Entries Tagged 'Life' ↓

Going to work this morning, I noticed how the little bypass road that I usually take is starting to be developed heavily. Up until now, it’s always just been mostly farmland and a couple of big “estates” — you know, those fancy houses with two stories and a _huge_ front yard. There’s always been a tiny bit of development going on — a few strips of stores, a single subdivision, etc.

Lately though, the level of development has stepped _way_ up.

(At this point, I had a lot more written about this point, including how allusions to Nelson DeMille’s book “The Gold Coast” and everything, but I lost it. Don’t worry how. Just believe me that it was great.)

+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

My weekend’s going to be busy, but at least I don’t have to travel anywhere, except to the local Wal-Mart to get enough oil for oil changes for all three of our cars, and maybe Autozone for some spark plugs, and maybe Daylight Donuts for some, well, breakfast.

Taking a big trip soon — I’m not too worried, though. Got a good car that gets great gas mileage and is dependable as hell, though the exhaust is being extra loud for some damn reason lately.

Either way, I got AutoZone to talk with the engine’s computer, and it said everything was A-OK, except for a tiny glow plug problem, which doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in this heat…

Traveling 2000 miles in 4 days is sure to be a hell of a trip, but it’s nothing I haven’t done several times before. It’ll suck having to go to work only a day after I get back, though (if I get back when I planned — the return trip always seems to take a lot longer!).

Over the years, I’ve become quite the connoisseur of rice. Do I have a special liking to rice? No, not so much as I just appreciate being to buy 10 lbs. of food for $3!

You can’t beat it. Rice is the staple food (and for some, the only) of most of the world — this is what most of humanity eats along with breakfast, lunch, and dinner (if they get three meals a day at all).

Me — I just eat it to save money. Why eat more?

*Regular-old White Rice*
Nothin’ fancy about this rice — it’s what your mom used to cook for you. Two cups water, one cup rice, boil, and then simmer for 20 minutes. Doesn’t get much harder than that. If eaten plain (I don’t recommend it), this type of rice is utterly tasteless and has a texture that will bore you to tears.

*Basmati Rice*
Grown in the foothills of the Himalayas, Basmati rice has a naturally fragrant smell — you can really notice the first time you cook a pot. The rice has a slightly longer grain than you might be used to, and when fully cooked is slightly drier as well — this is probably due to the lesser water requirement of Basmati rice (1 ½ cups water to 1 cup rice).

I’ve only ever been able to find it in these big 10 lbs. woven bags with a whole bunch of Pakistani writing on it — a neat touch.

*Jasmine Rice*
The particular brand of Jasmine Rice I bought was from Thailand — Jasmine Rice had a very nice flavor and texture, slightly fragrant but not too much so. Now that I think about it, there wasn’t very much special about Jasmine Rice, except for that it seemed to be of a slightly higher “quality” — I know that’s real subjective, but it was just something about the way it looked, tasted and smelled.

*Botan (Calrose) Rice*
When I first opened this rice’s bag, I instantly noticed a difference — the rice’s grain was very, very small! Seriously, it’s like half the size of a “normal” grain of rice like what you’re used to.

Its requested ratio for cooking was slightly different, too — the bag requested a ratio of 1.5 cups rice to 2 cups water. The rice, when done, was very, very sticky — just how I’d expect from a type of rice used in sushi!

*Saffron Rice*
The mother of all rice — a rice with such a nice natural flavor that you can just eat it plain. It’s rice flavored with a spice known as “saffron”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron — whatever the hell Saffron is, I know it’s good!

You can have this rice with a curry or a stir-fry, but just eaten plain it is a dream. It’s not spicy or overpowering, but has such a _rich_ taste that you won’t want to put down your bowl.

!http://threshold-zero.tmanime.com/images/6.jpg (Green Eye)!:http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2438897
“Ask me about Blindness”:http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2438897

For about 4 hours or so today, I sat at my computer, enraptured, reading the most amazing thing. I just couldn’t stop reading, no matter what.

Follow the link above, and you’ll find a “Question and Answer” session by a fellow who’s blind. He’s been blind since birth, and has never known the sense of sight… because of this, he has some of the most unique perspectives on life, meeting other people, _et cetera_ that you’ll probably ever hear.

You don’t have to read every post in the (14-page-long) forum thread — just search through it for posts by him (his name’s _Caffeinated Sloth_). He quotes the questions put to him before he answers them, so you won’t be missing anything.

There. Done? If you’re not, go back — it’s really cool. The guy seems like the most laid back individual in the world — he’s asked several times about what he’d do to have sight, and he answers (basically), “To tell you honestly, I’m not too concerned about it.” Remember — he’s been his whole life without sight; he’s never experienced it or knows what it’s like.

Think about it this way. Someone comes up to you and says, “You’re missing a sense called ‘Ingtoc.’ I have this sense and you don’t. With this sense, I can tell that this object here [points at phone] has the quality of ‘furl.’”

Would you be that concerned that you didn’t have this magical sixth sense called “Ingtoc?” (It’s a bullshit word — don’t bother looking it up.) No, you wouldn’t be — you have no frame of reference for what this sense does, and furthermore, you’ve gone your whole life without it and probably feel like you get along just fine that way.

The guy also posts a quick MP3 he makes of his screen reader program working away (he’s a blind person that doesn’t use braille all that much — prefers screen readers) — either he’s messing around (I don’t think so), or he can actually listen to spoken text at an incredibly fast rate… he explains it later on, and debunks some of the amazing-ness. Says it took him years to reach that speed, and it only works with that one program he uses (an accessibility program called “JAWS”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_%28screen_reader%29).

It’s made me think more about my web design, for one thing. He says he can’t stand images without proper “alt” parameters (his screen reader just skips over them) — this is directly in line with the official Document Model Specifications provided by the “W3C Internet Consortium”:http://w3.org, of course. He prefers the use of “h” tags as well (h1, h2, etc.) — they make it easy for screen readers such as his to quickly “jump” across sections (what I think they were originally intended to be for). Makes me feel bad for neglecting them all these years, it does.

“CAPTCHA’s”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha (like the one I use on this site) are also a pain in the ass for him, as you might imagine — there is no computer system known to man (at least publicly) that can figure out a well-made captcha, and that’s pretty much the point… An alternative would be the question-based authentication at a site like “Ajaxian.com”:http://ajaxian.com — this type of spam-proofing asks a simple question before you comment (What is two plus two?) instead of giving you an image to decode. It’s enough to fool an automatic spam robot, but a screen reader like “JAWS”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_%28screen_reader%29 should read the question just fine.

It’s made me think a lot more about coding standards when it comes to markup such as HTML, for one thing, and just why such things are important to individuals such as him. (Are you listening, Microsoft? I’m sure there’s some upper-level execs in your organization that are sight-impaired in some way.)

By the way, from time to time feel free to check my “Tumblr Blog”:http://captainskyhawk.tumblr.com — it’ll just be quick little things that I send from my cell phone! Yep — pictures, quick text messages, all straight from my cell phone.

The site is even PDA/Newton accessible via “http://captainskyhawk.tumblr.com/mobile”:http://captainskyhawk.tumblr.com/mobile (hint hint nod nod wink wink), so you lucky owners of internet-enabled PDA’s can have fun, too.

…for the first time in about 12 years or something, and they ground on one of my teeth with a device that reminded me of a belt sander.

A very small one, of course. Tooth-size.

Okay, what the hell, eh?

Last night I had a dream I was in Cambodia, fighting rebels in the name of Britain.

I’m not trying to make a point — none of that makes the least bit of sense. Has Britain ever even had anything to do with Cambodia? Don’t even ask me how I was aware of these facts — sometimes you just know things in that “dream” sort of way without ever having been told them explicitly.

For the past few weeks, on my long drive too and from work, I’ve been noticing a particular bum.

Now, that’s not so amazing in itself — I see bums and homeless people every now and then in the city where I work.

This is a different kind of bum, though — this is a bum with a sense of _adventure_.

Why, because this bum has decided to leave the city, and set out into the countryside.

From where I live to where I work, I drive through about 50 miles of barren countryside. No cities, hardly any homes, nothing. It’s a big road, though, and quite heavily traveled.

For the past three weeks now, I’ve seen this bum slowly make his way out into the countryside from the big city, pushing two carts of some sort filled to the brim with junk. I’d say he makes it only about a half of a mile every day — he’s having to push these two carts in some pretty thick grass.

Every night, as I’m driving home, he’s parked his carts just a tiny bit farther off the road than where he usually pushes them, and I assume he’s trying to make a “camp” for the night in the forest (which there is a lot off around here).

He must be carrying quite a bit of food and water in those carts, since he’s been in the wilderness for about three weeks now, nonstop.

What drives this man? Where does he think he’s going?

I notice he’s been let to do this, unaccosted by the police or state troopers. You may find this heartless, but I commend it. In my opinion, if the man wanted help, he would seek it out — he obviously wants to be left alone.

Will he make it? Will a car swerve off the road one day and take him out before he reaches his goal?

I must admit I’m actually starting to worry about him. He’s coming up to a (very) small community of houses that are on the road (about or six) — they’re “country” houses, though, so they’ve got very big yards, are very big in size themselves, and are more than likely lived in by very rich people not wanting to live in the city… people very likely to call the police if they see strange bums wandering around the outskirts of their property.

So, how’s he going to do it? Personally, I’d recommend trying to make the trip across all those yards during the night — it’ll be risky, but it’s the only way.

Been busy lately!

Between moving to a new place, and trying to get the internet set up at it, and getting all of my computers set up (which I still haven’t done), and finishing up a major project at work, I’ve been busy as hell!

I’m also trying to set up a new Ventrilo server for everyone, but I’m having a LOT of trouble with that as of right now, mostly because Charter Internet (my ISP) doesn’t give our static IP’s to residential customers. Assholes!

<BEGIN-TECH-SECTION>
Well, I updated to ATI’s latest drivers, and then went through several days of wondering why the hell my goddamn video was so _slow_ until I eventually noticed that, for some damn reason, 2x anti-aliasing was on by default… -_-’

In the course of trying to figure everything out, I eventually uninstalled ATI’s drivers and installed “Omega’s Drivers”:http://omegadrivers.net, and just decided to keep them at the end of everything, since they seem to work just fine.
<END-TECH-SECTION/>

In other news, Nina and I have a new place to live in and we will be in there by the end of the month, no matter what!

And next week, we’re off to see “My Chemical Romance”:http://mychemicalromance.com prance around the stage like a bunch of pixies! Yay!

…maybe he’ll look me right in my eyes… surely, time would stop, and the moment would drag on for what seems like forever.