There are some people who read my blog who may not agree with everything I say in this post. To those people I implore you to read to the very end. I’m hoping to make some very valid points that everyone should understand. In short, this post is about the Second Amendment and our right as American citizens to bear arms. Immediately I can tell you that my stance is that I am pro-2A. I also believe that everyone should be pro-2A, and I will explain why in the following paragraphs. With that said, I also believe that there needs to be a sensible level of gun control in our nation. Again, I know that I probably scared some folks away, but like I said, read to the end.
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The Jimsonweed Experiment
My dad was yelling at me. His beard and hair had overtaken his face and he looked like a werewolf. I wasn’t sure at the time what he was angry about because I was too busy watching the curtains drip down the wall behind him. There I was, chained to a bed in the hospital. I had no clue how long I had been there, but it seemed like weeks had past since i last experienced reality.
Just let this sink in
I believe that both God and Satan inspire us. Through our writing, our music, and everything we are. This song to me is the most earnest conversation between God and Satan. Imagine Satan as the thief, and the manifestations of God as the moon.
Said the Thief to the Moon, “I’ll extinguish your light soon
I’ll put an end to all the light that you shed on this world in its darkened state.”
Said the Moon to the Thief, “You know not of what you seek
You’ll doom the world to wander the night with no light to guide the paths that men seek.”
“Oh, but all the wealth in the world will be mine
Without a means of defense for all those blind
My very existence is a race to attain wealth
For the thief’s only loyalty in life is to the Devil and himself.”
“The earth will rise up and devour all that you are
The skies will call forth thunderous storms from afar
When you’re dead, there’ll be no grave to remember your name
For your greed brings your end and there’s no one but yourself to blame.”
All the drafts are making me crazy
I know there’s an underlying story that I’m trying to write here. I want to write the middle of that story, but I don’t know what to write. So I started it, but am now writing something else instead. I have a few drafts on here. Some things that I’ve started, but didn’t quite like, or didn’t quite know how to finish. So I saved them as drafts, and there they remain; unfinished. I want to finish them, but I know that I’m not ready to finish them now. When I get the urge to write them, then I know I will be ready. Just like I got the urge to write my last published blog, or this one. I know that I said I wanted to publish new stuff every week, but that just added pressure. It made this seem like a chore. I f’cking hate chores. I don’t like anyone to tell me what to do. I even hate it when I tell me what to do. I added an SEO plugin to my website. It tells me how to improve readability, and tells me to add focus keyphrases, and other bullsh’t. I even hate that thing telling me what to do. It’s like when you’re at the store and you swipe your debit card. Then the person behind the counter thinks you don’t know how to do it. They tell you “Press ok”, and “put in your pin number” and it drives me crazy. Almost as crazy as when someone says “pin number” Personal Identification Number is what PIN stands for you f’cking dipsh’t……
The reality of choice
I’ve touched on this briefly in my prologue. The reality of choice is a f’cking beautiful thing. This reality, the reality we all live in, is what epitomizes free will. We all have the freedom to make whatever choice we please. While some people use this ability to choose to do evil things, I have to believe that most people only want to do what’s best for themselves and those that they love. This may lead to causing problems that go further than the people they thought would be affected by their choice, but there’s no way we can know what the exact outcome of our choices will be. That is the beauty of choice. It’s indeterminate and incalculable. We know full well how we will react to a choice or an outcome. We can never presume to know how others will react.
Choice; is sitting in a restaurant. You’re presented with a menu and you read it over. You notice several things that sound delicious but you can’t make up your mind. So internally you flip a coin. You play Eeny, meeny, miny, moe and you leave the choice to chance. Little did you know that the sandwich you decided to eat would give you food poisoning. Had you chosen to eat something else on the menu, would that still have happened? It’s a choice. It’s not random. You decided to eat that sandwich, and you must deal with the consequences.
This is the simplest and easiest example of choice that I can provide. In reality a lot of the choices we encounter are much more difficult than this. The most difficult thing about it is that we never truly know what the outcome of those choices will be until after we’ve already made them. We can do a little math in our head, come out with a guestimation of what we think might happen, and then make an educated guess. I think that’s what most of us do. But we never really know what will happen for some of those more difficult scenarios until the choice is already gone. That’s what we call hindsight.
With 2020 about to begin, I hope that hindsight isn’t all we have left.
On the topic of death
This morning, just before I woke up, I dreamt that I was shot in the back. The bullet passed through me instantly, but that split second seemed like a lifetime. In that short moment before I died images and thoughts flashed through my mind. These abstract conjurations seemed to answer all of the questions I had. Then suddenly everything faded white. Like when the ‘real world’ fades into the construct when Neo learns what the Matrix is. Then I woke up. I don’t remember anything I learned, or the questions that were answered.
Green Chile Sauce
Green Chile Sauce
- 2.5 Tbsp Butter
- 15 oz can Hatch green chile enchilada sauce with roasted garlic
- 10.5 oz can Campbells Cream of Chicken soup (Optionally use Chicken Broth or Vegetable Broth instead)
- 2 oz Cream Cheese (chop into small chunks)
- 10 oz milk
- 13 oz tub of Bueno Hatch Autumn Roast chopped green chile (Hot, drained and strained)
- ½ medium white onion (diced)
- 3 – 4 cloves garlic (minced)
- 1 Tbsp dried celery flakes.
- Salt & Pepper (to taste)
(Yield about 8 cups)
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It seems to me that programming is one of the most underappreciated art forms. I’m talking specifically about back-end programming; not front end UI design. A degree for web design is an arts degree. But back-end, logic is not ever really considered artistic by the masses. When I was younger my older brother tried to get me into programming. I always complained and said I didn’t like it and was not interested because it was not creative enough for me. I’d say it was boring and that I had no interest. Then I actually started doing it. I realized that it is a very creative art form. It allows creative and logical minds an outlet to build amazing things. There are a few major downsides though.
People rarely express any gratitude or excitement about what you’ve built. If it works as they expect and they’re happy then they tend to just use it and keep to themselves. They don’t often make it a point to reach out to those that built it and even say thank you. Programmers are so far removed from the Sales and Support side in most companies that they rarely receive any positive feedback at all. The positive feedback comes in through the support teams and makes its way up the chain to the management and administrative teams, but it rarely flows back down to the programmers. People are always very quick to express displeasure though. When something doesn’t work correctly it will often times fall right down on the programmer’s shoulders and that could mean long nights and weekends working to fix a critical bug. So there is very little gratification in being a programmer.
As a programmer it’s difficult to talk to people about my work. Unless you are also a programmer, you just won’t understand. When I start talking about how I used a specific design pattern in my code most people’s eyes will glaze over and they’ll drift away. It’s not a topic that you can really understand unless you have some training in it and have done it before.
Now that I’m thinking about it more I realize that this problem is not only a software engineering issue. It’s most likely inherent to all forms of engineering. Engineering is very creative work. That’s what Engineers do all day is create things. Sometimes they are building things to solve new problems, and other times they are looking at new and more efficient ways to solve old ones. So make sure and thank your engineer friends and family. It’s because of their very creative minds that we have all these cool things that we tend to take for granted on a daily basis.
A Conscious Thought of a Rational Mind
Consciousness cannot be quantified or measured. Science has not found a way to determine what it is in our brain that makes us conscious and self aware. There have been many studies into this topic. Is it a soul? What is it that gives us the ability to reason? What is this constant nagging that tells us to ask: ‘why’? So ultimately, why do we ask why? This question seems a bit like dividing by zero. It appears to be a ponderous thought that leads you down into a deep infinity within your own mind and one that you won’t ever be able to answer. Well, I don’t think that this post will lead you to an answer either. So, if you think this is a waste of time, go ahead and turn away now, because it’s only going to get deeper from here.
The Actual Beginning
Growth. What is it? Growth is not just the act of getting larger. Growth is also metaphysical. Growth is something that we all experience in our daily lives. In fact, all living things experience the act of growth. You could say: “It’s a fact of life.” There are three facts of life that I’ve found. These three things are ubiquitous for all forms of life. This post is about the first of those items.