My brother and I just kept tag-teaming it until we got to the end. When it told us we had to do the whole over again, yet harder, my brother said, "say it isn't so joe...." and we quit.... I think we spent an entire week on it -- out of school, teenagers, etc.... Ah, the life....
I did say that didn't I? Let me define: played a lot of games, but apparently not well.... "Pro" as in "knowledgeable"... not necessarily talented.... I'm over-explaining now aren't I?
I simply only ever remembering never finishing two games: GnG and PoP. Oh, and everquest, never fucking finished everquest....
I played the original PoP (back in, what, the early 90s?) on my old AMD 486 dx40 (shit, was that my processor?). Anyhow, it was a 2d, arcade-style jump and hook game that would suck you in so hard you could never escape. Obstacle after obstacle, challenge after challenge I over-came with exact jump and hook sequences. Me and a friend teamed up trying to conquer it. Yes, fun, but dammit to hell, frustrating as all get out. We finally got to some place that was undoable and were pro-gamers (I only admit that here). Just like another great, yet damnable game -- Ghouls 'N Ghosts -- this game was fun, but so unbeatable that it left me scarred for life. (In Ghouls 'N Ghosts, once you finished the entire game, it made you start over from scratch, but was now harder, HARDER!!!).
These games represent works created by great game makers who are sadistic bastards. Like dating a beautiful, yet screwed up, girl. You remember them fondly but painfully.
PoP post original? I dunno. Never checked it out, and I think I just needed to vent all of this, now, for the first time ever.
No other encyclopedia or would-be encyclopedia covers as many topics as Wikipedia. I've used it to do everything from research SOX regulations for my job, to understanding my favorite online game, DoTA to name it. And they even have a page on mail order brides. Not that I've ever looked into that (god they're hot, and they all have the same name, Elena...).
I believe Lewis responded to a letter once full of the same type vitriol with something along the lines of:
You are a god-hater not an atheist. There is a difference. As a former atheist, I take offense to your representation of one
Not much mention of it has been made here, but Lewis was quite the atheist prior to his conversion. He did an incredible job answering the demythologization argument of the great Rudolf Bultmann. I did some of my graduate work on Bultmann.
In essence, Bultmann argued that the gospels were myth, as any other myth of ancient times, and was totally unbelievable. Bultmann was a renowned theologian having spent his long career in the gospels.
Lewis responded with respect saying, "I have not labored as you in the New Testament, Mr. Bultmann, but I do know something about myth, and the New Testament is not myth." Claiming the NT as myth brought the argument clearly into the territory of the scholarly work of Lewis.
In all his writings Lewis is a very frustrating figure for critics to tackle. His logic is sound, his arguments high-minded and scholarly and his writings readable to everyone and all. His "art of translation" stated that if you cannot state your point clearly for all to understand then you do not much understand it yourself.
Again, I do enjoy these exchanges we're having. If you'd like email me at fatkiddown@hotmail.com so we may continue in email.
I've gotten so much advice: good, bad and ugly. But I have a few people I respected tell me that I would get through this. I respected that because I knew what they had been through. Some days I look back on myself and realize how naive I've been all of my life. What a loud-mouth knowitall I was. I was even so presumptuous as to offer advice to the really-hurting. I watched Mel Gibson's "The Passion" while my divorce was fresh and my emotions felt like a mile-long motorcycle wreck's worth of road rash (and I've had road rash and know what it feels like), and as I watched it I fully appreciated the depiction of pain. Not that I could relate (who could?) but from my own deep pain I said to myself in the theater, "now that's pain -- I can relate."
I've been reading eastern philosophy this weekend and came across some interesting concepts. Such as: it is in not accepting who we are that we accept who we are. It is in fearing we cannot change that we truly begin to change. That inner peace is the ability to stop trying to concentrate and simply concentrating. So much religion is for its own sake, when true religion is actually not being religious at all. It is equivalent to focusing on the finger pointing at the moon rather than looking at the moon itself. I was trying to show my dog, today, something on the ground I thought he'd enjoy, and instead of looking at the object he kept looking at my finger -- this happened after I read this analogy.
So often we are trying so hard to fix ourselves that we are simply not being ourselves. One Taoist said that the boat is meant to get you across the water, and once across you leave it behind. You don't carry it on your back or stay in it. If you carry on your back your journey will be burdoned, and if you refuse to get out of it then you will drift, eventually, into the ocean and never complete your journey.
I've known people who have been in counseling for upwards of a decade. I've always felt it was too much and these people are self-absorbed. I think, now, that they have decided to stay in the boat.
As your sig states: no matter where you are you have to chop wood and carry water -- you have to live life for life's sake and not for the sake of figuring out life....
Very good stuff. I've actually read your response more than once and find some quotable material too. I'm not easily impressed either, so kudos (or is it cudos?).
I'm also realizing that, being desperate to be whole I tell myself, and others, that I am whole. In reality, I'm still not. It's much like the nazgul wound Frodo still whences at at the end of LoTR: "it's never quite healed Sam...."
Still, this is what I am -- scars and all. It's what I am....
I'm not against anyone for taking anti-depressants. I did tell my last girlfriend that I would never marry someone on them. She consequently worked with her physician to wean off them. As a later doctor explained to me: they are a temporary solution to a problem. When his patients call him wanting a refill he makes them come in for a re-evaluation in the hopes of getting off of them and moving to further stages. I saw him a year after my marriage broke up. I was still screwed up but far better. I told him I lost 60 pounds (I looked like a skeleton) almost lost my job and wanted to kill myself. He was like, "you know, those are all really good reasons to take something." Made sense to me. But like I said, I read a book that gave me a path.
I've developed a lot of theories since my divorce. One theory I have is that engineer/technical/analyst types simply don't do well with women. I still haven't figured this one out. Basically, smart guys do worse than dumb guys. Sorry, but it's true. Girls like 'em "big and dumb" no matter what they say. Oh, they might say, "sure, but we don't want to marry one." But that's who they chase. They chase big, dumb, attractive guys who are also jerks. Jerks do better with women than "nice guys." If a girl ever says of a man, "he's a nice guy" I think "ouch!" That's a deathnail. But, in a way it makes sense. Who are the successful men in the world? Typically, they are driven, movers and shakers, they don't sit still, they control their worlds and people in them and make things happen. If things don't happen they take charge. They are, essentially, jerks, but if you look at the side-affects of, say, steroid use it is the same. So, I think women are just attracted to natural things that define "maleness." Guys pumped on steroids don't whine about their problems. They do something about it: fight, yell, rage, but they don't whine. Whining is what people on estrogen do. A woman, also, doesn't stay with an unhappy man. A man makes his world happy if it isn't happy and/or he knows that it's going to be happy -- it's going to fall in place. Just like Col. John "Hannibal" Smith on The A Team says: I love it when a plan comes together. Life doesn't get him down cuz he has life figured out. These are generals and not specifics. A guy can't always be uppity or have life figured out or even pretend to, but in general, women want men who are going some where -- that's who they latch on to. In the end, they want a guy with power and money. Basically, they want power. Power gets money. And if you follow the logic to power then everything I said above makes sense. To truly have power you gotta know how to get there. In a way, women are parasetic. I know that sounds bad, but they do want to ride a gravy train being conducted by a man. All equal rights aside and all that, women are still women and men are still men. I'm rambling here.
Reality philosophy: I'm still changing my thoughts on all this, and lately I have begun to realize that reality is what we label anything we don't like. Also, reality is the right now and also the past. It's things in the past that we didn't like that happened and it's the current state that we don't want to accept. It isn't the future. Going forward, reality is shaped by our imagination. This is something new I've been thinking about. We know it will basically take the form it is projected to take -- much like the path of a hurricane -- but we can affect that path to an extent -- maybe even a great extent. When my marriage fell apart I looked in the mirror and realized I was over weight and out of shape. I lost weight, at first, due to the shock and depression, but I began studying, for the first time, fitness. I began eating right, running and working out. I am basically very trim and put on 10 pounds of lean muscle over the past two years -- not an easy feat. You see, I shaped my present reality. I changed the future somewhat. I am still divorced, I'm still struggling here
Good love advice you provide too. I was married over a dozen years, and if I could go back in time maybe I would not have married her, then again I would not have my child. Thankfully, we cannot go backwards anyhow. It's taken me many years to learn just a little about women -- with hard knocks along the way. It reminds me of a Chinese proverb, "experience is a comb nature gives us after our hair has fallen out...."
I concur on the positive thinking stuff. Honestly, a lot of what Peale had to say (The Power of Positive Thinking) ground on me, but there were some nuggets in it. I found Carnegie far more appealing. I still read his How To Stop Worrying And Start Living. I was offered "head pills" by a doctor, but didn't take them. Instead I began researching anti-depressant drugs and depression in general to understand what it all meant -- why I felt like living crap. I came across a book entitled, Depression Makeover and decided not to take any drugs. I'm not saying that it's wrong to avoid drugs and maybe I should have taken some (one doctor scolded me for not when he later heard me explain how I had felt back then), but I decided to embrace the depression and learn from it. I truly believe depression is a natural state of mind that has a purpose and we must find what it is and address it if we hope to overcome it. This is the reason for depression. To simply drug it and not address it doesn't help us to grow -- that's my thoughts.
I have nothing against eastern philosophy or religion and think that it meshes with my own faith at certain points. I tend to read broadly and look wide for solutions. I am an analyst by trade, and my divorce made me begin to analyze things I never dreamed I would. I know far more now than ever I could have imagined, and life is deeper to me if not a bit more tragic at the same time. "With much wisdom comes much sorrow," Solomon said, and I think he's right....
Dunno how that happened there, and dunno why/. doesn't allow you to edit after posting, but, of course, that one comes from the matrix.... That's what you get when banging out memorized quotes....
For me, you cannot be happy until you have been horribly unhappy first.
I am now approaching the second year of my divorce. My marital breakup was equivalent to the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs. I lost massive weight before working out and putting back on muscle. I learned to jog and became a better father. I read book after book on relationships, divorce, psychology and religion and finally came to the conclusion that most, if not all, of my unhappiness in life came from the fact of trying to control the free will of others. I happened upon a theory I call "reality philosophy." I mainly base this on Robert Ringer who points out in his theory of reality:
Reality isn't what you hope it would be. It isn't what it even appears to be, but with careful investigation it is what it is. You either go with it and benefit from it or fight it and suffer.
I have learned to let go and stop trying to control things. I think Fight Club says it best when Tyler tells the narrator in the car as he's trying to keep it between the lines, "look at you! you're pathetic! just let it go...." Truly, it isn't until we've lost everything that we are free to do anything. I am a living example of this.
Looking back, if anything made me a man it was my divorce. I went through a crash course of the legal system, the hell of financial trauma, work stress, single-fatherhood, on and on. Divorce hits you on every level imaginable. But I was determined to survive and thrive. I now am in the third basketball season as a YMCA children's coach. I have found one of the most therapuetic things is to volunteer my time for something like this. The kids are my doctors, counselors as I watch them grow, learn and each season as I've coached basketball, soccer, etc. I find the practices and the games are the highlights of my life. I am better at my job, my appearance, my relationships, name it. I wouldn't trade my divorce for anything because I never knew that I wasn't even happy before it.
I am now leaner and wiser than ever and am a far better person to be around. I dove into religion and books as I said. Here are some qoutes I carried in my pocket for a solid year and committed to memory. Each chance I got -- if waiting somewhere with nothing to do for example -- I would get them out and go over them:
Attitudes are more important than facts. -Karl Menninger
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your mind in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 4:6-7
Stand up to an obstacle. Just stand up to it, that's all, and don't give way under it, and it will finally break. You will break it. Something has to break, and it won't be you, it will be the obstacle. -Peale
Do not take the attitude that you are in a situation in which nobody has ever been before. There is no such situation. -Peale
People have overcome every conceivable difficult situation. -Peale
A clean engine always delivers power. -Peale
Never tell me the odds. -Hans Solo
A mind free of negatives will always produce positives. -Peale
There is no spoon. -Peale
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. -Emerson
If you had faith... nothing would be impossible. -Matthew 17:20
Throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow. -Peale
The rough is only mental. -Peale
There is a time when we must decide and act and never look back. -Phillips
If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge. -Hawkes
When worrying about something always ask two questions: 1. What am I worrying about? 2. What can I do about it? -Litchfie
I have no sympathy for the tech geniuses of the past who can't use the ever simplifying crop of current technology.
Ever simplifying? You mean like trying to make Active Directory replication work on a sizeable WAN? Or understand why age-old SMTP commands were changed with Exchange so that tried-and-true PIX filters can't work with it? Or do you mean the ever-incredible-maddening patch-management testing and rollout and testing that takes an entire team to do at a large corporation. Or, perhaps you mean the some 10s of 1000s of malware progs that have come out just this year -- heck, this month -- and that must be fought and battled daily....
My friend, these old guys lived in a simpler and finer time and there is an elegance to actually understanding the technology from a telnet prompt and watching T1 activity on a lower layer on a one-by-three inch monitor you've plugged directly into the nortel board. Modernity -- as far as technology goes -- has not simplified anything if much at all.
And these guys didn't start using Windows until they were over 50. They've simply not spent their life living with the current, global OS, nor do they feel they have to to run their networks and backbones -- believe it or not, there's more to IT than windows and an ipod.
I am not a kid, nor am I in my 60's, but I'll never be that stupid or clueless about anything.
Your attitude proves my very point. Print out what you've said here today, and when you ARE in your 60s reread it. You'll see clearly how narrowed a view it was....
It's not necessarily either/or, but simply shades of. 60-something year old tech guys are most likely ("most likely" being operative) not going to play wow (I do happen to know a 50-something year old who does) or use a shuffle or ipod and will probably not care much about the latest video card, but they will understand electronics and be masters of the big-iron they are paid to admin and that they've been adminning for 30 years. They'll also know how to set the timing on a 64 chevy blind-folded, but I digress.
A 20-year old college guy will most likely ("most likely" being operative) not know how to trouble-shoot a nortel rack, repair a tv set (cuz he watches bittorrented "battlestar" episodes on his PC anyhow -- of course, my mind goes back to the real "battlestar") or understand the basics of a radio, but he will know what "northbridge" means and that you better not fire up a p4 without paste and HSF.
Me and you? I bet you're not 60 or 20 like me -- we're in the middle, and we are a shade of the two opposites cuz we have actually setup a netware 2.x/3.x server and, yes, we learned the hardway not to fire up a p4 w/o HSF....
I don't know. Personally, it seems things are changing a bit regarding how my generation is viewed vs the now-young. I "grew-up" in the era of up-and-coming personal-computers. My first was a ti994a wherein I learned basic at age 13. DOS, Wolf3d, Doom, Windows 3.x, Netware, Lotus Notes administration, NT, Sendmail.... Now, I'm in a half-tech/half-paper-pusher role where I still have my Linux box here, my unix there my windows (terminal)... here, and I have a team of younger techs, in their early and mid-20s, that I work with and lead.
My uncle was my mentor who is a backbone switch guy -- to this day -- for a big telco running nortel racks and keeping big stuff going -- cool as hell when he takes me to "the node." He can barely use windows and relies on me for everything, but he can build a tv and actually puts a wafer board to use and, yes, he looks like froheki. I respect the hell out of him. The guy who taught me routers and switches and cisco is now in his 60s and also can't use windows, but he'll keep your damn network running smooth. He lives in telnet and writes everything down on a legal pad. I think he's a god -- always have. The guys under me tend to laugh at anyone older, treat them like their idiots and scoff at any supposed technical aptitude -- both the nortel and the switch guy and myself. They seem to presume to know more out-of-the-box on anything that comes up, but they are windows xp centric, college guys. I love 'em and relate to them and not all are like that, but more often than not they are. They couldn't setup a netware 3.x box if they had to or bang out a quick grep command to find something, but they can play wow, explain the latest tech on the latest nvidia card and hook up a shuffle -- things that the two ancients I mentioned would and could never do, but they know they can't....
It just seems there is a loss of respect for the pioneers and the level 60 wizards that were doing technology while the new generation was in diapers or even born. Again, my personal opinion....
This is in answer to random posts I've read throughout this thread. I usually get enough and have to rant:
The fact of the matter is that windows will continue to lug along and the computer still works albeit like a sedan going through a mudbog. People don't get serious about "fixing" a computer -- or having it fixed -- until it simply doesn't work anymore. They'll keep closing the popups and dealing with the idiocy as long as they can eventually go where they want to go today.
Most people, also, have no clue what a web browser even is or that they're using it. They call that icon "the internet" and they click on it to go here and there. IE vs FF? Come on. These threads contain post after post of "people will begin to realize and then they'll...." Blah, blah. No they won't. Why? Because people are stupid.
Also, I doubt FF or any browser will come close to 50%, heck, even 25% as long as windows is THE OS and comes with THE Browser.
Businesses using FF? Big business? Not hardly. At my place -- we have 30k employees at 400 sites across the country with a corporate office and half a dozen divisions -- all our "intranet" apps have been written with IE in mind. We got too much other stuff going on -- considered "real stuff" -- to put any amount of time into coding stuff to be FF friendly. Team Services, and any other MS-based thing that companies run, only plays well with IE. You can try FF (heck I do), but forget it. Something eventually doesn't play right and so you go to IE. I basically use FF for all public browsing but when time to look at something at work I fire up IE. And if I made a serious effort, again, to promote FF it'll cost me politically.
I have presented FF as part of a computer security plan, but it'll never go beyond a memo.
Stop thinking from the aspect of your experience, your one computer, your view of things and realize that there's a great, wide world out there full of dumb people. They don't know their dumb..../rant
So, only two groups use Firefox: Early adopters and Microsoft Haters.
I use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook. Which category does that put me in? The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.
It's simple. If you use Linux you are in the "Microsoft haters" group. Therefore all people who use Linux -- or who do not use Windows and/or IE -- are Microsoft haters. Hey, don't kill the messenger....
Civ3: great game. The inclusion of cultuarl boundaries was the missing element from the previous releases. The one flaw is the incredible pace at which the AI builds new cities. I do not think such an emphasis existed with 1 or 2. I find that one of the main keys to success in Civ3 is simply building more cities than the other cultures. How do you plan on addressing this in Civ4? Don't you feel other factors should determine a successful culture?
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My brother and I just kept tag-teaming it until we got to the end. When it told us we had to do the whole over again, yet harder, my brother said, "say it isn't so joe...." and we quit.... I think we spent an entire week on it -- out of school, teenagers, etc.... Ah, the life....
I did say that didn't I? Let me define: played a lot of games, but apparently not well.... "Pro" as in "knowledgeable" ... not necessarily talented.... I'm over-explaining now aren't I?
I simply only ever remembering never finishing two games: GnG and PoP. Oh, and everquest, never fucking finished everquest....
I played the original PoP (back in, what, the early 90s?) on my old AMD 486 dx40 (shit, was that my processor?). Anyhow, it was a 2d, arcade-style jump and hook game that would suck you in so hard you could never escape. Obstacle after obstacle, challenge after challenge I over-came with exact jump and hook sequences. Me and a friend teamed up trying to conquer it. Yes, fun, but dammit to hell, frustrating as all get out. We finally got to some place that was undoable and were pro-gamers (I only admit that here). Just like another great, yet damnable game -- Ghouls 'N Ghosts -- this game was fun, but so unbeatable that it left me scarred for life. (In Ghouls 'N Ghosts, once you finished the entire game, it made you start over from scratch, but was now harder, HARDER!!!).
/breaks down
These games represent works created by great game makers who are sadistic bastards. Like dating a beautiful, yet screwed up, girl. You remember them fondly but painfully.
PoP post original? I dunno. Never checked it out, and I think I just needed to vent all of this, now, for the first time ever.
There might be a surplus of seals since the bears won't be around to eat them so go ahead and hunt them too.
So this baby seal walks into a club....
Try the veal....
No other encyclopedia or would-be encyclopedia covers as many topics as Wikipedia. I've used it to do everything from research SOX regulations for my job, to understanding my favorite online game, DoTA to name it. And they even have a page on mail order brides. Not that I've ever looked into that (god they're hot, and they all have the same name, Elena...).
I believe Lewis responded to a letter once full of the same type vitriol with something along the lines of:
You are a god-hater not an atheist. There is a difference. As a former atheist, I take offense to your representation of one
Not much mention of it has been made here, but Lewis was quite the atheist prior to his conversion. He did an incredible job answering the demythologization argument of the great Rudolf Bultmann. I did some of my graduate work on Bultmann.
In essence, Bultmann argued that the gospels were myth, as any other myth of ancient times, and was totally unbelievable. Bultmann was a renowned theologian having spent his long career in the gospels.
Lewis responded with respect saying, "I have not labored as you in the New Testament, Mr. Bultmann, but I do know something about myth, and the New Testament is not myth." Claiming the NT as myth brought the argument clearly into the territory of the scholarly work of Lewis.
In all his writings Lewis is a very frustrating figure for critics to tackle. His logic is sound, his arguments high-minded and scholarly and his writings readable to everyone and all. His "art of translation" stated that if you cannot state your point clearly for all to understand then you do not much understand it yourself.
Such was the approach he brought to the LW2.
A movie critic said something once that stuck: if I don't get the plot it's not my fault....
Again, I do enjoy these exchanges we're having. If you'd like email me at fatkiddown@hotmail.com so we may continue in email.
I've gotten so much advice: good, bad and ugly. But I have a few people I respected tell me that I would get through this. I respected that because I knew what they had been through. Some days I look back on myself and realize how naive I've been all of my life. What a loud-mouth knowitall I was. I was even so presumptuous as to offer advice to the really-hurting. I watched Mel Gibson's "The Passion" while my divorce was fresh and my emotions felt like a mile-long motorcycle wreck's worth of road rash (and I've had road rash and know what it feels like), and as I watched it I fully appreciated the depiction of pain. Not that I could relate (who could?) but from my own deep pain I said to myself in the theater, "now that's pain -- I can relate."
I've been reading eastern philosophy this weekend and came across some interesting concepts. Such as: it is in not accepting who we are that we accept who we are. It is in fearing we cannot change that we truly begin to change. That inner peace is the ability to stop trying to concentrate and simply concentrating. So much religion is for its own sake, when true religion is actually not being religious at all. It is equivalent to focusing on the finger pointing at the moon rather than looking at the moon itself. I was trying to show my dog, today, something on the ground I thought he'd enjoy, and instead of looking at the object he kept looking at my finger -- this happened after I read this analogy.
So often we are trying so hard to fix ourselves that we are simply not being ourselves. One Taoist said that the boat is meant to get you across the water, and once across you leave it behind. You don't carry it on your back or stay in it. If you carry on your back your journey will be burdoned, and if you refuse to get out of it then you will drift, eventually, into the ocean and never complete your journey.
I've known people who have been in counseling for upwards of a decade. I've always felt it was too much and these people are self-absorbed. I think, now, that they have decided to stay in the boat.
As your sig states: no matter where you are you have to chop wood and carry water -- you have to live life for life's sake and not for the sake of figuring out life....
Very good stuff. I've actually read your response more than once and find some quotable material too. I'm not easily impressed either, so kudos (or is it cudos?).
I'm also realizing that, being desperate to be whole I tell myself, and others, that I am whole. In reality, I'm still not. It's much like the nazgul wound Frodo still whences at at the end of LoTR: "it's never quite healed Sam...."
Still, this is what I am -- scars and all. It's what I am....
Good stuff.
I'm not against anyone for taking anti-depressants. I did tell my last girlfriend that I would never marry someone on them. She consequently worked with her physician to wean off them. As a later doctor explained to me: they are a temporary solution to a problem. When his patients call him wanting a refill he makes them come in for a re-evaluation in the hopes of getting off of them and moving to further stages. I saw him a year after my marriage broke up. I was still screwed up but far better. I told him I lost 60 pounds (I looked like a skeleton) almost lost my job and wanted to kill myself. He was like, "you know, those are all really good reasons to take something." Made sense to me. But like I said, I read a book that gave me a path.
I've developed a lot of theories since my divorce. One theory I have is that engineer/technical/analyst types simply don't do well with women. I still haven't figured this one out. Basically, smart guys do worse than dumb guys. Sorry, but it's true. Girls like 'em "big and dumb" no matter what they say. Oh, they might say, "sure, but we don't want to marry one." But that's who they chase. They chase big, dumb, attractive guys who are also jerks. Jerks do better with women than "nice guys." If a girl ever says of a man, "he's a nice guy" I think "ouch!" That's a deathnail. But, in a way it makes sense. Who are the successful men in the world? Typically, they are driven, movers and shakers, they don't sit still, they control their worlds and people in them and make things happen. If things don't happen they take charge. They are, essentially, jerks, but if you look at the side-affects of, say, steroid use it is the same. So, I think women are just attracted to natural things that define "maleness." Guys pumped on steroids don't whine about their problems. They do something about it: fight, yell, rage, but they don't whine. Whining is what people on estrogen do. A woman, also, doesn't stay with an unhappy man. A man makes his world happy if it isn't happy and/or he knows that it's going to be happy -- it's going to fall in place. Just like Col. John "Hannibal" Smith on The A Team says: I love it when a plan comes together. Life doesn't get him down cuz he has life figured out. These are generals and not specifics. A guy can't always be uppity or have life figured out or even pretend to, but in general, women want men who are going some where -- that's who they latch on to. In the end, they want a guy with power and money. Basically, they want power. Power gets money. And if you follow the logic to power then everything I said above makes sense. To truly have power you gotta know how to get there. In a way, women are parasetic. I know that sounds bad, but they do want to ride a gravy train being conducted by a man. All equal rights aside and all that, women are still women and men are still men. I'm rambling here.
Reality philosophy: I'm still changing my thoughts on all this, and lately I have begun to realize that reality is what we label anything we don't like. Also, reality is the right now and also the past. It's things in the past that we didn't like that happened and it's the current state that we don't want to accept. It isn't the future. Going forward, reality is shaped by our imagination. This is something new I've been thinking about. We know it will basically take the form it is projected to take -- much like the path of a hurricane -- but we can affect that path to an extent -- maybe even a great extent. When my marriage fell apart I looked in the mirror and realized I was over weight and out of shape. I lost weight, at first, due to the shock and depression, but I began studying, for the first time, fitness. I began eating right, running and working out. I am basically very trim and put on 10 pounds of lean muscle over the past two years -- not an easy feat. You see, I shaped my present reality. I changed the future somewhat. I am still divorced, I'm still struggling here
Good post.
Good love advice you provide too. I was married over a dozen years, and if I could go back in time maybe I would not have married her, then again I would not have my child. Thankfully, we cannot go backwards anyhow. It's taken me many years to learn just a little about women -- with hard knocks along the way. It reminds me of a Chinese proverb, "experience is a comb nature gives us after our hair has fallen out...."
I concur on the positive thinking stuff. Honestly, a lot of what Peale had to say (The Power of Positive Thinking) ground on me, but there were some nuggets in it. I found Carnegie far more appealing. I still read his How To Stop Worrying And Start Living. I was offered "head pills" by a doctor, but didn't take them. Instead I began researching anti-depressant drugs and depression in general to understand what it all meant -- why I felt like living crap. I came across a book entitled, Depression Makeover and decided not to take any drugs. I'm not saying that it's wrong to avoid drugs and maybe I should have taken some (one doctor scolded me for not when he later heard me explain how I had felt back then), but I decided to embrace the depression and learn from it. I truly believe depression is a natural state of mind that has a purpose and we must find what it is and address it if we hope to overcome it. This is the reason for depression. To simply drug it and not address it doesn't help us to grow -- that's my thoughts.
I have nothing against eastern philosophy or religion and think that it meshes with my own faith at certain points. I tend to read broadly and look wide for solutions. I am an analyst by trade, and my divorce made me begin to analyze things I never dreamed I would. I know far more now than ever I could have imagined, and life is deeper to me if not a bit more tragic at the same time. "With much wisdom comes much sorrow," Solomon said, and I think he's right....
There is no spoon. -Peale
/. doesn't allow you to edit after posting, but, of course, that one comes from the matrix.... That's what you get when banging out memorized quotes....
Dunno how that happened there, and dunno why
For me, you cannot be happy until you have been horribly unhappy first.
I am now approaching the second year of my divorce. My marital breakup was equivalent to the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs. I lost massive weight before working out and putting back on muscle. I learned to jog and became a better father. I read book after book on relationships, divorce, psychology and religion and finally came to the conclusion that most, if not all, of my unhappiness in life came from the fact of trying to control the free will of others. I happened upon a theory I call "reality philosophy." I mainly base this on Robert Ringer who points out in his theory of reality:
Reality isn't what you hope it would be. It isn't what it even appears to be, but with careful investigation it is what it is. You either go with it and benefit from it or fight it and suffer.
I have learned to let go and stop trying to control things. I think Fight Club says it best when Tyler tells the narrator in the car as he's trying to keep it between the lines, "look at you! you're pathetic! just let it go...." Truly, it isn't until we've lost everything that we are free to do anything. I am a living example of this.
Looking back, if anything made me a man it was my divorce. I went through a crash course of the legal system, the hell of financial trauma, work stress, single-fatherhood, on and on. Divorce hits you on every level imaginable. But I was determined to survive and thrive. I now am in the third basketball season as a YMCA children's coach. I have found one of the most therapuetic things is to volunteer my time for something like this. The kids are my doctors, counselors as I watch them grow, learn and each season as I've coached basketball, soccer, etc. I find the practices and the games are the highlights of my life. I am better at my job, my appearance, my relationships, name it. I wouldn't trade my divorce for anything because I never knew that I wasn't even happy before it.
I am now leaner and wiser than ever and am a far better person to be around. I dove into religion and books as I said. Here are some qoutes I carried in my pocket for a solid year and committed to memory. Each chance I got -- if waiting somewhere with nothing to do for example -- I would get them out and go over them:
Attitudes are more important than facts. -Karl Menninger
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your mind in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 4:6-7
Stand up to an obstacle. Just stand up to it, that's all, and don't give way under it, and it will finally break. You will break it. Something has to break, and it won't be you, it will be the obstacle. -Peale
Do not take the attitude that you are in a situation in which nobody has ever been before. There is no such situation. -Peale
People have overcome every conceivable difficult situation. -Peale
A clean engine always delivers power. -Peale
Never tell me the odds. -Hans Solo
A mind free of negatives will always produce positives. -Peale
There is no spoon. -Peale
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. -Emerson
If you had faith... nothing would be impossible. -Matthew 17:20
Throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow. -Peale
The rough is only mental. -Peale
There is a time when we must decide and act and never look back. -Phillips
If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge. -Hawkes
When worrying about something always ask two questions: 1. What am I worrying about? 2. What can I do about it? -Litchfie
It doesn't buy everything in life, but what it don't buy I don't like....
[disclaimer: This is a joke, I am a democrate, I can make fun of my own, and G.W.B because... well because thats easy]
... the very purpose of even using the Al-Gore-created-the-internet trigger....
You just stymied a megs worth of flames and grandiose explanations
You missed that whole, "don't kill the messenger" part didn't ya?...
I have no sympathy for the tech geniuses of the past who can't use the ever simplifying crop of current technology.
Ever simplifying? You mean like trying to make Active Directory replication work on a sizeable WAN? Or understand why age-old SMTP commands were changed with Exchange so that tried-and-true PIX filters can't work with it? Or do you mean the ever-incredible-maddening patch-management testing and rollout and testing that takes an entire team to do at a large corporation. Or, perhaps you mean the some 10s of 1000s of malware progs that have come out just this year -- heck, this month -- and that must be fought and battled daily....
My friend, these old guys lived in a simpler and finer time and there is an elegance to actually understanding the technology from a telnet prompt and watching T1 activity on a lower layer on a one-by-three inch monitor you've plugged directly into the nortel board. Modernity -- as far as technology goes -- has not simplified anything if much at all.
And these guys didn't start using Windows until they were over 50. They've simply not spent their life living with the current, global OS, nor do they feel they have to to run their networks and backbones -- believe it or not, there's more to IT than windows and an ipod.
I am not a kid, nor am I in my 60's, but I'll never be that stupid or clueless about anything.
Your attitude proves my very point. Print out what you've said here today, and when you ARE in your 60s reread it. You'll see clearly how narrowed a view it was....
It's not necessarily either/or, but simply shades of. 60-something year old tech guys are most likely ("most likely" being operative) not going to play wow (I do happen to know a 50-something year old who does) or use a shuffle or ipod and will probably not care much about the latest video card, but they will understand electronics and be masters of the big-iron they are paid to admin and that they've been adminning for 30 years. They'll also know how to set the timing on a 64 chevy blind-folded, but I digress.
A 20-year old college guy will most likely ("most likely" being operative) not know how to trouble-shoot a nortel rack, repair a tv set (cuz he watches bittorrented "battlestar" episodes on his PC anyhow -- of course, my mind goes back to the real "battlestar") or understand the basics of a radio, but he will know what "northbridge" means and that you better not fire up a p4 without paste and HSF.
Me and you? I bet you're not 60 or 20 like me -- we're in the middle, and we are a shade of the two opposites cuz we have actually setup a netware 2.x/3.x server and, yes, we learned the hardway not to fire up a p4 w/o HSF....
I don't know. Personally, it seems things are changing a bit regarding how my generation is viewed vs the now-young. I "grew-up" in the era of up-and-coming personal-computers. My first was a ti994a wherein I learned basic at age 13. DOS, Wolf3d, Doom, Windows 3.x, Netware, Lotus Notes administration, NT, Sendmail.... Now, I'm in a half-tech/half-paper-pusher role where I still have my Linux box here, my unix there my windows (terminal) ... here, and I have a team of younger techs, in their early and mid-20s, that I work with and lead.
My uncle was my mentor who is a backbone switch guy -- to this day -- for a big telco running nortel racks and keeping big stuff going -- cool as hell when he takes me to "the node." He can barely use windows and relies on me for everything, but he can build a tv and actually puts a wafer board to use and, yes, he looks like froheki. I respect the hell out of him. The guy who taught me routers and switches and cisco is now in his 60s and also can't use windows, but he'll keep your damn network running smooth. He lives in telnet and writes everything down on a legal pad. I think he's a god -- always have. The guys under me tend to laugh at anyone older, treat them like their idiots and scoff at any supposed technical aptitude -- both the nortel and the switch guy and myself. They seem to presume to know more out-of-the-box on anything that comes up, but they are windows xp centric, college guys. I love 'em and relate to them and not all are like that, but more often than not they are. They couldn't setup a netware 3.x box if they had to or bang out a quick grep command to find something, but they can play wow, explain the latest tech on the latest nvidia card and hook up a shuffle -- things that the two ancients I mentioned would and could never do, but they know they can't....
It just seems there is a loss of respect for the pioneers and the level 60 wizards that were doing technology while the new generation was in diapers or even born. Again, my personal opinion....
It's a LoTR quote....
This is in answer to random posts I've read throughout this thread. I usually get enough and have to rant:
/rant
The fact of the matter is that windows will continue to lug along and the computer still works albeit like a sedan going through a mudbog. People don't get serious about "fixing" a computer -- or having it fixed -- until it simply doesn't work anymore. They'll keep closing the popups and dealing with the idiocy as long as they can eventually go where they want to go today.
Most people, also, have no clue what a web browser even is or that they're using it. They call that icon "the internet" and they click on it to go here and there. IE vs FF? Come on. These threads contain post after post of "people will begin to realize and then they'll...." Blah, blah. No they won't. Why? Because people are stupid.
Also, I doubt FF or any browser will come close to 50%, heck, even 25% as long as windows is THE OS and comes with THE Browser.
Businesses using FF? Big business? Not hardly. At my place -- we have 30k employees at 400 sites across the country with a corporate office and half a dozen divisions -- all our "intranet" apps have been written with IE in mind. We got too much other stuff going on -- considered "real stuff" -- to put any amount of time into coding stuff to be FF friendly. Team Services, and any other MS-based thing that companies run, only plays well with IE. You can try FF (heck I do), but forget it. Something eventually doesn't play right and so you go to IE. I basically use FF for all public browsing but when time to look at something at work I fire up IE. And if I made a serious effort, again, to promote FF it'll cost me politically.
I have presented FF as part of a computer security plan, but it'll never go beyond a memo.
Stop thinking from the aspect of your experience, your one computer, your view of things and realize that there's a great, wide world out there full of dumb people. They don't know their dumb....
However, I'll be checking out IE 7 and if I like it more I'll switch to it.
Tell me, friend, when did Kazzahdrane the wise abandon reason for madness....
Dude, you're making me deja vue....
So, only two groups use Firefox: Early adopters and Microsoft Haters.
I use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook. Which category does that put me in? The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.
It's simple. If you use Linux you are in the "Microsoft haters" group. Therefore all people who use Linux -- or who do not use Windows and/or IE -- are Microsoft haters. Hey, don't kill the messenger....
Civ3: great game. The inclusion of cultuarl boundaries was the missing element from the previous releases. The one flaw is the incredible pace at which the AI builds new cities. I do not think such an emphasis existed with 1 or 2. I find that one of the main keys to success in Civ3 is simply building more cities than the other cultures. How do you plan on addressing this in Civ4? Don't you feel other factors should determine a successful culture?