Perspective

Last week, someone tried to have a friend of mine killed. The attempted assassination was unsuccessful, and the people responsible are currently in prison awaiting arraignment on a number of state and federal charges. This kind of thing makes for one hell of a reality check; whatever challenges I’m facing and whatever issues may surround me and those around me, it could be a whole lot worse.

Accomplishment

bandage and I went to Tampa Fetish Party last weekend. Regrettably, we still don’t know whether or not moonshadowdance will enjoy herself at an S&M play party, as she was unable to attend. Perhaps next time.

In any event, we were able to debut the second-generation illuminated spreader bar, which looks much better than the first go-round (and is quite a bit brighter, too!). The new one, which like the first lights up with continuously cycling colors, looks like this:

It’s great fun! 🙂

Humor

scarlete seems to think I’d make a good cult leader, based on my ability to make unreasonable things sound reasonable. I’m not quite sure what that says about the people around me, as cult leaders are generally successful not because of their own reasoning skills but because they tend to choose followers who’re easily led, but there it is.

Nevertheless, I’m reminded of a saying (attributed to George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

Suffice it to say that I don’t think life comes in “one size fits all,” and I don’t think the path of least resistance leads to enlightenment, or to happiness. And this is a feature, not a bug. 🙂

Paranoia

I’ve been on America Online for…well, since 1992, meaning for the better part of a decade. In that time, a number of people have sent me instant messages.

Over the past three weeks, the volume has gone way, way up. And a lot–I mean a lot–of those instant messages have looked like “Hi! I’m 12. Wanna chat?”

Am I being paranoid in thinking that this is a very clumsy attempt to set me up, or is this happening to everyone?

And now, by popular request:

Tacit’s cool poly dragon sticker

It’s Tuesday, and I still haven’t recovered from the weekend. Does that mean I’m getting old?

Take a deep breath…OUCH!

Saturday morning, Shelly (bandage) decided she wanted something pierced. She, Kelly (kellyv), Mel (lightgatherer), Nan (moonshadowdance), and their partner Chris went traipsing to the tattoo parlor to do the deed.

Okay, so I lie. We didn’t actually “traipse.” We were on a mission; we went with a purpose. Shelly wanted needles and pain.

Have I mentioned recently how absolutely lovely Shelly is when she has pain inflicted on her? She got two piercings, hood and labia, and was flying like a kite for hours.

If you’re interested, pictures are here. This is SO not work-safe!

Some images of the lovely lightgatherer:

A few more, plus a bonus image of Shelly and Keirston, below. Warning: not work-safe

I’m a geek. That means my house is wired for Ethernet, my office is wired for Ethernet, and I have routers and computers and broadband everywhere.

I live in Florida, the lightning capital of the world.

We’ve been having hellacious electrical storms all week. The toll so far: One router, one PC, one iMac, one cable modem, and one hub, all destroyed.

Add to that the laptop I destroyed yesterday while trying to replace the hard drive, and it’s been an expensive fucking week. Grr.

First, the freaky bit:

Yesterday afternoon, while I was at work, someone broke into my car and opened the hood. Nothing was stolen, nothing was tampered with, but when I went out to the parking lot to go home, the hood of my car was open.

I’m guessing that someone in the street racing community wanted to see if I had a VTEC engine in my car (I drive a Honda del Sol, popular among street racers around here). I don’t, but if I did, I bet my car would’ve been missing when i went to go home.

Fun stuff

lightgatherer is very sweet.

She’s also an excellent model. I should have some images to post online soon. 🙂

Of Giraffes and Alligators

Shelly (bandage) was once told that her problems with isolation were not because she’s messed up, but because she’s a giraffe and she’s hanging around with a bunch of alligators. Hanging around with other giraffes helps with the feelings of isolation.

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Problem is, the world is filled with alligators, and giraffes are fairly rare.

In many ways, my relationship with Kelly (kellyv) was designed with the idea that I would become romantically involved with alligators in mind. Alligators who fall in love with me are quite likely, at some point, to decide they want me to themselves; this is the way alligators work. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if someone is going to force me to choose between her and Kelly, then I’m going to choose Kelly.

Indeed, the terms of the relationship I have with Kelly were inadvertently set up in such as way as to make my lovers ask me to choose, because the terms of my relationship with Kelly make it very difficult for anyone who falls in love with me to feel secure with me.

That’s a problem it took another giraffe to see.

My relationship with both Shelly and Kelly is changing to accomodate the knowledge of this design flaw. Relationship changes are not always easy. they are, however, often necessary; indeed, any healthy relationship can and must change over time.

I do not plan to exclude either one of htese people from any part of my life. They are both wonderful people who bring joy to my life, and I will not willingly part with either.

So it’s all good. 🙂

Windows XP: How do we loathe thee?

Kelly’s laptop has been acting quite strange. Or rather, it’s been acting like a normal Wintel laptop, which is quite strange if you’re used to working with Macs.

The way it works is this: Install Windows 98 SE. All is good, for a while; then, over a period of months, things gradually quit working, or work increasingly erratically, until finally using the computer becomes as frustrating as picking ant shit out of pepper while wearing boxing gloves.

So I reinstall Windows 98. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Well, Kelly picked up a copy of Win XP Professional on the off chance that it does not suffer from Redmond Bit Rot(tm) to quite the same degree as Windows 98.

Okay, so here’s how to install XP Professional on an NEC Versa SX laptop, in a week or less:
Oh, the pain!

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm

So now you know. 🙂

My own personal favorite is Proof 227, PASCAL’S ARGUMENT:
(1) If God exists, it would be really cool.
(2) If God didn’t exist, it would really suck.
(3) Therefore, God exists.