to affect her real badly. We tried Vinegar, Ice Packs, and also Panadol before I went to the chemist to get some advice. I got her this Insect bite cream that had a local anesthetic and antispectic in it, and that combined with an antihistamine did the trick quite well. There’s nothing worse then seeing someone you love in a great deal of pain and not being able to do a damn thing about it, except for if you were the one actually experiencing the pain, that I think would be worse.
Not much other exciting news, the landlord fixed our gutter so now we can actually sleep when it rains, and I cleaned out the garage, now it’s neat and stuff….. man I’m fussy!!! Oh well, hope ya’ll having a good day, and for those of you still using Windows…ha ha ha, he he he…… sorry
Ok, still bloggin from Mel’s laptop, but that should be rectified by tomorrow night. My PC is almost finished recovering from it’s heart transplant conducted by Dr Tom and assisted by myself. He had to keep it there for observation for an extra day or two.
Meanwhile, since my keyboard was disconnected and not being used I decided it was high time to give it a clean. Bloody hell there was heaps of sh*t in it, you wouldn’t believe. From the surface it looked pretty clean as I occasionally give it a wipe over with a cloth, but beneath the surface was a nasty suprise. Ok, so I found a finger nail, and also a staple, and a lot of cat hair!!!! :confused:
I took the time to take off each key and clean it individually and dustbust all the junk out of underneath the keys. I wiped it all over with some disinfectant and a cleaning agent and now it’s as good as new. It was however a bit of a waste of time considering I could have gotten a new one for about $10, yet I was feeling rather frugal and thought it better spending 3 hours cleaning it instead. I’m trying to save money wherever possible, and in the process I’m not contributing to excess land fill caused by wastage. At the end of the prcedure I took the time to clean my desk and my monitor too, and now it’s all shiny and stuff! I have exorcised (edited :smile) the demon, this room is clean.
I’ve been so busy. Busy… busy… busy. Every single day it seems that the time zooms by so fast that it’s over before it’s started. Despite this apparent contradiction I am fully away that this is simply the way life goes. Today though, and inparticular this evening, has been one of those times you wish you had a flying Delorean.
I have had a good time today, as busy as it’s been. This morning I went over to Tom’s place for the day. Today was my day off and we had planned on getting Gentoo Linux setup on my PC. I’ve been wanting to make the transition over to Linux for a while, and Gentoo looked pretty sweet. I’ve had a lot of experience with Linux in the past but this past year or so I’ve been pretty busy and have fallen out of the loop somewhat, so Tom was nice enough to take the time out of his day to guide me through the indepth process of installing Gentoo, it’s probably one of the hardest Linux distributions to install, at least the way I wanted it installed. You see to get the system optimised for my processor you have the ability to compile the whole OS from source code. Being the geek I am I opted for this install process. Urgh Urgh Urgh, MORE POWER (ala Tim “the toolman” Taylor)!!! Anyway, as we speak the system is still compiling, but what has been done so far looks great, totally hammers over any distribution I’ve seen before. At the moment though I am using Melly’s laptop to blog while my system is sleeping over at Tom’s til tomorrow.