One of the best quotes I saw online was “This is must have felt for my parents when John Lennon died”.   Some people in my generation would give the “rock star” death to Kurt Cobain.   I didn’t even like Nirvana until years after his death.   I did know when he died the world changed.   Steve Jobs was also a rockstar.   He was a visionary and he changed technology forever.   I had to deal with the extreme Apple haters yesterday (some friends, some just online) that made inappropriate comments.   Within hours of the announcement, that’s just wrong.  Regardless on where you stand on the Mac vs. PC legacy, this is a man that has touched you in so many ways that you are not aware of.   His influence is extended into just about ever facet of the modern computer you own.

You like Windows and it’s graphical interface, you can thank Mr. Jobs.   You needed to use floppies once upon a time, thank Mr. Jobs (for the 3.5″ inch design).   You decided you are past floppies and don’t need them anymore, you can thank Mr. Jobs for leading the way of removing them from machines.   I could wax on and on about Pixar, iPhones, and iPads – but you can get that coverage anywhere else and you should read it from people that write better than I do.    I’m just going to give you a few personal Apple related stories.

My first experience with Apple may have been the computer lab at Open Door Christian School, unfortunately those days don’t stick with me.   I don’t really remember using a computer in school until high school, and then that was a dos based system.   The first experience I remember was my next door neighbor when I was between 4-6 grades had a Mac Plus.   It was a sleek all in one box that put my Commodore Vic-20 to shame.   We played a few games on it when his parents gave him permission.  The most frequent one was one of the Ultima games.   Those days were complete black and white glory and it was fantastic.   In 1988 we moved to Vermilion, and I was stuck again with only having access to my Vic-20.

By senior year of high school we got a PC in the house and I was entrenched as a PC guy.   I wouldn’t say at first I had any real feelings on the Mac vs. PC wars.   They were the same right?   At least that was what I thought at the time.   Then moving forward I became a PC technician at a PC shop.  Occasionally we got Macs that came in and fixing them between all the technicians was a hope and prayer.   It was like the time I fixed a Novell file server at a doctor’s office, I still have no idea what I did beyond using the help file and typing random commands.  One common problem was that the motherboard battery would die on the Mac and then the computer would refuse to boot.  We fixed quite a few of these.  This seemed ridiculous though.   Why would a computer not boot if the CMOS battery died.   PC’s would still boot.   Mac’s suck.  Apple limited you too much from tinkering beneath the hood.   Being a DOS maven I hated that.   I wanted to tinker, tweak, and hack my computer to do things it should have.   You couldn’t do that with a Mac.   There was also the Apple Tax issue.   I was firm PC and all Mac’s sucked.   I chose my position in the war.

Sometime in 97-98 I did some PC work for a salesman at B&K Automotive in Vermilion on freelance time.   What was my payment?   30-50 Apple II’s.   I had to do two trips in my escort having it completely weighed down with every inch of available space that I didn’t need to drive to move them to storage at the Vermilion Haunted School House.   I didn’t have room at home to store them (I had moved out of my apartment and was living with my mother or Xie’s parents at the time).   A group of this hauled them all upstairs and put them into storage.   We had extra parts and peripherals galore.   There was a guy named Greg that also worked at the school house that I would have my epic Apple Vs. Microsoft arguments with.  He managed to put together a top of the line Apple II for himself and they played games on it in the basement of the school house.   I always meant to save one perfect one for myself, but I never did.   They were all destroyed or removed from the building before I ever had a chance.  They are gone like my TRS-80 and CoCo that I had received around that time period.

OSX then came out.  There wasn’t the same reason to hate the Mac.  I respected them and what they could then do.   A few years later we purchased Xie the first Mac in the house, the original Mac Mini.   Unfortunately the Mac Mini was the bastard child.  We liked it.  It looked beautiful.   Unfortunately we were ingrained windows users and didn’t do much with it.   It was always the question of what can we do with it.  It didn’t help that each of us had at least two windows computers and the Mac was an add-on.

Sometime in there Xie received her first iPod.   It was a 20 GB 2nd or 3rd generation.  It actually is still in the house somewhere and works.   She then upgraded to a first-gen nano and I received the original iPod.   After we moved into the new house she lost the Nano for a span of two weeks.   We found it on the upper patio sitting outside in the weather.  It had rained a couple times during the “we can’t find it stage”.   It had been dry outside for 2-3 day before we found it, we took it in, charged it, and it worked like a champ.   About after that incident Xie received an iPod Classic 120GB (having missed the window for the 200GB and being annoyed at that fact).   I inherited the nano and loved it for months.   One day while working on the car I hopped into the passenger seat, the nano was in my back pocket and cracked in half.   It was a good little device that had a life that ended too soon. The final iPod in the house was purchased about 2 months ago, a shuffle for Xie to use during workouts.  I still want one of those for the fashion style more than actual use.

Two and a half years ago we started our move into the full Apple ecosystem by purchasing two iPhone 3GS’s.   I thought the first gen iPhone was limited by not being able to install apps and very limited basis, by the time my contract was up and ready to get a new phone – we were eyeing the 3GS.   Since then the iPhone has become part of our daily lives.   I couldn’t live without my phone.  I upgraded to the iPhone 4 last year, and plan on upgrading to the new 4S.   I get so much out of the device that the cost is worth the upgrade.   Like I did say in yesterday’s piece, Xie is receiving the first 4S, I get the second.   Alexander is currently rocking my old de-activated 3GS.   I’m sure he’ll be upgrading to the iPhone 4 once I get my new one.

Sometime two years ago the Mac Air was announced.  I had to hear all the complaints about lack of power and lack of CD drive, but I so wanted the device.   While I was at NASA I managed to beta test the Mac Air for use in the environment.   While I still used a PC quite a bit this was my first regular usage of OSX.   I loved it, but I also did love my PC.   My work and play was becoming more and more browser based.   I could do 80% of whatever I needed to do on whatever platform I wanted.  The remaining 20% I just jumped between machines.   During that time it was my favorite laptop I had ever used.    Eventually it was taken from me and repurposed to upper management.   I was given a Mac Pro, but it wasn’t the same.   I didn’t like quite as much, of course it was also a couple years old.   I stopped really using my Mac and went back to the PC.

As I was preparing to leave NASA for a new job, the iPad was announced.   I wanted one.   It was just like the phone that was joined at me hip, but I could do more on it.  I unfortunately did nto get one.  Xie did (64GB Wifi).  She loves it and uses it on a daily basis.   She is a maverick switching between the iPhone, her computer, her iPad, and using the right device for the job.   We have not yet purchased an iPad 2, but I’m sure when we do I’ll inherit the iPad 1.

Last year the Apple TV 2 was announced.   This also has become a staple in our household.  We don’t have cable or OTA signals that reach our house.   All of our TV consumption is done via ripped DVD’s and Netflix.   We are also watching something new all the time.   I did get sick of transcoding everything to MP4 – so our Apple TV is now jailbroken and running XBMC.   SO between XBMC and Netflix we can pretty much watch whatever we want.   We use the iPad or the iPhones as a remote and everything works wonderfully (the interface for XBMC is a wee bit laggy though).

Finally about 3 months ago we purchased two MacBook Pro’s.  These are our new daily machines.   We are using them almost exclusively.   We still have Windows 7 desktops, but we don’t use them nearly as much.  The usage model has definitely swapped on it’s head between PC and OSX.   Mostly because running Windows in virtual box allows me to run whatever I need on a single machine.  Modern technology is wonderful.   I consider myself OS agnostic, but the hardware quality of this laptop is fantastic.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go back to not owning a non-Apple laptop.

So to sum up, I’m still mostly a PC person (that uses OSX on his personal/work laptop).   I have even given two Apple TV 2′s and 2 iPod Touch’s as gifts.  My household has quite a history with Apple on our journey getting to where we are today.

Apple Products we have gone through:

• 30 – 50 Apple II’s of various flavors
• Mac Mini
• Mac LC and a Clone Mac (stories not worth mentioning, but they were owned and used somewhat on par with the Mac Mini in the house).
• 4 iPods
• 3 iPhones (so far)
• 1 iPad (so far)
• 1 Apple TV (so far)
• 2 MacBook Pros (so far)

For a PC person that is quite the list.   I can defend Apple, and if I’m not careful I might one day become strictly an Apple Computer user.   Until then, thank you Mr. Jobs for what you have given us.  Thank you for pushing Apple, Microsoft, Google, and a myriad of other companies to improve and compete so that the consumer wins.   Thank you.

Some other stories to check out

Steve Jobs Remembered: 10 of His Most Magical Moments

 What Steve Meant Back Then

15 Inspirational Steve Jobs Quotes 

I’ve been using XBMC for a little over three years now.   My first go around was with the original X-Box.  These steps are basically the same as the one’s I followed to soft-mod the X-Box.  This worked fine for around a year.   Then for some reason or other I had to update XBMC (something wasn’t working right).   I updated it and something went wrong.   I corrupted my hard drive and all I was left with was a shell of an X-Box. For awhile we had a standard computer hooked up to the TV to compensate, but this became cumbersome in it’s own right.

So we purchased the ATV to supplement our TV needs and hopefully replace the computer.  Since we were an apple accessory house (multiple idevices) it didn’t seem outrageous to start moving to MP4 as the standard.   After I spent weeks converting my previously avi DVD and VHS rips to MP4 I had them all loaded into the itunes.   For the most part this worked.   As time went on however we noticed things were not working as well as we hoped.

New DVD’s that I straight ripped to MP4 seemed to all work perfectly fine.   AVI’s that I converted worked about 50% of the time.   We would start watching a movie and the sound would be off from the start, or it would be off at the end.   Slowly I worked to clear out these faulty files – but it was proving to be a pain to reconvert them and try again or to hunt down the DVD trapped away in a box in the attic to rip from the source again.   There had to be another way to do this.

Luckily for us I noticed that XBMC for iOS devices was released, and shortly a version came out for the ATV.  I had to learn how to downgrade my ATV to a previous version, then how to jailbreak it.   The first thing I noticed was comparing playback.  When I played an MP4  I knew it looked sharp and crisp on the ATV through iTunes sharing.   However, when I played through XBMC the playback was muddier and grainier.   After some attempts with this I just really gave up and didn’t go much further.   I’m almost positive it is a codec issue but I didn’t feel the need to investigate much further.  So many people were raving about the ATV in their setup that I must be doing something wrong.

A few weeks ago I started using XBMC on my laptop for playback when I am in “relaxation mode”.   The best part is that he gave me an offline library access to see what movies I had and didn’t have.   So I used this and started rescraping my library.  Looking at the stuff I hadn’t converted to MP4 just because of all of the out of sync sound issues I had been having.    This was a moment of nostalgia for me and I really missed my XBMC setup.  At first I just wanted to build a new proper media PC.   The problem is I don’t really have the space – and what space I did have was going to cause me heat issues.    I considered buying a different set top player that could handle my file formats – but I wasn’t sure what I was going to get.   A Boxee Box might still be in my future.   So it came down to if I wanted to try again on the ATV.

The first issue was that I was using a firmware that there wasn’t a jailbreak for.   This changed late last week when the latest version of Seas0n Pass was released.   I was now capable of re-jailbreaking my device.   I knew I had some issues last time I jailbroke it, but I didn’t remember what they were since part of the issue was firmware downgrading.   This time was no different, though I believe I had different issues.

I followed the directions from Seas0n Pass and I was having a hard time getting the device into DFU mode.   Micro USB cables are not in abundance in my house (you can’t step without spotting mini USB).   The only micro USB cable I could find at all to work with was the cable that came with the Kindle.  I think this cable was the cause of my Woes.   The device would not go into DFU mode with the power disconnected.   Reading further I saw this could be caused by what the cable was rated for.   If it is rated for charging it may not handle the rest of what is necessary.    I attempted to perform this with the power plugged in and it would go into DFU mode, but the firmware would be corrupt and the device would need to be restored with an official firmware.   I did this three times.

What finally did work was doing the following steps:

1.  Plug the device into the USB without power and hold down the buttons to place it into DFU mode
2. When the device starts it’s fast blink I plugged in the power cord
3. When the software found that a device was detected in DFU mode I pulled the power code

Following those steps I was able to jailbreak the device without a hitch.   I did try leaving the power after I the software detected it, but this lead to the same issue of a corrupt firmware.   Once I was done I was ecstatic (since this took me a couple hours at least).   I once again triumphed over machine.

The next steps was to install XBMC.   Remembering the device checks for updates regulary and this causes XBMC to crash I SSH’ed into the box and edited the host file as per this document.  I was all set to install XBMC.   Unfortunately this version of Seas0n Pass does not add the handy dandy drop down menu that let you install it from the TV interface.  That’s ok I’ve done this before.

While I was still SSH’ed into the ATV I followed the instructions for installed XBMC on it.   After 5-10 minutes I was done. At one point it looked like it was hanging and I manually rebooted the device.   On the second attempt it hung at the same spot, I just waited and the installation  completed.   I now had an XBMC menu on my ATV.   I could have installed other software on the box at this time, but really I have no interest in doing that.

The picture above is now what my XBMC screen looks like.  I chose the vertical Confluence theme because it is the same one I am using on my laptop and I have no issues with it.  The default horizontal menu theme that came with the install didn’t seem right to me.   The first thing I noticed was that I could use the remote app from my iphone to control the screen.   When I installed XBMC months ago only worked with the hardware remote that came with the device.   Normally we never use that remote, so it was no where to be found.   I had some XBMC remote apps for my phone so I used those.  It was a kludge jumping from one app to another but it worked.

I went through and started adding my libraries, matching up what I have configured on my laptop.   Then I started scanning the content into the library.   The scanning only works for a little bit then the software crashes.  This causes you to go in and start scanning all over again.   Last night I had it go for a couple hours without a crash – that was a record.

The interface is not a responsive as it on the computer.   This is because it isn’t as high powered as a device.  Once playback started everything was smooth.  HD content looks perfect on my TV.  Standard Definition is another issue.   I am noticing the same problem that I noticed last time I jail broke the device.   It some content isn’t as sharp (noticeably, not subtly) as it is when I play the same file in the standard ATV interface.   This was just MP4′s – we had moved to the PS3 to watch AVI’s and there was a significant difference in quality there also.   Looking a bit further this does seem to have everything to do with codec, but I don’t know what.

I am overall happy.   I have a killer iPad remote app now that works perfectly.   I can control it from my phone.  I can play almost any file format I want.   Life is good at the moment.   I do hope they get the codec issue for non HD content fixed soon – when that happens this will be a flawless and great setup.

While I was at college one of my roommates was dating this girl (Kristy) who was in marching band with us.  She was in my trumpet squad so I knew her pretty well.  I was dating someone else at the time, that gave me the best breakup I ever received (another blog post for another time).   Close to the end of marching band season, the girl I was dating gave me the mentioned breakup and I was single.  Somehow this other girl had a big blowup with my roommate and they also broke up.    In the end only one of three of us in the dorm room were seeing anyone.

This was a time that brother came up to stay with me for the weekend.  He would have been 12 at this time.   I think it was the normal little siblings weekend sometime in the October timeframe.  It wasn’t unique – but at the same time it didn’t seem to be common for tons of people to have their little brothers or sisters at the school.   My brother had the freedom of staying out late and hanging with my room mates.   We were doing just that.   This relationship was put into motion because I took him out around the campus that night.

My brother and I were out rollerblading around the campus (how dated does that sound?), and ran into Kristy who also was a rollerblader.    We spent around an hour or so tearing up and down the quad and around buildings.  It was fun and probably one of the last times my brother and I had a normal sibling bonding experience.  It was getting late and everyone was tired.  My dorm was the closest so I went up and dropped my brother off at my dorm room to play with the computer while I went to walk/roller blade Kristy back to her dorm room on the other side of campus.   I returned to my brother about 2 hours later and he was hanging with my roommates and just fine.  I spent the next day with my brother until he left sometime in the afternoon and then I spent the rest of the day with Kristy.

It was a fast whirlwind relationship and she came back with me for the weekend sometime in December and stayed at my Dad’s apartment with me for the weekend.   The most interesting experience was watching her fascination with seeing Lake Erie frozen over.   Something I think that most of take for granted growing up on the lake, but she had never seen it before and was filled with awe.   We walked around town, and I introduced her to some of my friends from my hometown.   We headed back to school and we were a few weeks from winter break.

Winter break came around and my father had purchased a house across the town.   I was staying at my dad’s house and one of my friends was in town from Florida.   I didn’t have my license yet, but my friend did.  We thought a great idea would be to take a two hour drive to New Philadelphia to visit my girlfriend.   My father was kind enough to lend me his Beretta for the trip.    We picked up another one of my friends and off we went to New Philadelphia.   Thinking back this was the last long trip all three of us ever took together.

I honestly had no idea where New Philadelphia truly was, but we had a map.   The drive took a little over 2 hours only mildly going over the speed limit.   I had her home address and phone number and that was all I thought was needed.   Following the map and stopping for directions once inside New Philadelphia we managed to find her town house.   We stop by and knock – no answer.   We didn’t have much else to do and we didn’t want to give up and just head home.   We noticed a mall on our drive in and thought we would go hang out there for awhile and try again later.   She wasn’t expecting us, so sometimes these things happen.

We are walking through the mall and I spy my girlfriend in a jewelry store.   She was in a jewelry with another guy.  This gentleman was a marine whom she had supposedly broken up with before she started dating my roommate.   I went up and confronted her, and they were picking out her engagement ring.   I was floored, but managed not to get into it with her boyfriend (ex?)(betrothed?) in the middle of the mall.   Which of course this is a good thing since I was 150 lb geek and he was a marine.   She tells us to come over to her house in about an hour and we would talk about it.

We manage to get to her house and at this point the marine was ready to tear me limb from limb.   I stuck it out and my two friends backed me up (one of my few true brave face moments). Kristy managed to calm him down and control him long enough to get him into the car.  Of course this included the standard stay back and don’t provoke him on the way to the car.   My friends bless them offered to chase after him when he tore out of there and pull the baseball bats out of the trunk.  Sensible me didn’t take them up on the offer.

She explained to me he asked her to marry him and insisted on buying a ring even though she hadn’t said yes.   I of course was young dumb and eighteen.   For some reason I believed her enough to kind of trust her, but not enough to stay with her.  So while she blocked off time with me (who knew who might show up next) we didn’t stay too long and headed out to the gas station.  I was heart broken, angry, and didn’t know what I wanted to do.  I thought about going back.  I thought about cutting her out of my life (kind of hard when she sits two seats down from you in band).   I didn’t know what I was going to do.

My friend from Florida had to call and check-in (mind you he was 18).   His parents told him that he had to be back at the house in a little over an hour.   It had taken us over 2 hours to get to where we were.    I think we took my father’s Beretta to the limits of driving on the way back.  At one point we almost hit a cop car backing out of a driveway.   We were lucky that there was too much traffic behind us that he couldn’t get out and immediately come after us.  Either way we took the first back roads when we were out of his sight that we could.   We manage to do the two hour drive in an hour and half, only getting him home slightly late.

In the aftermath, it turns out she was engaged though she says she called it off when she managed to get back to school 2-3 weeks later.  In the interim I managed to get back together with my girlfriend I had before I went to college.   Since there is some overlap here, here is a couple relevant paragraphs I did when I wrote about her (remember young, dumb, and eighteen):

School rolled around and I reconciled with my girlfriend (Kristy)from the previous semester.  Now for some reason this should have been a straight break up with Kim moment.   I held off for a couple days and Kim came down to visit.   The situation was not a surprise to my college girlfriend, she knew what was happening.    I took Kim to the local mall and we walked and talked, but my college girlfriend stalked us and was obvious about following us. After getting back to the car Kim asked what it all was about, I explained and broke up with her.  She dropped me off at my dorm room and I thought then that she left.   I went up and spent time with my college girlfriend, while this was happening Kim proceeded to make out with my roommate’s best friend.  That’s the kind of rebound girl she was.

At this point you would think that the Kim college years era was over, well not quite.   I get a phone that she is pregnant and needs to talk.   I arrange it that I come home that weekend to talk to her.  Problem was college girlfriend insisted on going and I had not told her about the pregnancy.  I manage to get up north and slip away for a little bit to talk to Kim.   This leads me back home and my college girlfriend is upset.  She tells me she is pregnant (I had not told her Kim was pregnant yet).  So I’m 18 years old and I find out in less then seven days that I have two girls pregnant.  To add to the top of the tower here, college girlfriend and I break up.

So let’s step back for a moment here to right before the break-up.   Logic me in place seems to mean that Kristy figured out Kim was pregnant and wanted to throw her weight against that notion.   In retrospect seeing that I caught her buying an engagement ring so some leeway to talk to an ex-girlfriend should have been allowed.   So she figured it out, and then she found out that Kim was pregnant.  I was staying at my mother’s house and this lead to a very loud and heated argument in my mother’s living room at around midnight.  We woke up the whole house.   I also had two friends over witnessing this whole train wreck play out in real time.   Kristy was so upset she broke up with me.  She left with one of my friends who said he would drive her back to school.   I almost came to blows with him as they were leaving.   I think my mother held me back.

They didn’t drive back to school, they went to his parents house (he was still a senior in school).   Yes they did that night, and that’s are far as I’m going to discuss it.  They started dating for a few weeks and then he broke it off with her.   He had another girl and Kristy was a psycho.  Here is where we go back to the other piece again:

A few weeks later I’m dating someone else and I find out both college girlfriend and Kim have miscarriages within a week of each other.  I don’t tell anyone and did not tell either one of them, so it’s coincidence that they both told me, and today I think they were both lying to me over the incident.   Around this time period my grandfather died and I was dealing with that also.

 

The night Kristy told me about her miscarriage I just took off walking.   I walked for 3-4 hours that night.  I walked for miles dealing with this.   The weather was a mixture of flurries and freezing rain.  It eventually moved into heavy snow.  At the time I didn’t careMy roommate knew what I was going through and was worried about me.  I showed up right before he was getting readying to call someone.  I walked in with I then immediately sat down and wrote this poetry / essay piece:

Slowly as the sun shrinks and the blowing leaves stop their travels, life does not contain the same vibrancy. My footfalls thud heavily upon the freshly snow covered road. The constant thumps comfort me sadly. They will never leave me, even if I wanted to run from them.

Thump, thump………….

My heart is iron. It is dulled and heavy, tempered by remorse I do not understand the people that ask “Why me.” Everything that has happened through my destiny is, in part my doing. The cracks in my iron are not my fault, but I could have avoided them. It is as if I opened my chest cavity as loves swings a sledge to my iron. Never dodging the strike, I am knocked down by the blow.

Thump, thump, thump………..

The advice of avoidance has been given time and time over. I have been told, ” You fall in in love too easily.” How can that truth exist, something so hard and rare never happens easily. I have been truly deep in love three times in the expanse I call life. One lasted for nine months. I loved her with my all. When I was with her I traveled through different social circles. She is now engaged to be wed. The past slips silently through the cracks in the floor.

Thump, thump……….

The second love of my life was one of my best friends. I loved him like a brother. I would have taken a bullet for him or gave him the world. The sun set on our friendship when he broke his word to me. After the promise broke it’s binds, he continued turning the knife in my back. He is now hunting me down because he thinks I returned the favor.

Thump, thump, thump……….

The last love of my life I continue to weep oceans of tears for in the late hours of twilight. One day she is by my side, hand in mine, telling me how happy she was. The next she isolated me and shut all the corridors connecting us. I have knocked on all the doors but I do not get any answer. As it looks I will spend my future alone. She always asked me how I knew she was the one.

Thump, thump….

When I was with her time and space held a different dimension. Happiness was not a possibility but a constant. My heart and mind held no doubts in the dark corners. Mu soul was content. Her smile radiated like a summer sunset. Her eyes held the mysteries of the cosmos. One of these mysteries is why she shut me out, I hope someday I can solve it. I can remember the past. My heart was content.

Thump, thump, thump…………..

The final breaking tore my heart in two. I do not think I can have as true a love again as I had with any of these three. Each moment is painfully filled with happy memories. It is ironic how happy memories can hurt worse then a physical wound. Some people claim I am gifted with the skill of writing. Many times I have regarded this skill as a curse, I can watch the snow plow go down the street beside me and as soon as that image reaches paper it will never be forgotten. All three have poems and writings associated with them, that will never leave me in peace.

Thump, thump………

Glancing at my surroundings I no longer know which road I am on. I do not know how I got here other then a couple hours have passed. Distances are irrelevant anyways. These walks are to sort out my thoughts, not to see how far I could go. distance is a dimension in which I do not have an existence. The important thing is the thoughts that filter through my weary gray matter. The thoughts that run rampant through fields of neglect and sorrow reap fertilization they receive.

Thump, thump, thump………………

Not that long ago I lost my grandfather to a slow painful series of strokes and bad medical conditions. We had never been close and to all my memory had never really sat down and talked. About two or three weeks before he passed away I went to see him on my way to school. It hurt so badly to see the big strong man I had been visiting for so many years, so sickly and small. I could not stay long because my heart sank to unchartered depths at the sight. The only good memory I have is when he said my name in recognition, something he had not been doing for anyone else.

Thump, thump……

I have had many scars in my so far short existence, but I only hold one fear. It is not a fear of depth or pain, I have made my peace with those. Each day I have lived I have cherished every second. If given the option to do it all over again…. I would not take it. All the events that have happened have molded me into the man I’ve become. The nagging fear has not happened, but it might someday. I won’t tell you what it is, but pray for me it does not come true.

Thump, thump, thump…….

As I turn down the next street I find my bearings. I can now start the long trek home. I will go back a different way then I came. What fun is it just to retrace steps you have already taken? The world will continue to turn and I’ll continue walking, sorting out my problems. If you should ever see me, give me a short wave or a nod. I don’t need a ride, just time and distance to help stitch my emotional gashes. I do not need to hear a friendly voice, I have my feet hitting the pavement going thump, thump, thump………..

 

During the walk I was in a bad place.  I managed to survive.  There have only been a couple times since then that I have felt as depressed and miserable as I did that night.   Kristy and I did get together a couple more times, but it didn’t stick more than a couple days.  We had been through too much.   I don’t remember the last time I talked to her, I don’t even really care.   I did look her up on Myspace to check on something.   I didn’t message her or friend her, I just checked and she had two kids.   Both would have been too young to be mine.   So that was just to kill a lingering question of what if she was still pregnant and lied about the miscarriage.   That lookup settled one thing that haunted me a little bit through the years.

As a final aside – she races lawn tractors competitively now…………

Young, dumb, and eighteen – that is all I have to say for myself.

Reading through I apologize for all the asides – but since I mostly write stream of thought this kind of thing happens.

People tend to forget sometimes that blogging along with other online activity is a social activity.   If you become lazy there is a good chance the next person becomes lazy.   So in the end few people are writing.   Ideas are only shared amongst those that press on with getting their voices across.  These people normally aren’t your friends.   More specifically they aren’t my friends.   My friends (and myself if I let myself get in the groove) would prefer to be entertained.  They would prefer to not try to create something, but to be a passive observer.   This was also something we were taught while we were growing up.

During the eighties and nineties we were passive observers of TV and books.   We could share commentary with our friends, but few were going to be on TV or write a book.   Even if they did manage to write a book chances were further against them to get it actually published.   We now live in a different day and age.   Everyone can now create something and share it online.    We may have a very small audience – but someone is always paying attention.   The biggest problem these days is to get people to notice.   If we can get back the constant need for feedback (an unfortunate human condition) – we can create something wonderful.

So now we aren’t passive observers.  We are stuck in front of computers all day long.  We have to lead by example.   We can sit and watch a mind numbing amount of Netflix (I’m guilty).   We can also go out and create something.   Once your friends see what you are doing they will consume to some extent.   Some of them however, will be reminded that they have their own site.  That they want a little piece of the world to call their own that they can cultivate.   Of course I can be reading this blip all wrong and things will go back to months between posts (guilty again).   I am going to try to concentrate to get a few posts out a week.

The rising tide raises all ships, but then again as all my friends love quoting these days – winter is coming…..

Look at that hyper realistic artwork!

Some time in the winter months in Vermilion, OH I was staying the night at a friend’s house in VOL.   Being standard teenagers in the early nineties we did the normal thing, went down to the store to see if there was a movie or video game to rent.   We went to the “Little Store” which was a hole in the wall convenience store in that area of town.   They had a couple racks of movies and video games.   That night we rented “Baseball Stars” and took it back to his house.   We were playing it for a couple hours slowly building up our team.

This is where we need to take a minute and understand the gameplay.   While this was a normal baseball game for the most part it had (at the time) a revolutionary system for trading, buying, and selling players.   You start out with the low end team and work through the world series.   I don’t remember how many games were playing through for the series, but according to Wikipedia the max was 25.   So the understanding was that if you played through the whole series with enough wins – you would earn enough money to upgrade your team.   This in turn made the game a little bit easier since you would buy players that matched the level in the game you were at.   Assuming you owned the game after a few months of game play you could probably max out your main team.

I would say we were 4-5 games into the series and then tragedy struck.   I don’t remember how, but the NES was knocked off the TV during the middle of a game and the cartridge came loose.   We had spent a couple hours so far in the game and watched what seemed to be tragedy as the NES blinked it’s red light off an on.   It was mocking us in that way of saying “You have wasted more of the last two hours than you thought you did – have a nice life.”

We got up and tried to salvage whatever happened.   We fixed the NES and reinsterted the cartridge.   Luckily this game performed auto-saves and had up to the last game we finished.   Something else strange happened.  The saved game was glitched.   It wasn’t glitched in the sense we couldn’t go on – it was one of those times where the game glitches in your favor.   When we went to purchase the players we did before the game fell over – we noticed something.   We had millions of dollars in the game (why the heck can’t my atm card glitch this way).    This was literally months of work done because the game fell over and corrupted the save at just the right spot.   There is absolutely no way we could have repeated this.

Of course we were excited, and we immediately purchased every single over the top player that you normally could never afford.   Our team was maxed.   We went on through how many more games and won the season undefeated.   The NES gods smiled down on us in that one perfect moment. Sadly I have never been able to play that game again.   I am next to positive I have a copy in my vintage games collection – but I’m sure if I put the game in one of my NES’s I would try to bump and beat the console just right to try to replicate that glitch.   Unfortunately I know that can never happen, and I would likely destroy one of my consoles trying.

I wanted to write a piece on rotary phones – after starting I realized I had two stories to tell.   The other part of this story can be found on Retreading Pop in this article.   Head over there if you want to read the rest of the story.

The phone pictured above was the target.  I was the hunter.  Too bad the hunt took 2-3 years.   Let’s roll back for a moment and see how my wife and I captured my prey.  Somewhere around 1999 when my wife and I were living in our first place we started to talking about the technology we missed and how we would love to get a rotary phone.   We had a luggable computer or two, a CoCo, a Commodore Vic-20, a TRS-80 – but those were all computers.  We didn’t have a single vintage phone.

Since I worked at a small PC shop, getting computers donated to me wasn’t completely uncommon.   If I had worked for the phone company I’m sure I would have received some phones.   Unfortunately I did not work for the phone company.   We talked about getting a rotary phone, but never seriously started the hunt.   I wish all those trips we spent in those years going to antique stores I would have sidetracked from the vintage books and picked up a telephone just once.  Every once in a while in Oregon we would go out and look for a phone, then the time passed and we didn’t think about it for awhile.

Around 2006 it became an object of desire.   It could be that we bought our first house.  It could be we had more disposable income.  What we did know is that we really wanted a rotary phone.  Not just any rotary phone mind you, but a black desktop model (I still want a red one thanks to the Adam West Batman TV Series).   The first thing we noticed going out places was the asking prices for the phone.  Good condition ones were going for over 200.00.  We knew that there were literally millions of these things made, so there was no way we were going to pay that.   The ones that were under 100.00 normally had noticeable damage to them.   We didn’t want to pay for the same thing twice, if we had bought a damaged one we would eventually want to replace it.

So every time we went out to the antique stores (which was a lot less frequently than previous years) we would look over pretty much all the phones we could find.  Then a few months after my son was born we went out to an antique store with my father and step-mom in Columbus.    Doing the normal go through all the phones routine we found a couple that fit the bill.  We managed to snag one in fairly good (no reason to replace later) condition for 25.00.   As far as I can tell all the pieces are there and it should work.   The rub, we don’t use a home phone anymore.  So this phone sits on the shelf looking pretty and begging to be used.   It is something of art for us though, and the thrill of owning it still justifies the hunt.

There are only a few more things I actually want in the telephone department.  I want a lineman’s handset from a couple decades ago.  I would take a touchtone – but would absolutely cream over a rotary lineman’s handset.   I would also like a payphone – I’m fine with a touchtone for this.  Double points though if it is vulnerable to a red box tone generator.  Triple points if it is vulnerable to a blue box.  Finally the one I will have to pay a couple thousand for  – a phone booth.   I’m not sure where I would put it in the house, maybe I would mount it in the backyard.  I would love a phone booth either way.  I’m also sure more than once I would change from street clothes into a Superman costume inside of it.

Head over to the Retreading Pop article to hear me gush on the rotary phone.

Ah…The Facebook privacy issues.

Doesn’t it seem that a portion of your friends list goes nuts every other month over some Facebook privacy flap?  This month it is Facebook Places, earlier this month was the Defcon data harvest, and earlier things like overly complicated control settings.  In another month or two it will be something else.  First and foremost we have learned with Microsoft over the years that the market leader will get blamed for every little misstep.  I love mocking Microsoft, but I’m writing this on a Windows 7 netbook (I also use Ubuntu, OSX, IOs, Maemo, etc.).  So the majority of this vocalization is from a minority that makes it sound like there is a bigger problem than really exists.

So we know that a vocal minority can get everyone worked up and excited.   People that don’t understand the issue will always latch onto something if it sounds scary enough.   The less they understand about the issue, the scarier it sounds, the more likely they are to get worked up over it.  Take the dihydrogen monoxide hoax for example; here is the information on dihydrogen monoxide:

Dihydrogen monoxide:

• is called “hydroxyl acid“, the substance is the major component of acid rain.
• contributes to the “greenhouse effect“.
• may cause severe burns.
• is fatal if inhaled.
• contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
• accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
• may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
• has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:

• as an industrial solvent and coolant.
• in nuclear power plants.
• in the production of Styrofoam.
• as a fire retardant.
• in many forms of cruel animal research.
• in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
• as an additive in certain “junk-foods” and other food products.

The only thing that’s missing from the description that I can see is some key taglines; can responsible for millions of lost revenue, can be found in the victims of child pornography, and is taken by Facebook employees with access to your personal data (hang on I’m tweeting that one).   One student even did a paper where he surveyed users with the facts above to see if they would sign a petition banning dihydrogen monoxide.  43 out of 50 people signed the petition to ban it.   What is dihydrogen monoxide?  It is water.

Why is this relevant?    Because the same scary sounding facts about any new technology that Facebook creates get tossed about by the people that least understand the issue (as far as “warnings” on Facebook status messages are concerned).  People like suspense caused by danger, just watch the news for the tagline “what maybe in your house killing you right now”.   I really hate those.  People however will talk and get worked up over the littlest thing.

These same people that are so worried about the privacy impact in their Facebook status have a few things working against them in their “fear of privacy”.  First and foremost is that they are using a social network, if the policies scare you so much and it is a major concern to you then maybe it’s time to quit Facebook.  The next thing is that Facebook no matter how private you think it is or should be IS A PUBLIC venue.   Maybe not everyone on the planet can see your Cancun pictures, but your friends can.  If your friends can see it; so can Facebook, so can their partners, and so can random Joe Shmoe because Facebook changed their privacy policy and the information leaked out.  Finally we have the same people concerned about privacy filling out every little survey on the planet like “Which My Little Pony Are You”, “If You Were a Tiger in Midwest America, Which Zoo Would You Be In”, or “Which Writer from the French Revolution Might You Be Related to”.  Do you think these app developers are doing this out of the kindness of their heart?  They are doing it to collect slivers of information about you each time you do one of these surveys.

The question is who to be worried about with your “private” information.   Are you concerned more about the advertisers having your information?   Well then stop filling out surveys, learn to clean your cookies, install ad blockers, disable JavaScript, and disable flash.   Are you concerned about Facebook having your data, then stop using Facebook.  No matter how secure you have locked down your privacy settings, Facebook will always have access to that data.  Are you worried about the government?  Well the CIA is a minor investor in Facebook; their role has never been clear – but think about that for a moment.  Are you worried about Joe Schmoe?  Well random individual is really the least threat to your privacy of all those listed.

I do understand there are fringe cases.  Issues where there are abuse cases, restraining orders, or child custody battles.  If those are truly your concerns though, shouldn’t you be using a pseudonym anyway?  The people concerned about their safety should always put privacy first and foremost, especially when there is a real threat.  The perceived threats on the other hand, mostly are non-existent to the normal average person living in a small town.   I can get census data and get a general idea of you, I can find out how much you paid for your house and the basic layout, I can find out if you have kids.   I can stand in front of your house and take pictures of you through the windows legally.   These are more close to home violations of your privacy that are legal and easy to do that people don’t get up in arms over.  At least you won’t until I’m actually taking pictures of you from the street.

For everyone else, we are getting to the boy that cried wolf syndrome.   When a real issue comes up the general populace is going to pay less attention to it, because they hear “Facebook” and “privacy issue” on a weekly basis.   This is going to cause a problem when a real security issue that everyone is going to have to stand up and yell about comes around.  Let’s take places for an example, you can opt out and opt out of people tagging you into places.    Now the other person can tag you at a place, but it won’t show up in any user streams if you opted out (but Facebook knows you were there).    However that same person could do a status update and say you were there and all their friends (and the world if they don’t have their privacy locked down) would know that you were there.  They can also tag you in the status update and that event would show up in your stream.    So while you can opt out of places; your friends can still place you on the map in other ways.

In the end I’m not saying that Facebook doesn’t have privacy issues.  They do, and many of them.    I don’t need people with the vaguest idea of what is going to get worked up and tell me about an issue I am well aware of.  I have few technical people on my friends list – and they are never the ones to get worked up over these issues in their status messages.   We get our information from trial and error, thinking through and figuring out the issue ourselves, or at least reading about the issue from reputable sources.    The real strength of Facebook is that it has profiling on every one of their users.   If this bothers you don’t use it.  Trust a company that won’t keep a database on you, like Google. ;)

IMG_6151, originally uploaded by Creeva.

Lex was ten months old on he first Christmas this year. Everyone told how exciting it would be. Well all those people stretched the truth a bit. As parents we think the whole thing is going to be new and exciting, all because we loves it as kid.

Since Christmas isn’t a leap it means that at most your child is 364 days old, and more then likely has not yet opened a present yet. You hand the child their first Christmas present and expect them to tear into it. I’m sorry to disappoint you, they don’t. You sit there recording the moment and they just tap at the wrapping paper. So opening presents becomes very long and drawn out.

After a visiting a couple grandparents he got a vague idea, but it was no means exciting. Next year however, I’m sure the cyclone of opening gifts will start.

When I was eight years old and the Thriller album came out, this was the first album I was completely in love with.    Nothing topped it.  I remember getting a pair of red parachute pants as a present and thought they were the greatest thing in the world.   About a month later I had put holes in the knees of them from constantly sliding across the floor.  I lusted for a few years after that to get the red jacket, but it never emerged.    I would have still bought one up to a couple years ago – it was never meant to be though.

I was in Greenville at my Godmother’s house and her son staying up and waiting when the Thriller video had it’s world premiere and we thought it was the greatest thing ever made.  I think they aired it a few times that night and we watched it everytime – to think this was on MTV back when they actually showed music videos.

Lastly I participated in Hands Across America – Michael was into it and through this chain of millions of people I would be connected with him and everyone else in the world.   Even though we lived in Elyria at the time, our place in the “Hands” line was literally about 2-3 miles away from the town we would eventually move it.  We were at the Ford Plant on route 6 in Lorain, which is a literal stones throw from Vermilion.   I remember thinking that Michael organized the whole thing – I know better now.   He was one of the prime reasons I was into it though.

As I remember people were just mulling around, no one wanted to hold hands until it was time.   When the correct time happened there was this line of people holding hands as far as I could see to the east and the west.   It was a moment in time that struck me even at the age of ten that this was a monumental thing.

Time passed and I can say any fascination with Michael passed out of my life.   We’ll skip the controversy years, but slip in that I loved that he owned a monkey.   Recently I heard about his gearing up for the London concerts and was hoping that if toured the states that I would get a chance to see him.   He is a concert I would have paid 100-200 to see.  To capture a bit of that childhood – the memories of the parachute pants and never getting moonwalking down.

Some people have gone so far to say he is our generations Elvis or Lennon.   I may give him Elvis, but he was no Lennon.  Either way he was a larger then life superstar that did have an impact on me, and it will be with me for the rest of my own life.

I may not have been working much on my blog over the last couple months, but one thing I have been working is my own personal wiki.  It’s not publicly editable so don’t bother trying. One thing I have found that it is useful for is an memory augmentation technique.  I can keep notes or lists to myself in it that I can easily go back to.

I’ve gotten so used to wiki editing and syntax that I am now incorporating a stand alone wiki into my normal work flow.   Now some of you do know that I run the Stars of Intrepid wiki to keep the memory of the people that played a great game in a great time period alive.   I saw uses for a wiki in this scenario long ago, and it’s gone OK.   It would be great if there was a greater participation, but it is what it is.   A moment trapped in time.  There are modifications occasionally, but it’s far from a vibrant community.

The best thing about a personal wiki is you are not dismayed when people are not contributing.  It’s all you.   It can be incomplete.   It can be riddled with problems.  It mirrors your mind, thought process, and line of thinking.   It is more of what you are.   Whenever I need to write something the wiki is now a well of information I can go back to, at least htat is part of the intent.

One of the major things I wanted the wiki for (at first) was to keep a list of all of my online profiles and accounts.   This makes a central repository that I can call upon to remember if I signed up for such and such a service.   The other thing it’s been useful is to map the flow information that I use for crossposting data across the internet.

When someone asks a question of how information is distributed I can give a very specific answer of the path it takes.   Others can look for themselves how I might produce a video in youtube and have it show up on vimeo.  If you haven’t tried keeping a wiki for your own information, I suggest that you do try it.  It is a different animal from a blog and is used completely differently.   It’s like comparing a book to an encyclopedia, both present information but in a completely different manner.

What a long strange trip it’s been.   Back before I started a blog, I was just a person on the swg forum with the name Creeva in his signature.  I did a random Google search and I had less then 100 entries, about 3 years ago I was still stuck at 419 entries.   These days my number fluctuates for 20k-60K entries in Google depending on the day.   I’m still proud of having the number one entry in Google for “the greatest accomplishment of mankind” and not so happy about being number one for “afk entertainer” (UPDATE ON THE SECOND ONE – I’ve been bumped to number 2 – yay me).   One thing  always bothered me when I started this trip of seeding Google, the fact that originally when I searched for “Creeva” that Google sent me back the suggestion “Did you mean Creeval?” – this continued on when I had more hits for Creeva in the database then existed for Creeval.

Every few months I did a variation search on Creeva and normally I would either get no suggestion for some spellings, or I would get something spelled different.   Today however when I did a search for “Creeeva” it came back with the suggestion “did you mean Creeva?”.  Finally I’ve broken through the glass ceiling of valid search terms and “Creeva” will start being a valid suggestion.

I really don’t care if this changes tomorrow and it goes back to some other suggestion, today I have my moment in the sun.

See the full size picture of Google’s suggestion here.

Granted as a side note, my real name has only 4900 hits for it, and when I search on it, it suggest a different spelling of the last name (different person).     The suggestion also has 1500 less hits for his name then I have for mine, but that’s a battle for another day.

Over the last couple months I’m sure some of you have noticed that I’ve been sharing more personal stories.   This isn’t to say that the blog is going to be all personal (I’ll keep the the mixture of technical to personal to irrelevant), it’s something to share a bit about myself in my writing.   Sometimes I don’t get personal and tell my own stories at all.   I think this leads to an abstraction to any regular readers that do not really know who I am.

Telling the stories that mean something to me is two-fold.   One is that it is cathartic like my Month of Mom series, others are just blowing off steam.   The second major thing is it makes sure that there is a record some where for my son to have the stories about me that I may forget to pass down in the old oral tradition – in my day we had modems that moved 1.4 KB down or up the network at a time – and we liked it.

I also think in a way it makes me a better writer.   I think it gets me in touch with the things that are away from the realm of technical.  The people that follow or friended me on any of the services I use can have a peek at me in a way that other bloggers don’t share.   Other bloggers can stay on set topics for an overall blog better then I can, so it’s a hodge podge here of what you may or may not get.

I hope everyone is enjoying the ride.

I never truly finished my “Month With Mom Series“, I was working on the novel for NANOWRIMO, and then came back and ran out of steam to finish the blog article series.  It’s take me over a month, but I wanted to address a couple comments.  The first came from my youngest sister who still lives with my mother and step-father:

Ok well im just going to say what I feel . About the part 2 and part 3 , I feel she should of never ever took him back . He is not a father and doesnt act like one. He does not bother talking to us all the time except for my yonger brother usually. And is mean to the pets . I dont even like him living in the house . And seems like he doenst even try at all . But I still dont get what she see’s in him. When he was in Columbus it was better without him . But thats all im gonna say .

She seems to have some of the same feeling that I do on the issue, at least when it comes to how my mother dealt with my step-father during their separation and the reconciliation.    So this is similar feelings coming form someone that is thirty-two and someone that lives in that household and is thirteen.   This is also her father, it might be my step-father, but it is her father and this is the treatment she feels that she gets.  Don’t forget that I had another sister pipe in on her feelings.  My own father has read my series, but thought it would be best to not leave public comments, I guess in some ways he is a wise man.

This next comment was left by Groovymarlin who runs her own blog, but I knew through playing SWG with.  This comment was left on part 20 of the series (also the final part I finished).

I’ve been reading these all along and I have to say they’re fascinating, though maybe not for the reasons that you think. I’ll just summarize my thoughts so far:

1. Your mom is obviously a very shallow person. It also sounds like she was a little too selfish and self-centered to be a very good mom.

2. On the other hand, you were all fed, clothed, received medical care, etc., etc, growing up yes? My point being – she may not be a very good mom, but there are much WORSE moms.

3. A lot of your complaints about her sound pretty nit-picky to a third party. I’m sure that to you, just about everything she does is annoying and obnoxious and irritating. But to an outsider, a lot of the things she does sound like…things that middle-aged women do. However…

4. Your opinion and view of her has obviously been colored by the truly negative things she HAS done in the past, and therefore every one of her transgressions is magnified to you.

5. Your mom seems to have a bad habit of using people, but remember: people allow themselves to be used. Your grandparents in particular seem to have no problem allowing her to manipulate them. Is it right? No. Are they adults, and capable of deciding for themselves whether to allow this? Yes (at least as far as we know – if at some point due to age or health they become unable to make these decisions on their own, then there would be a real problem).

I think in general you’re handling the mom situation the right way, which is to just let her do her own thing, as long as it’s not hurting you or your own family. I feel pretty bad about some of the things she said about, to, and in front of your sister. That passive-aggressive shit is not cool, not from anyone, and especially not from a mother. But what can you do about that, other than give your sister your emotional support and help her do her own thing as well? Nothing.

People suck, don’t they?

Ever since I read this comment I thought it would be a good blog post on it’s own for a reply instead of loosing it in the noise of comments that no one would ever read, just like my sister’s comment above.  Though she says I’m handling this the right way and can see where I am coming from I wanted to address a couple of the points.

Point number two stated because we were clothed, fed,  and had medical care that she couldn’t have been a terrible mom, there are crack addict mothers that can do the same.   When I was 16 I had a job where I pulled a muscle in my chest.   It kept going for a few days where I didn’t tell anyone that I was having trouble breathing.   Everytime I took a deep breath it physically hurt ot breath.  Not to the point where I couldn’t breath, but to the point where I thought something was wrong with my heart since it was in that vincinity.  Like eveyr male I ignored it as long as possible and finally mentioned to my mother.

My mother thought I was making it up and yelled at me for making her take me to the doctor.   Stating she didn’t have the money for it (my parents were divorced by then).   I think my grandparents ending up paying for it.   It turned out I didn’t have heart problems like i was afraid, but a pulled chest muscle like I said.   I had been hyper-ventilating for days, which means taking breaths faster and more shallow then you normally would.  I hadn;t noticed since it seems we are taught when you are hyperventilating you are gasping for air.   I was proscribed codeine for the pain, every once in awhile to this day the problem will creep back for a week or two and I just deal with it since pain medication is the only thing they can proscribe.   My siblings have had similar doctor experiences where my mother only reluctantly took them after we plead the case to my grandparents since my mom thought it was some sort of attention plea.

I never asked for medical attention from my mother.   Besides getting teeth pulled for braces the last major medical thing tha tI had done was in elementary school when I got chronic ear aches.   So this wasn’t a case of my mother always dragging me ot the doctor and me haivng nothing wrong with me, it was serious to me, I was in tears fearing the worst about my condition and thinking it was my heart.

A similar issue goes with the getting fed thing, my mother has always chosen not work.  Because of this she happily took advantage of the free lunch program for the local schools.  I can’t say that my sibling are still on it, yet for two years of my high school I was.   It seemed to her better to get her kids free lunches then to get a job.    She has worked the welfare system so she could go on buying things from the home shopping network and Longaberger baskets, but send her children into the free lunch program.  that is selfish and naive, and if she had been cutting back on other things maybe I would have more sympathy and understanding.

So did she keep clothed, fed, and medical care – only when it suited her, she didn’t have pay, it didn’t effect other people’s appearance of her, or she was forced.   I still wonder what school officials thought about me wearing hundred dollar tennis shoes (since she wanted us to look our best) while getting free lunchs.

Number three stated I was pointing out alot of nit picky things – I mentioned earlier that alot fo these were small things, things that eventually broke me and caused me to cut off all communication with her.    I don’t deny some of hte things were small, but it is also the small things that shape us.   The big things we overcome; my mother didn’t beat me, she was the person that cared about herself first and her children second.

Number four stated that I magnify the issues and focus them on myself.   I was the whipping boy, after me it the third in line, then the fourth (my brother second in line didn’t get the whipping boy treatment), now it’s my sister that’s fifth in line.  I can say what I felt was slights to me and things that I have a right to complain about.   If one day my siblings decide to tell their own stories alot of similarities will line up, since this is what they tell me “off the record”.   Eventually maybe I’ll get some of them to talk about their own experiences more.

I’m also however not going to deny that I’m writing about the things she did that annoyed me or set me off.   These feelings will seem stronger to me then outside forces.    Some of it is truly petty, but I needed material to write and I did leave some bigger things off the record for the moment, writing this piece reminded me of the doctor’s issue I mentioned.    I’m not saying I’m done with this series, but for the moment I’m done writing about it.   I may do some more pieces in the future, but it will be about the larger things she did when I have the time, energy, and motivation to write about them.

If your interested here are the links to the stories so far:

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

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Read Part 20 Here

My sister’s email I published yesterday has my stories out of whack now.   I was originally going to relate the story of my mother and the cedar chest, but I already did that.   If you missed it, here it is:

I will now give you an example I have full memory and first hand knowledge of. It was at a family holiday dinner a few years ago at my grandparents and somehow the morbid subject of what we would like if my grandparents passed on. I stated I would only want one thing, a cedar chest crafted by my grandmother’s cousin. My grandmother chimed in that it was going to be given to her cousins family, well my grandmother has been saying that my whole life, so for thirty years it’s still been sitting there. My mother then said I couldn’t have it because she wanted it. Selfish? Well let’s continue this story.
A few minutes later my mother asked me why I wanted the chest because she thought it was ugly and tacky. I said it was something that would always remind me of my grandparents, their house, and the memories. To me the chest is kind of like a symbol of my grandparents. This prompted me though to ask why did she want it if it was ugly? Her answer? She said she wanted it because I said I wanted it. So I was shocked and called her selfish, I think that was my annual fight that year and I left. It was petty, you would think as adamant as she was when she said she wanted it, that somehow I knew there was a secret stash of money tucked away in it. Nope, she is just worried about someone else getting something she can’t. What a great mother.

I’ll get re-organized through my drafts and getting something new up tomorrow.  Even writing about her is aggravating and putting me all out of sorts.

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Read Part 2 Here

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Read Part 10 Here

Read Part 11 here

Read Part 12 Here

Read Part 13 Here

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Read Part 16 Here

Read Part 17 Here

Read Part 18 Here

Read Part 19 Here

Day late…

If you haven’t caught on to this series yet I have mother issues.   Because I have my mother issues I need to sit down and logically recognize what they actually do to me.  Things my mother has made me.

Growing up I was extremely self conscious of everything, how I looked, who had what, etc…  What has happened as an adult is that I just don’t care.   I don’t care what you have.  I want what I want for my own reasons.   As I’m getting older I can care less what society thinks about me, so essentially I’ve become the polar opposite of my mother.   Though Xie will tell me that isn’t always the case.

Because of growing up in my household I learned to thrive in chaos.   This is great in some of things I do since I can make order out of chaos (well at the same time creating more chaos around the thing I made in order).  Unfortunately for those around me this isn’t always a conducive environment for those that deal with me.

I get my anger from my father, and I’ve spent many years getting that in check and controlling.   It’s something I have to deal with.  I have learned however people like my mother are the ones that are most likely to set me off at a moments notice.  This is why I didn’t marry a girl like dear old mom.   My father after the divorce seems to have his anger issues in check, can we say common denominator?

I base(d) alot of what I know about relationships from my parents and their interaction.   When things aren’t going well in my own relationships I’m completely oblivious since things aren’t explosive like my parent’s relationship was.  While our child isn’t born yet we don’t know truly who the enabler and the disciplinarian will be.   I’m pegged for the enabler, and that’s not necessary a good thing.   If I get that from anyone it’s going to be my mother.   I just need to make sure my son doesn’t become a spoiled brat.

Frustration at stupidity.  The exasperation I get over comments that are idiotic, that comes completely from my mother.   I have mentioned her belief that ninja humanoid turtles were possible. I used to do all of her proof reading for her college homework when I was in high school, and I was responsible for the rewrites.  When I was about fourteen she said she was smarter then me.   What she may have meant to said was wiser, though I don’t think that was the case, since if she was wiser or smarter she would have said the word wiser.   Also for anyone wishing to defend her on that one, she still says she is smarter (Oprah must have told her she was).  I have a standing offer to pay for an IQ test so we can settle this once and for all, if she is write (highly unlikely) I may just kill myself since it will be proof that intelligence means nothing. On a side note recently I was just talking about sitting for the Mensa exam.  I don’t know if I’m Mensa smart, I may not be, but I’m confident enough to actually sit for the test.

The last thing is I get insane over little requests people ask of me.   I better be in the right frame of mind because I can go ballistic if it’s something they can do for themselves.   I’ll give you the story I use to describe this whenever I talk to someone about her.   When I was in high school I told my mother I was going to be taking a bath (yes I’m a boy and I like baths get over it).  She acknowledged me and said she was going ot cook dinner.  At this point everything is fine and dandy.   About 10 minutes later I’m in the middle of reading a book and my mother starts screamiming my name.   Now this isn’t a your in trouble name scream, nor was it a where are you at name scream.  What it sounded like was the “OMG THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE” scream.   I threw on a towel and rush down the stairs.

Well the emergency?  My mother needed a wash cloth to do dishes .  Her answer about me being in the bath?  “I forgot”.  In ten minutes she forgot what she had been told and acknowledged (and I’m sure she heard the bath water run) and put all of that aside for her immediate need of a wash cloth.   To make matters worse, she thought I was down in my room.   Now our family was a plit level.  The kitchen on the main floor, the bathroom on the second floor, and my bedroom on the lower floor.   In theory give or take ten feet I would have had to expend the same amount of energy to come from my room or the bathroom to come to the kitchen.   She would have expended half the energy (minus the energy to start yelling) to go down to the second floor and get it herself.  It was absolute pure laziness.   I pointed it out to her, and she didn’t care.   She wasn’t old or invalid, she was healthy and approxiamately the same age as I am now.   The worst part, I was dripping wet, freezing, and I still had to get the washcloth.

I was a sucker and should have said no, but I was a mama’s boy.  That story though is an example of many many things that are quite similar.   Because of her necessity or decorating the house for the holidays, I now loath decorating for the holidays/  I have never had a christmas tree in my  house, that may change next year with the kid on the way.   Compared to my mother’s house and her record breaking three christmas trees she did one year, my house will be quite sparse.

My mother likes to tell people how things are to be decorated and have everyone else do the work.   After the divorce I became the man of  the house.   I learned to loath the holidays.  When your mother is healthy you shouldn’t be fifteen and being Santa Claus setting up the tree late at night for your siblings, but yet I was.  I love the holidays, I just hat emy mothers version of them.  These days though i’m preferring Halloween over Christmas, black and gory for the win.

Ok  I’m stopping now otherwise this will become the post that will never end.

Read Part 1 Here

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Read Part 11 here

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Read Part 17 Here

Recently I did a forum interview on the swg forums (thread is located here), I didn’t re-subscribe, I just visited the forums during SWG’s free month back special.   Here is the text of that interview:

-Forum Related-

Forum Name:

Brentgueth aka “Creeva”

Any particular reason or meaning behind your Forum Name?

I’ll let everyone figure out the obvious.

Is there any particular board on the Forums that you like/hate? Why?
The Intrepid board. Some people don’t realize that there is a lot of history here and back in the day it was quite fast moving. By the time you answered a post there would fifty new posts. It kept me active and made me a part of the community

Beyond that I hung out in the entertainer forum a lot since I believe the entertainer class is part of qhat makes SWG unique and special. I’m rabidly anti-afk it was SOE’s stance in not patrolling or punishing for AFK that was the straw that broke the camels back for me.

Any particular forum topic that you are fond of?

Anything community related or inspired.  The community is what made SWG and Intrepid great.  If it wasn’t for the community we had the game wouldn’t have lasted past six months.

Favorite threads?

Intrepid Has a No Grind……
Clarks House…… <—I remember this thread too, Hilarious.

Any Forum personalities that catch your fancy? (Person who’s posts make you laugh or like to read)

In no real order:

Corndog
Keltrien
Padre
Qitu
Darthtuefel
Irasha
Shikazi

-Character Related-

Main Character you play:

Creeva Murkado – Twi’lek for the win – Lekkus Until Death

Any backstory to their name?

to the name – no it was something I made up in 10 seconds and went with.  On the front side though, creeva has become my avatar name for almost every online service I use.  Because of Intrepid I’m extremely attached to that name – I even own creeva.com.

What profession are they? Any particular reason why you chose that profession?

Entertainer for life.  I respecced to other professions only to get the badges.  Beyond that I’m a full time entertainer.  During CU I briefly tried BH and pre-nge I was 90% of the time master entertainer/master musician/master rifleman.

I originally started a character on Gorath – his name was Jonathan Lysak (sp?) – the third day after launch Gorath was down and Xie ‘lanthia and I wanted to play.  I said you know what would be funny – let’s make entertainers – that should be good for a laugh.   We randomly chose Intrepid because that server was up.  The rest is history.

Sometimes fate just happens to put in a place and position that surprises you and is the perfect fit.

Any interesting Chapters to you Characters life?(Marriage, Kids, War Hero, Galatic Senator, Winner of the Intergalatic Pie Eating Contest)

Grrrr.  This is a hard one – but let’s hit the highlights

Starting Planet – Talus
Moved to Tyrena – Where My Heart Will Always
Member of Star Dragon Entertainment – Intrepid’s First Entertainer Troupe
Winner with the Def Stars In the First Intrepid Jam Bonanaza
Performed at every Groovefest (I think) – worked and helped Xie organize entertainers for the first one (She did most the work)
Founding Mayor of Symphonia
Founding Member of DEF
Founding Member of STARS
Founding Member of IPS
Fighter for entertainer rights
Helped organize and participated in the Intrepid Anti-Decay Protest
Helped Enchi-Lada rename a house Clark’s House and caused mass confusion
Was at Moya’s Wedding
Started the Museum Movement
Founded the first somewhat comprhensive Museum  – my buildings were the second museum on the server (though I announced first and they built theirs before I completed gathering things)
The first Intrepid funeral for a character was in my name
Founding Mayor of Pirates Retreat
Ran SNN – The Stars News Network – when INN was no more
Did behind the music columns on the forums for retired musicians
Maintainer of the Intrepid History Project at starsofintrepid.com (it’s a wiki go update your entry)

um…is that enough

That’ll Do Creeva, That’ll Do.

Roleplayer?

Roleplaying Light thank you

Are you in a guild? If so which one and why?

Currently?  Well I think I am still in STARS

In the past – I helped found DEF to be Intrepid’s first and only Entertainer Guild.   I did the same with STARS (it didn’t have the staying power – or rather Xie and I didn’t have the staying power to work at it) – I was also briefly in NWO.

How many years have you played SWG? Taken any extended breaks from the game?

I started at launch  – I’ve taken extended breaks here and there – I theory I’m still on extended break.   I will come back officially when it’s Intrepid’s final month as a server and play in the Tyrena the final day until the servers go black.  I don’t care if that’s in 2 months or 20 years, I will do my best to keep that word.

Over the time you played SWG what is your favorite memory?

That’s not fair – I guess if I had to pick – winning the first Intrepid Jam Bonanaza by being the first entertainer group to actually use lyrics instead of just playing flourishes.

Though the people, hanging out, being at home – that’s what makes Intrepid great and that’s what I remember the most.

What is the funniest/most embarrassing moment you’ve had in the game?

Arguing with Moya’ over toilet placement in the galaxy. <—First Crafted Toilet on Intrepid if I remember correctly.

-Other People-

Favorite person you’ve played with over your characters lifespan?

Xie ‘lanthia

What you would say to them if they were in game and the server was getting it’s plug pulled tomorrow?

e-mail me – you can get the email address from creeva.com or use the contact me form there – I would give you my e-mail address to post – but for some reason SOE doesn’t like that and messages get deleted that way.

Favorite Guild or Group of people you’ve played with?

DEF and STARS

If you participate in the GCW what player would you call your most Respected Nemesis?

AFKers – there is always a war on them.  I miss when I could break AFK macros by stealing their nalargon or omnibox.

-The Game Itself-

Favorite Iteration of the game? (NGE, CU, Pre-CU) And Why?

Pre-Cu – the possibility and purity of hte game – instead of hte watered down version

Favorite Pet/Droid? Why?

The AFK bunny – he dances AFK for credits – though I tell everyone to make sure not to tip me.

Favorite Weapon or Armor you’ve had? Why?

Davinci “Widow Maker” Laser Rifle – When it was created it was the post powerful rifle ever made on the server (my character still has it) – and an entertainer owned it

Favorite Profession in the game? (Past or Present)

Entertainer

Your preferred GUI color palette and Keymap?

Imperial – and custom keymap to be pre-nge controls

Favorite Emote of all time?

Don’t know – I /waved a lot though

Favorite in game Location/Planet? (Lake Retreat/Naboo etc.)

My original musuems in Symphonia

Favorite Server?

Intrepid

What keeps you logging in to SWG through the good and the bad? If you no longer log into the game what things do you remember that kept you playing?

The People

-The Player-

Any SW related collectibles that you are proud of?

I have some toys – but I won’t stand on the fact that there is anything I’m proud of – I do own the PS1 game Masters of The Tera Kasi still sealed.

Favorite Movie/SW book?

A New Hope

Favorite Food/Snack?

Pizza

What hobbies do you have outside of SWG?

Blogging (creeva.com) – I’m right now working on a novel for national novel writing month, I perform in two community bands playing trumpet, and video game collecting.

Your Country/Hometown?

Ohio

What is the one thing to see if we come to your Hometown?

a normal ohio small town

Any of your family members or relatives remind you of a particular SW character?

My wife distinctly reminds me of Xie ‘lanthia

And most importantly if SWG player showed up at your door because they were stranded in your hometown you would:

I’d keep them for the night.  The only player that I didn’t work with at one point (Wong-Fei-Hung and Astrolite) that I’ve met was Moya’ I took her and her husband to dinner once.

A while back I received the following email from my sister (It’s been mildly edited to protect names and some grammar):

So I just read your blog..

I must add something.. and you make me realize mom doesn’t ever say anything nice about me.. and I’m not writing this to bitch about her either but its true.  I went out to eat with her, our sisters,  and our youngest brother the other day and she told our youngest she couldn’t get any peircings because “no preppy girls have them” and how they look like trash.
okay, well she was refering to me

Second.

I told summer she should really think about going to EHOVE (the local vocational school – creeva). Mom goes EHOVE is for people that don’t do good in school and our youngest sister doesn’t want to be apart of that (the sister writing this went to EHOVE – creeva).  Okay.. diss to me again, which i said something.

Third.. mom asks me if i went to Trip Ohio in 8th grade cus our youngest sister will be going next year.  I say, no because she didn’t have the money for me to go so I couldn’t.  I told our youngest sister that at the dinner table and mom denied all of that and said i was lieing.  Right.. my older sister said the same thing thats why we both didn’t go.

THEN..

mom tells me to shut up, then our youngest brother makes a comment to our youngest sister..

“You know why mom is mad at you?   Because you act like [sister writing this email] that’s why she hates you..”

So i wonder what she tells our youngest brother, she hates me?

Nice.

I stormed out of there and left.

Obviously I have replaced my sibling’s names with their rank and order.   We don’t refer to our youngest sister as our youngest sister (who by the way is two years older then my younger brother).   I just don’t want to be the reason their name shows up in a google search.  I did think it was important to show that my views on my mother are not mine alone.   I did receive permission from my sister to use this email, so there is no surprises.

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This one is a day late……

A few months ago I wrote about the girl that was my longest relationship before my wife.  Well this girl was a lot like my mother.  She was very bossy and wanted things a certain way.  She cared about the appearance of things and not the reality.   I don’t want to hash everything I wrote in the other post here again, so I won’t.   Read the link if you want ot hear more about her.

On the other hand, during that whole on again off again relationship, I managed to essentially date and live with a girl just like mom.  It was the relationship from hell, and I’m sure part of me deserved it.  The best thing is after the relationship was over and I was with my future wife I saw how much that girl was like my mother.   It also made me realize how much I’m like my father.   So in turn I realized how much it was never going to work out.

Maybe my anger towards my ex bleeds over to the anger I have my mother (or vice versa).  Who knows.

This wasn’t meant to be a long post, but more of one stating that I did not marry a girl just like mom.  I just dated one.

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Sorry – this one is a couple days late.

My parents don’t get along. I mean really don’t get along at all. I’m not sure I can stress this enough. My father always seemed to be doing what he did in the best interest of the children. My mother on the other hand was in a money grab and used leverage. This was nothing out of the norm from before the divorce however.

From about age seven until age fifteen, I was keenly aware that my parents did not have a good marriage.  I remember telling my friends that my parents were going through a divorce.   Ironically, they managed to keep going and going (along the way they also had two more kids).  My parents were a mismatch from the beginning, and if I had not entered the picture they might not have gotten together.  They did and now for some historical information.

My father attempted to be the disciplinary or the family, my mother was the enabler.   She was very very much the enabler.   If  my father tried to set something down (this is looking back mind you), my mother would take a position just to be the opposite of him.   Of course if my mother wanted to agree with him, I could just bring out that everyone was doing something, this would normally allow me to gain her consent.

Now some of this I remember and some of this is stories passed down, I’m going to try to remove the bias and just give you some examples:

When we were living in Elyria, we didn’t make a ton of money.  Sometimes we were scraping by month to month.  It something that happens to a lot of families, and even as an adult I still find myself doing that most the time.  One month we had twenty dollars left in the bank account.   My father was counting on this money to provide lunch meat for himself for work.   My mother on the other side had other plans.  Knowing full well how much money was in the bank she went out and bought wash clothes, effectively draining the bank account.

My mother was never happy with what she had.   My father was constantly remodeling to her tastes.   He learned a lot of things about working on a house, so I guess you could say that’s a good thing.   I however remember the house always being in the state of flux as some project or another was constantly being performed.  Of course now as an adult I leverage my father for knowledge he gained from that experience, but my wife can’t live in that sort of atmosphere.  So that tidbit is something to take for taste.

During the early nineties my mother decided she wanted her own money.   That’s a good thing.  She decided she was going ot make dolls and enlisted my father and my grandmother on her venture.  She made enough to purchase a living room set after hours and hours of labor and sewing on all three of them.  I remember I did quite a bit of stuffing myself, but I don’t believe I did much else.   Now you would think that this is a good example of the family working together.  However, my mother didn’t seem to understand the concept of “cost of manufacturing”.  She believed that the whole thing was pure profit and just poo poo’ed all the money that it cost to create the dolls before sales.   Thinking back I hope my father set the profit margin, since my mom would have probably sold them for a loss and then went “Golly, look at all the money I have from sales”.

Before moving on to the post divorce era I’m going to relate one last story.  There was a movie I wanted to see (I was 15) – it was “People Under the Stairs” and I wanted ot go with a friend.   My father said no, it was an R rated movie and he didn’t want me to go.   My mother snuck money to me and dropped me off to see the movie.   She was in full enabler mode.   Later when my father found out the fight between them was explosive, don’t mix two volatile chemicals together.   I have my own father issues I may write about another time, but this month is about mom.

After the divorce my father and I didn’t talk for a few years.   We talked lightly after awhile, but it didn’t start getting regular until I was traveling for consulting.   This led to a whole new ball game in dealing with them.  I didn’t want to accidently pass information from one side to another, but at the same time I had to make my feelings known.   I would get my fahter to talk about things my mother had told me – indirectly inquiring.   I also did the same thing on the reverse.

The problem is I normally sided with my father’s point of view.   I was this go between, trying to maintain peace on each side of the family.   When I first moved into my house i was in the middle of everyone, so my house was going to be the holiday get together place.  A Switzerland where neither side could fight.   Well that didn’t last long before i stopped talking ot my mother.

The most interesting thing was the Thanksgiving when we first moved back to Ohio.   On my father’s side all of his siblings still get together the weekend after Thanksgiving to have a family meal.  My brother lives next door to my father.  My mother was staying at my Brother’s house that day……

Somehow, in some wierd mix up of the galaxy, my mother invited herself over to my father’s house.  (I’ve mentioned that they do not get along at all).   Her excuse was to see all of my aunt’s and uncles who could care less about her.   The rest of the family completely agrees that she was there only to see the house and see how my father was doing.   I don’t know how she managed ot get the nerve, but I wouldn’t enter the den of a place where I know I’m not wanted.

But maybe she just wanted to see if my father’s curtains made her look fat……..

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At one point in this whole debacle where I stopped talking to my mom, Xie thought she would try to mend things. She dropped me off at burger king to eat and went over to my mothers to talk (this is all second hand mind compared to most things I’ve written). Xie sat her down and told her she was going to push her children away one by one if she continued down the path she was going. That my mother had to pick herself up, get a job and move forward being an example (I’m sure Xie will comment on this story to fill in more details).

The selfish thing my mom said to my wife? “You don’t have to have a job why should I?”

Now because this is second hand I normally wouldn’t have included this, but I wanted to point out Xie’s effort. This wasn’t the first time my mother had said this. There are a lot of answers to this.

1. Xie has a supportive husband that hadn’t left her once and possibly will again
2. Xie spends her free time learning and expanding herself – my mothers expansion comes from Oprah and Dr. Phil
3. Xie doesn’t have two children at home not even teenagers yet that need to eat and hopes daddy will give mommy child support money
4. Xie isn’t a leech that feels entitled to it, she has offered to work many times, I don’t understand why both of us need to be miserable for a few extra bucks

While my mother is grazing the home shopping network for things to buy, Xie is doing Algebra out of text books for fun. There is a world of difference. Most notably my mother needed an income she could trust to take care of her kids and not ask friends and family for money to get by.

I will now give you an example I have full memory and first hand knowledge of. It was at a family holiday dinner a few years ago at my grandparents and somehow the morbid subject of what we would like if my grandparents passed on. I stated I would only want one thing, a cedar chest crafted by my grandmother’s cousin. My grandmother chimed in that it was going to be given to her cousins family, well my grandmother has been saying that my whole life, so for thirty years it’s still been sitting there. My mother then said I couldn’t have it because she wanted it. Selfish? Well let’s continue this story.

A few minutes later my mother asked me why I wanted the chest because she thought it was ugly and tacky. I said it was something that would always remind me of my grandparents, their house, and the memories. To me the chest is kind of like a symbol of my grandparents. This prompted me though to ask why did she want it if it was ugly? Her answer? She said she wanted it because I said I wanted it. So I was shocked and called her selfish, I think that was my annual fight that year and I left. It was petty, you would think as adamant as she was when she said she wanted it, that somehow I knew there was a secret stash of money tucked away in it. Nope, she is just worried about someone else getting something she can’t. What a great mother.

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