Archive for October, 2005
Mad Funk
Posted by smokingpen in Odds-n-Ends on October 31, 2005
Sometime last week I hit this really weird mad funk that caused me to not be as nice as I would normally be in relation to the people around me. Does that make a lick of sense? Probably not. The long and short of the last several days is I have been upset and mad and have taken it out on / wanted to take it out on the people around me.
There was no reason I could point at to suggest why I was in this mad funk. That is probably more frustrating to me than almost anything else I?ve done or have been doing. To be mad, swearing mad, making biting remarks at people and events around me, and not knowing what is causing it. Needful to say, the past several days have been rather frustrating to me. I?d say the problem is sexual frustration, but 32 and celibate means that goes hand-in-hand ? there?s another reason that I?m not seeing.
Normally church helps with these moods, but even church seemed to get in the way of something else. Something else is the mad funk. The mad funk is not a positive thing. The outcome was that most everyone I came in contact with got the wicked side of my tongue, mood. I?ll try to repeat that again in another paragraph soon.
Last night, I sat down and started writing in my journal. We?re not talking the BLOG (stands for web log) but rather a pen and paper journal that I keep. I?ve got a few of these, they are now a significant feature on one of the bookshelves I own; yet, there I was writing down ideas, blurbs, rather than writing down ? whatever. The journal is supposed to catalogue my life and it?s been months since I?d had a significant entry. To me, that?s a bit sad. A lot has changed in my life, internally; that I?m not sure I have what it takes to just sit and write in the journal what is going on around me.
Once my jumbled thoughts were down on paper, though, I seemed to calm down and mellow out. Now that?s weird. What does my writing thought?s down on paper have to do with my being mad and upset or not? However, I wrote, I calmed, I went to bed. I like bed. Bed is good.
Therein lays the problem, the run, if you will. I was mad about things I had no idea what they were and the act of writing in my journal thoughts I recognize as having yesterday, and not in the preceding days, immediately calms down the storm raging inside of me. Talk about weird. Talk about totally disconnected ways and forms of life. Talk about the subtle changes in dynamics throughout my life. Talk about the need for things that have never really been ?needs? in my life.
I think I am done ?bitchin? for the moment. More later ? I?m sure.
Truck Drivers and Driving
Posted by smokingpen in General Essays on October 28, 2005
On my drive into work this morning I fell in behind a semi traveling on the interstate at about 50 miles per hour. This may seem unimportant, at it probably is, especially since I have a car that will pull around and drive considerably faster than a semi is apt to go. So, I waited until it was safe to pull into a passing lane, accelerated, and flew past the semi with a spray of water and several very colorful words at the back of my mind. As I did this, I remembered something that hasn?t resurfaced in a few years: truck drivers swear at four wheels because of their stupid moves.
I drove semis a few years ago. Most people that know me know that. It?s nothing I?ve hidden, and at times, something I make sure most people hear. That is one fact that seems to put people at odds with their beliefs or preconceived notions about me.
However, when driving semis you live in a world of diesel and grease and the people you encounter aren?t always the most ? illuminated in the world. They are not exactly intelligent people and do what they do because they could pass the tests and because someone, somewhere, was going to offer them a job. If you are to believe the TV and radio ads, billboards, word of mouth, signs on the back of semi trailers, truck drivers in general, and the federal government, there is a severe shortage of truck drivers on the road.
While driving semis I heard, a lot, about four wheels (if you drive a car you are a four wheel) and how poorly they drove. There is a lot of truth to this because most people don?t take into consideration the stopping distance for a fully loaded semi. It?s a lot farther than for a car. People don?t pay attention to where they are in conjunction to the semi and get mad when a driver doesn?t pay attention to them.
There is this built in antagonism between truck drivers and your every day, run of the mill, automobile driver. They don?t get along and they aren?t supposed to. The responsibilities are radically different. And yet, truck drivers always get mad at four wheels for the stupid antics that they play when driving around semis.
As I was driving to the bus stop this morning this occurred to me. I fell in behind the semi because the exit was coming up. What I didn?t realize was how slow the driver was going and when I decided that driving 50 MPH was not what I wanted to be doing, I pulled around him. The way I did it, very quickly and relatively close, suggested to me that he was probably swearing up a storm to embarrass a sailor in a brothel in Singapore, because of what I did. Technically, I didn?t do anything wrong. The truck driver isn?t going to see it that way.
The notion that truck drivers are better drivers than everyone else is rather fallacious. It?s not true. Yes, they have more training. But, that training is designed to function in an environment where they have a pivot point on their vehicle and to allow them to safely slow or stop it in inclement weather. Anyone can learn the same techniques of a truck driver. They?re not hard.
One ?trick? of the trade is how you watch the road. Instead of driving defensively, the truck driver will watch the road as far ahead as he can and will, mostly subconsciously, adjust the speed and driving to account for the conditions and traffic. You don?t get into accidents when you have slowed down considerably before you ever hit congestion. If you are watching at least a half mile down the road, or as far as you can see, and not the road directly in front of your vehicle, you do drive better.
Most people don?t learn this, ever. A small car functions differently than a big semi. You can correct the swerving and driving mistakes far more efficiently. This leaves the regular driver with the impression that he is actually a good driver. There are very few good drivers. Truck drivers included.
It is my opinion that most people are just really lucky. They don?t get into accidents because they were the cause of the devastation behind them, because the God?s are shining down upon them, because they didn?t have to drive defensively, because they were lucky, that time. Everyone has driven with someone who has never been in an accident and never had a ticket and you wonder, ?Why the hell not?? That person is absolutely horrible when it comes to driving and the road. You can almost hear the destruction of vehicles, the crunch of metal, and breaking glass behind them. Many drivers really suck at driving.
There are actually many rules that, when watching people drive, are never followed. This is kind of sad. You get complacent and then things happen. However, as I drove to the bus stop this morning, and pretty much knew the truck driver was swearing at me for the speed, the way, I drove, I couldn?t help but laugh and wonder what kind of a driver he really is. Granted, the weather was slightly inclement. It was raining this morning and had been most of the night, but the weather wasn?t sufficient to justify the speed and the driver didn?t leave the interstate at the next exit.
People are going to drive however they feel they want to or should. Many are going to live under the misapprehension that they are good drivers. Most are probably wrong. Truck drivers are not excluded from this.
Scarred
Posted by smokingpen in Odds-n-Ends on October 27, 2005
Last night I changed my cell phone number. It?s no longer a New Hampshire number so, if you want to get a hold of me, then you will have to pray that I have contacted you or e-mail me.
Anyway, after I changed my number from east coast *sigh* to west coast *double sigh* I went down to Spanish Fork to see my grandma. I?m convinced she hasn?t long in this world. She had a couple of falls this week, which is why I?ve gone a couple of times in a couple of days, and she looked, two days ago, like she?d been beaten. Yesterday, she was asleep, but her face and the cuts/bruises actually looked a lot better. I sat and talked about nothing for a while and then, when I was ready to leave, partially because I?m not convinced she knows I visit, I had to wait for one of the nurses to get done with what they were doing so I could get out. Grandma lives in the Alzheimer?s unit and there is VERY limited access.
So, as I was waiting for one of the nurses these old women surrounded me and started to talk to me. I?m good with that; however, at the same time, I?m not good with people who are constantly re-introducing themselves to me, forgetting my name, repeatedly, dropping hints at their connections (in this case, within the church), or touching me. They kept touching me. One of them kept rubbing her hands all over me and wouldn?t stop. This actually made the others really mad, which was on the funny side, but the more I moved away or changed positions to stop them from the physical contact with me, the closer they got. I felt like a bear in a cave trapped by hunters who were intent on killing me, skinning me, and using the pelt for a blanket, the skull for a bowl, and the claws as decorations. Yes, I have an overactive imagination.
Anyway, I went to bed troubled by that last night. I am convinced, as a result, that this led to some pretty freaking weird dreams. I?m scarred for life by this. My mother laughed like it was funny. Sure, it?s probably funny, but I?m scarred, damn it, and that?s just not funny.
Okay, yes, I?ll probably get over it. But why should I have to?
Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown – Review
Posted by smokingpen in book reviews on October 26, 2005
I just finished reading, ?Digital Fortress? by Dan Brown. Some of you may have heard of Dan Brown. He wrote this little book called, ?The Da Vinci Code,? about a code left behind by Leonardo Da Vinci before he died and spread throughout his works. From what I hear, that book is a smash hit and, hands down, has made Dan Brown a very wealthy man. I?ve never read it.
Several months ago, maybe a year, I did pick up a copy of, ?Angels and Demons,? which deals with the same character from, ?The Da Vinci Code,? but covers different aspects to the Catholic Church. I liked, ?Angels and Demons.?
However, I was recently in the market for something new to read. Something I hadn?t picked up before, and I am not certain that Dan Brown was the right author to work through a certain literary malaise. In short, he was highly suggested to me and in the end I discovered that I did not enjoy what I was reading. Granted, he is a talented author, but the book, ?Digital Fortress,? had far too many tells for my tastes. In short, I picked the villain at about page fifty or seventy and then had to slog through 370 pages of filler to prove that I was right. Okay, maybe not 370 pages, but it was pretty darn close. You find out, conclusively, who the antagonist is before the end of the book; but the moment there was a code that had to be cracked and a number taken from the code?. I?m getting ahead of myself here.
?Digital Fortress,? follows the exploits of two or three characters. The one we start with is Susan Fletcher ? a brilliant mathematician working for the NSA (National Security Agency) as a cryptographer in a super-secret section that runs a computer with a million processors. Coincidentally, this computer can crack any encryption code in a matter of minutes. Throw enough power at it and you win, right?
She, coincidentally, is in love with David Becker who is a professor of languages at Georgetown University. He?s young, so is she, they are both at the tops of their fields and met when David was brought into the NSA to help decipher some supposed Mandarin Kanje code that was being transmitted. Susan stopped him to offer him a job and fell in love; she never offered him the job.
Two years later, David is being shipped off on a special assignment to Spain to retrieve some personal belongings of a, now dead, ex-operative of the NSA. The Deputy Director of Operations at the NSA felt that a civilian was best suited to handle the task ? rather than getting actual agents of the NSA?s hands dirty and potentially dragging in an highly covert organization into the middle of something that could potentially explode and cause international attention.
The premise for the book is digital encryption. There are a lot of products on the market that give people the ability to digitally encrypt their e-mail and send it, in the clear, to the intended recipient. Dan Brown is playing a fools game when writing about this technology. The fools game is that technology is constantly advancing and changing. In this case, the premise is that someone, an ex-NSA employee, has discovered a way to make all encrypted data unbreakable by ?rotating? the clear text that is being decrypted. A ?brute force? attack on a password, or encryption key, basically requires the software to notice subtle changes in the text that is being interpreted. When it changes from garbage to something clearly divisible by certain algorithms, then the password, or encryption key, has been breached and the encryption on the file is no longer valid.
This process takes a VERY long time for most computers with single processors to handle. Imagine throwing a million processors at it and then taking that same time, working in tandem, to brute force the same encryption key. You can do it a lot faster. I don?t know that it?s practical. The practicality was actually the one thing that seemed real to me, throughout the book: Uncle Sam throwing billions of dollars just to crack encryption keys.
What caught my attention throughout the book was the, now dead, programmers matra, ?Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? or ?Who will guard the guards.? That?s really the key here, ?Who will guard the guards?? Who will watch organizations like the NSA or CIA or FBI or the White House or Congress when they begin the slow encroachment on our rights? Who watches them?
The answer is simple, and it?s sort of presented in the book, but not well. The answer is the public watches the guards; or the public is the guardian of the guards. Another check and balance to a system that can, through time, be abused.
One of the characters in the book, Greg Hale, ex-military, ex-marine, now working as a cryptographer for the NSA, says something to the extent of: How can the public, at large, stand up for themselves when the government can monitor, and shut down, all forms of private communication?
There are no answers in the book. Just a lot of clues and dead ends. The author doesn?t answer the question as to. ?Who will guard the guards?? That was the purpose of the book. Will the best among us, the scholars and geniuses, watch out for the common man, or will they, in the end, decide it is for our own good whether or not we, as a people, decide it?s for our own good.
Public sentiment. That?s what the book misses. Sure, it?s a techno-thriller that takes one character to Spain and back again, but at the same time, it?s a techno-thriller that falls short because, you never worry about the protagonists and by the time the principle antagonist (and his minion) get it all you can say is, ?Thank, freakin?, goodness. It?s about damn time.?
As I said, Dan Brown is a talented writer. However, this book is probably not one of his better attempts at creating a page turner. It read more like someone who was writing for the movies. Not a book I?d suggest you run out and buy.
Updated
Posted by smokingpen in Odds-n-Ends on October 25, 2005
I slept all day yesterday.
Maybe that seems a bit excessive. I don?t really know why I slept all day, I just did. All day long. Well, I did get up long enough to make two calls (at 5 a.m.) then I went back to sleep.
My roommate, who went camping (at a cabin) this weekend showed back up, finally. He told me he would be back in time for church on Sunday morning and when he never showed, Sunday morning, afternoon, evening, I was beginning to get a little worried. Things happen and sometimes those things are not always positive. In this case, he was playing hooky at work and decided to spend an extra day with the mountains and his friends. I?m kinda glad I didn?t even entertain the idea of going. That would?ve been bad. Okay, it wouldn?t have been good.
In lieu of having my roommate around, I finally decided to entertain an idea that has been playing in the back of my head for a couple of weeks (and to which I?ve lost some sleep) and I started tracking down the stakes singles ward. I?m not really certain why I decided to track the singles ward down. The rules are pretty clear, turn 31 go to family ward. I was planning on attending a family ward from the point of January 6, 2005 forward, and have been attending a family unit (branch) for the past year plus, but when I got here and found a place to live, the notion, the idea, that I maybe I should consider the singles program was something that was outside of the directive. In my mind, it was something that I wasn?t going to be doing. Not gonna happen.
Well, I?ve decided to start attending the singles ward. This is not something I was planning on, or prepared to do, and yet, I?ve been dealing with the notion and what I feel to be internal pressures to actually go and do for a few weeks; so, I am going and doing. Does that make sense? Probably not.
Anyway, this all leads to my telling my roommate that I won?t be getting up early on Sunday mornings to go to church with him. Instead, I will be sleeping in and going to church in the afternoons. I don?t really know how to broach the subject, but the subject needs to be talked about. There is something to be said for late church, and there?s something to be said for early church, and at the same time there?s something to be said about not doing the early church, and?. I can go on for a while. I will stop.
My church records are being put into the singles ward. I will begin attending, for real, this next Sunday, and life continues forward. I continue forward. Wish there was more to add outside of: I am missing a few books. Harry Potter book IV. Wheel of Time book VI. Life of Christ by Farrar, and a few other odds and ends. I?m sure I just tucked these books into different boxes I haven?t bothered to pull out, yet; but there is a level of frustration that is associated with not having what I think/feel I should have.
Telling Stories
Posted by smokingpen in Movie Reviews on October 21, 2005
Another day in Paradise. That?s a song isn?t it? Guns and Roses. Like, twenty years ago. Maybe the title is wrong, and I often mistake one artist or band for another, so I wouldn?t go around quoting me on that being a song title. I?m sure that someone who knows more about ?it? will correct me when they get around to it. I am not defining ?it?.
Not really certain what the point of updating today is. There is really nothing going on except that I am really tired. This getting up to ride the bus and going to bed, or trying to, at a decent hour isn?t working super well for me. Mostly because I am not going to be at that ?decent? hour. Last night I needed to make a call and passed out before I got around to it. I was pretty tired. Sleep for the dead, I say. Problem is, get little enough sleep and you may end up dead. Exciting. Eh?
Apparently when I reviewed ?Knife of Dreams? seemed to be unclear as to author source. Mostly because I wrote it differently than I normally do. Normally, I write reviews based off of stand-alone books and wasn?t sure how best to approach the review for that book. It?s book 11 of a 12 book series, I?ve been reading them since I was 14, and the outcome is that there is far more to the story than JUST what took place in the book. I probably did a poor job at it and that?s my fault. We can shoot one of my siblings later for my infraction.
Outside of that I was planning on seeing a movie this evening. Not sure that is going to happen, now. The movie I wanted to see, ?Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang? does not open in Utah. Apparently the studio is doing a limited release. They did the same thing with ?Pretty Persuasion? another movie I wanted to see and have to wait until it comes out on DVD. The later must not have done exceptionally well because it never went into wide release.
Another movie I wanted to see, and ended up seeing, was ?The Boys and Girl from County Clare.? It?s an Irish Indie. That?s independent movie. Apparently Ireland has a burgeoning movie industry and their own version of Hollywood. I?ve heard their take on the ?wood name, like Bollywood out of India, but I have no recollection as to what it is. Regardless, I heard about the movie, liked the premise, waited until it was released on DVD because it never went into wide release, and then bought and watched it. Of course, the fact that it had Andrea Corr in the movie certainly helped. Andrea Corr is the lead singer from The Corrs, an Irish pop band that has achieved some level of notoriety in the United States. She?s hot.
Still, the outcome is that many of the movies I want to see are not being widely released. The latest example of this was Neil Gaimon?s ?Mirrormask.? Good movie that I thought was well done given a very small budget. The images were meant to be surreal, the story more Alice in Wonderland, the outcome slightly ambiguous, and the movie fulfilled what it advertised. Great movie that will never go into wide release. I was actually surprised that Salt Lake City got it. Of course, I live in Springville and had to drive to Salt Lake City, but that?s another issue for another day. At least I got to see the movie.
Movies are not, and should not, the most important thing. It?s just that the visual stimulation that a movie provides is sufficient to help bring about ideas and emotions that can lead to creative sprees. There are other modes to doing this. Take, for example, books. I love reading books. Reading books helps to engender creativity. I would like to believe I am a relatively creative person. I like to read books. I want to write books. It all works together. However, movies are not the principle factor involved in my life. They do hold a place of prominence as I proceed to find out where I will end up and what I will do for the rest of my life. I like movies. It?s another form of storytelling and I like stories.
Anyway, I?ve wandered over enough territory. More later. ? and no, I am not going to define ?later? either -
Housekeeping Update
Posted by smokingpen in Odds-n-Ends on October 20, 2005
Okay. So, the comments were deleted in a very large cleaning out of unnecessary (and necessary) comments on the website(s) hosted through the server. The person hosting, and making sure the software is up-to-date decided that 25,000 comments, mostly spam, were completely unnecessary and did a radical delete of all comments on the system. Therefore, only a handful of comments made it through the purge. Pretty much Southerpeach and something I wrote in response to Peach. Amazing. I am sure.
Came across this and…
Posted by smokingpen in On Writing on October 19, 2005
