Vehemently Vitriolic

Last evening around dinner time, I was visited by the perennial pain-in-ass people known as the the Jehovahs Witnesses. They usually come on Saturday afternoons, but I guess conversion have been falling in this 3rd quarter, so the outreach program has been ramped up. “Goal oriented” are words I would use to describe the Witness breathren.
I’ll admit to being a godless heathen. I don’t believe or have faith, or whatever. I live in front of computer screens, so if there was a god, I’m pretty sure he would have given me some form of cancer (though, I use LCD’s now, so I guess I’ll have to find out what form of cancer they give off. Damn CRTs….such an easy stereotype) so I don’t sweat it.

However, I also have no problem with what people believe in. Whatever you believe in the privacy of your home is fine with me. Christ, Yaweh, Beezlebub, Welsh Rarebit, I really don’t care. I am quite aware that faith can be a huge thing to people, so I will even listen to their opening monologue before politely telling them I am not interested and to not bother us again. I don’t engage people in biblical inaccuracies or pretend I worship the devil. (more…)

So I bought Guitar Hero II a couple months back. Once I learned it, it didn’t take long to finish it off. It was ultra-addictive, but after finishing it on Hard, I needed…..more. Sure, theres Expert level, but after playing non-stop for a month, the same songs get a little tiresome. So, I bought Guitar Hero I. And finished that on Hard in two days. Ho hum.

Then a friend of mine showed me Frets On Fire and I instantly thought it was awesome. It’s essentially a FLOSS version of the Guitar Hero franchise, with the ability to add songs on your own (or from others at the great forum site) which really is the reason I bought GHI. Not to finish another game, but becuase playing the songs is fun (though, it must be said, if you know how to play even a little bit of real guitar, starting with the controller is a little cumbersome and just, well, wrong).

The big problem with FoF is that you need either to play on a keyboard, or get one of the mods (I like the RF-Mod, which seems to be about the only one compiled for Linux). You can also use a joystick using joy2key to emulate keystrokes. But, the holy grail, obviously, is to play on the guitar. I already had one for my PS2, so I went about finding an adapter to USB. (more…)

My wife is gone again for another tour to the Alaskan wilderness. This time she’ll be gone for a whole month, about the time of her previous stay. This is her third time leaving me for an extended period, and this time was profoundly different from the other two. I never like to see her go, it is literally losing your best friend in the whole world, but it never seems to have struck me as hard as it did this time.

It made me remember a truism I was told by a Canadian armed forces parachute instructor. He was explaining how the third jump with a military parachute (substantially smaller than a recreational one) is the worst you will ever do. It went like this: [WARNING: The rest of this is basically a sorrowful, self-indulgent introspection and is likely pretty damn boring if you’re not me or my wife. You have been warned] (more…)