First steps and Custom Desktop

First thing to do is the update.

Next I went to skype.com and downloaded their skype install package for Ubuntu. After this was installed I did the restart that the update required.

Next I decided to start customizing my desktop a little by cleaning up the panels.

First, I right-clicked on the top panel and deleted it. Then I right clicked on the bottom panel and added a new panel. Then I deleted the original bottom panel. I grabbed the new panel and moved it to the bottom (if it wasn't already there). I then right clicked this panel and did an add to panel. The first thing I added was the workspace switcher. I right-clicked, selected move and dragged it all the way to the right hand side and locked it in place. Next I added the clock and moved it all the way to the right and locked it. Next came the notification area then the window list.

Then to work on the left side of the panel. I first added the show desktop, moved it all the way to the left and locked it in place. Then I added the main menu, moved it all the way to the left and locked it in place.

Now to add a program launcher to the panel just click the menu, find the program in there and right click it...then choose "Add this launcher to panel". I went ahead and added Firefox, Skype, Pidgin, Gimp, OpenOffice Writer, and gedit (my most used stuff). Okay now we'll right click the panel one last time and go to properties, background. Here I chose solid color (hex code #000000 is black; #FFFFFF is white) and went black. Then cranked the style all the way to opaque. Now this does cause the text in the panel to be unreadable so to fix that we go to the Menu -> System -> Preferences -> Appearance where I chose the Dark Room theme for now.

Now the last thing I'm going to do today is to change my desktop background image. I'm going to cheat and use an image I found a long time ago on the web. Since then I've done a little bit of color editing on it so that it is red (rather than the original blue). Okay so the image I want is in my Pictures folder so I right click directly on the Desktop and choose "Change Desktop Background". I then click on +Add and browse to my Pictures folder and find the file I want. Click open. Set the Style option to Zoom (choose the option that looks best to you) and I changed the background color to black as well (just to be safe).

And now my desktop looks like this: (same as yours different image I would imagine)


So because the background image is black towards the bottom it looks like the bottom panel is floating there. Which is what I like. :)

Okay last thing for the night is make a keyboard shortcut for the terminal. So we go to Menu -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts. In the Keyboard Shortcuts window scroll down to the Desktop section there is one called Run a terminal click this line and then hit whatever key you want to be your terminal key (I used the Super L on my laptop which is the window button up near the top right). Okay that's all for the evening. Enjoy.

Fresh Start

Okay so in preparation for the New Year I've decided to go ahead and carry out my "Fresh Start" program (which I just conceived).

I'm going to be wiping my comp and doing a nice fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and then blogging about every detail of customization and whatnot from then on out. So in preparation for this process I nabbed a 2gb USB drive from my uncle (who got it at Wal-Mart for $5 a great deal).

Onto this drive I have loaded the following:
from my home directory: (folders that are preceded by a . are hidden and can be found by using Crtl+H)
.gimp-2.6/brushes
.gimp-2.6/fonts
.mozilla/firefox
Documents
Pics

These were all the folders that contained my various writings, codings, pictures; of the three hidden folders the two gimp ones contain all my downloaded brushes and fonts, the .mozilla/firefox folder holds all my bookmarks and saved passwords. So everything that can't really be remembered very easily (like I need to download Skype and Pidgin and enter my usernames so those buddy lists get restored). Anyways if I'm not here for a day or two it isn't because I don't like you...I'm just busy reconfiguring.

P.S. I didn't get any books from library thing early reviewers.. :(

Thanksgiving and Holidays

Ah...Thanksgiving how I love the Pecan Pie you bring about. So another year's Thanksgiving where we all get together and eat obscene amounts of food then throw away more leftovers than many families see in a week; such a joy to be American. In any case we actually still have some leftovers as they are still good for a few more days so we'll try to eat them before the end. Was a great weekend. A pipe burst at my grandfather's so he had to shut off his water causing Thanksgiving day lunch/supper/dinner (whatever it's called when you eat at 2pm) to be moved from his house to my parent's house. My mother of course was a nervous wreck since it was moved the morning of and she didn't have time to "properly" clean, even though the house probably would have passed a white glove test. Well family came over, food was eaten, football was watched, and naps were taken; good times had by all (especially me since I was one of the nap takers). After the family was done at my parent's house we headed over to my mom's mom's house where that side of the family partially gathered for desserts; I say partially because my Grandmother hadn't been feeling well so she canceled the official dessert party she usually has. Friday nothing happened. Saturday nothing happened. Sunday nothing happened. Today was Monday...nothing happened. Tomorrow I plan on applying for a job at the casino before heading to my class in the evening. We'll see what happens with that. I promise I'll re-install Ubuntu soon and blog the whole customization process but I just haven't been in the mood to mess with that lately. Anyways, downloaded new fonts and brushes for Gimp (free art program very similar to Photoshop but free), and I've been playing with that lately. Enjoy the most recent work. That still needs to be cleaned up and professionalized.

An animated user bar for a forum sig...got to love VanGogh vodka:


An actually proper sig for a forum not much but still something I made:

Another uneventful weekend

So yet another do nothing weekend. I babysat on Friday night (my nephew who is 3 and niece who is nearing 2). Then after that I went to a friend's house (Matt the Pellilo for those in the know) where he, Stites, and I (three Matts so very confusing) played Halo 3 and drank...until about 3am...then we started playing quarters while watching Boondock Saints (it was decided quarters was better for our liver than doing a shot every time they said fuck - 213 or so). Waking up the next morning we proceeded to watch Tropic Thunder (a ridiculously hilarious movie that I recommend watching either drunk or another form of intoxication though none is required for enjoyment). After the movie we played some more of The Halo. After enough time we all headed to our respective houses. Not much done on Sunday some stuff with my online game. Monday I slept a great deal...such is life. Today I have done nothing except go to class and write this post. I need a project to work on. I think I'll start my computer reconstruction either Friday night or Saturday. Later all.

Wacky computer fun

Okay so we all know that I'm a geek. I love my technology and I haven't posted enough about technology lately so today I'll be posting about my current computer and set-up (that means I'll be editing this post all day so keep checking back).

First, I no longer run the evil empire's OS. The move to Vista was something I didn't want to be a part of plus I wanted to expand my knowledge of the software workings of my computer. So I long ago switched to Ubuntu Linux. Just the other day I finally upgraded to 8.10 (the Intrepid Ibex). I have to say that so far I am very happy with the new version it seems even more stable with fewer visual bugs than 8.04 (Hardy Heron); though Hardy Heron was still a good OS.

Well that's it for now as I'm feeling ADDish so I'll be back in a few hours with some more notes on how I've customized my set-up.

(This bloody spellcheck is British!! it wants customize spelled with an s instead of a z. Ah well thank goodness for Add to Dictionary)

Edit 4PMish: Okay so I haven't exactly come back and updated this. I think I've decided that I'm going to instead rip everything off...re-install and then chronicle the whole process (things like where to find files that you want to save so they aren't formatted over and the best ways to go about saving those files and such). After doing that which I'll probably blog over a week or so I'll start posting about Adobe Flex for Linux which I have recently discovered and want to talk a bit about. In any case I won't be updating this until either late on Saturday or sometime Sunday because I'm off to babysit niece and nephew in a bit and then I'm playing video games later tonight and all today tomorrow with Stites so busy with very important things. I'll catch you guys up later on though.

Laying the smack down

Okay so one of my current duties in my online persona is be a forum moderator. Now I'm kind of the head forum moderator (admins have said it but the positional ranking doesn't reflect that, because of various reasons). Anyways, we have a person of a lower maturity level who tends to not differentiate his in-game persona and his moderating persona. This of course leads to some serious issues since he is one of the more powerful players in the game. Recently he decided to overstep his authority and do some retarded things thus seriously pissing me off. Never a good idea. Anyways, so I'm in the middle of laying things down to him and he is pretty much ignoring what I'm saying because he doesn't understand the way that even though our forums reside within someone else's...we're totally separate. So I bring in the game admin to the chat conversation.

His entire attitude changed instantly. Was like night and day. So we got the basic guidelines sorted out to him and made him realise that we operate independently and differently than the forum that we are within. So now the admin and I are bringing in another moderator whom I've known from gaming for a while, but the best part is that he and the immature mod don't really get along too well. Hilarity will soon be ensuing. Anyways, the reason I'm posting this is because my general life is boring. I need to find a hot woman with enough money to make me independently wealthy. That or get a job. Later all.

Free Books!!

Okay so yesterday (I think it was) the list of available books for Library Things Early Reviewers came out. Here are the one's I'm trying to get. Sorry about the length but you can scroll a lot easier than I can figure out how to stagger and spoiler box.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter And Sweet - a book about the Panama Hotel in Seattle and one man's memories of WWII and the interment of our Japanese citizens.







Circumference - a book about Eratosthenes an ancient Greek who made the first accurate measurement of a spherical Earth.







Gomorrah - being a novel of the corruption of Naples. (Having just finished City of Falling Angels which is about Venice and Venetians I think I'll enjoy this one if I get it).







Firmin - a novel about a mouse (or a rat) born into a bookstore where his family feeds mainly on books. He actually reads the books. An interesting idea that I find would make a compelling story line.







Genius and Heroin - a novel about how some of the most creative artists, writers and musicians have also been drug abusers. As someone hoping to one day be a writer it will be an interesting introspective into some of the figures that I admire.







There were a few others that I have elected to pick up. But these are by far some of the ones I'm really hoping to win. In any event I'll let you all know as soon as I know. Well back to your lives of not posting on your blogs (or commenting on mine). I'll talk to you all later.

Lucky Son of a Gun!!

Okay so I'm a little late on this post however the evening was well worth it.

So after my class this evening I went to the Casino here for dinner with my parents and our neighbors. After dinner since I only had $60 in my pocket (no job sucks) I talked my father into "loaning" me some money. He gave me $40 and said that was all he had for me. So I proceeded to walk around looking for a "lucky" slot machine (I am now certain that is an oxymoron). So I found one called Mermaid something-or-other and put $20 bucks in. Betting 20 lines at 1 credit per line (a credit being 2 cents) my first spin cost me 40 cents. This spin however garnered me 10 free spins. During the course of these 10 free spins I won 20 more free spins and the 30 free spins total won me about $48 so my total money in the machine was $68.40. Now the debate of staying or going on this machine. I decided one more spin wouldn't hurt (and if I lost would put me at a nice even $68 as I hate change). So I pressed the button and wonder of wonders, I lost. So I cashed out and went in search of a new machine to win on. After two failed machines I decided that maybe my being up $8 or so was a sign and cashed out my tickets. This left me with a little over $100. I promptly headed for the poker room.

I walk up to the poker room sign in desk and get a seat on a $1-2 No-Limit Hold'em Table. I turn to buy chips and don't even have to stand in line as there is a brush (manager type) trying to offload chips for whatever reason. So I grab my $100 in chips and head to the table. After one or two small wins and some throw away hands I'm sitting at about $80-90 when a guy on the other goes on tilt. Now sometimes being on tilt can be good but most (if not nearly all) of the time it's very bad. The guy takes his stack of $75ish and goes all-in before the cards are even dealt. Normally I'd be ecstatic about behavior like this because I'd have a deep enough pocket to rebuy and eventually bust him but tonight I've only got what's on the table. So after about 5-6 hands of him going all-in blind (I think he got 1 call and he ended up winning it by luck) I'm about to ask for a table transfer. I check my hole cards and see a beautiful Ace, King off-suit. Now the worse that my starting odds could be are something like 48% (unless someone had pocket Aces or pocket Kings but that's a low likelihood) so I'm elated by my luck. The guy next to the blind all-iner calls (although he may have called blind as well crazy people up there), then the guy two seats in front of me calls as well. I now have a chance to pretty much quadruple my $70ish dollars. I make the plunge and push my chips in.

We all roll our cards. First guy, the blind all-iner gets lucky and flips an Ace, five off suit. His blind caller next to him has Ace, nine off suit. The guy two seats in front of me rolls over Ace, three suited. I roll my Ace, King and everyone not in the hand decides I better win because I have the best starting hand.

Dealer lazily rolls out the flop. Jack, Seven, Ten. We all check that nobody paired and the two card hole flush is now dead as he didn't match up suits. Turn gets a dramatic pause and it's a queen. I can't believe that no one has paired yet as I'm freaking out that a pair can kill me the guy just in front of me who had folded says, "You've locked it with a straight." There it was Ten to the Ace. The only thing I didn't want to see was a river King because then we'd all split out. River card is held as the dealer plays up the moment. He flips it and we've got six no pairs for anyone, no King to give everyone the straight I take down a pot worth about $350. I nearly shat myself. Thankfully our tilter still has more money and he rebuys for another $100. I'm happy now because I can call him on his blind and bust him again whenever I get good cards.

A few hands later we're discussing what would be good enough to call a $100+ all in pre-flop when the guy after me calls it. He rolls over pocket Kings and we're all certain he's taking the pot when out comes a miraculous pair of Fives on the board to match the hole Five that our tilting all-iner had. He continues his antics pushing in $253. I've got around $350 dollars so I can call and still be good for the night as it's been enjoyable so far (but those hole cards are going to have to be damn impressive for that). We're all joking about calling with things like Brunson's Ten Deuce when I look at my hole cards to see pocket Queens. Now being the lover of the ladies that I am I knew this to be a sign. I start counting chips and the table goes crazy..we're going to have a $500+ pot pre-flop.

The dealer counts out my chips and smashes together a huge pile for us to go to war over. I flip my Queens and our tilted all-iner goes pale. He checks his cards for the first time and tosses out an Eight Deuce off suit. "Dealer I'll give you $25 if you make it happen." he calls across the table.

I look at the Dealer and say, "Billy you already know how good a tipper I am from last time." Flop rolls out with Five, Queen, Seven; I've now got a Set of Queens. The ladies are in love with me. Turn is a bust delivering no help to anyone so I've now secured this pot. River comes out Five giving me a Full Boat Queens full of Fives. I rake in a $500+ pot after a few more hands I decide that it's a night and head home. I paid back not only the $40 I had borrowed earlier that evening but also the $100 I had gotten some two or three months before (I hadn't wanted to use the ATM and then had just never repaid him). My mom of course then asks for $20 because she apparently doesn't have any cash so I give her that (since I'm a good son and owe them so much anyways). So right now on my dresser is $385; of which about $300 was earned in about 3 hours playing some really exciting and enjoyable poker.

Well good night folks and I wish all of you some luck in whatever you do tomorrow (don't worry I'm not going back to the casino for some time as I have to build my karma back up). Later all.

You folks are slacking out there

Okay, so I skived off posting this weekend. I did not hear groans of misery or wails of protest occur within the comments section so you folks are slacking out there. On to my life though.

Well, Saturday I spent with family celebrating a cousin's wedding. He got married down in the Islands so only a few folks were able to attend and he hosted a dinner at the Columbia (in Ybor) so that his family here could celebrate. Excellent time and good food. I was entrusted with the job of photographer so I'll let you guys know how those turned out in case it's a possible career path (doubtful). Yesterday was fairly uneventful just lounged around the house as it was a Sunday. Throughout the weekend I did some bug testing and a small bit of writing (not nearly enough though). Well back to the grind. I'll see you folks tomorrow.

Where's the Dominatrix?

Okay, so no one has sent a dominatrix over yet so I figured I'd go ahead and post. Not a lot happened today. Went over to my uncle's and repaired his PC (had some bad memory and corrupted version of Windows on the HD due to power surge); that took a large portion of the day. Then I cooked up some dinner. Well left-over chicken from last night, but I cooked up some green beans, yellow rice, and peas. Overall great dinner. The rest of the evening was pretty much spent goofing off with one of the admins and another tester from Chaos. Chatting on skype and just general bouncing ideas off each other. Tomorrow may or may not get a chance to post as we're celebrating my cousin's wedding (he got married down in the islands and now he is taking us all out to the Columbia restaurant for celebration). So that's about it for the day then. Later all.

Habits are created by forcing yourself to do unusual things

Okay so the old rumor is that if you do something for like 10-15 days it will become a habit. Well here goes. In an effort to get this back to a regular occurrence I figured why the hell not. Crystal in answer to your question in the comments: well that all depends on how attached you are to your husband's soul, or even his presence. Seriously people spend ridiculous amounts of time on that game but if he enjoys web-based games he may want to check it out. It being text based it may not appeal to him but one never knows. And if he just wants to check it out and then has any constructive criticism feel free to pass that along. On to other topics. I'm about to go take a shower (see I stay hygienic and clean because long ago I was forced to take them every day so now it's a habit) and then go and apply for a job as either a teacher or teaching assistant at the day care down the road from my house. I'm not certain if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It'd be a job that requires me to conform to a regular schedule, however (and this is a big however) I think I may kill a child because I can't usually stand them for any length of time. Especially younger ones that are allowed to act like they don't know the difference between right and wrong. You know they know it however they are such manipulative little bastards that no one else realizes it. Anyways, I'll probably apply to every location between there and the interstate because I need a job for the holidays at least (if not something more permanent).

Ah well, in any case if anyone reading this is interested in perhaps resurrecting the tradition of supporting artists feel free to send me checks and I'll write poems, stories or whatnot dedicated to your patronage. Speaking of which I need to finish this short I'm working on to try and get it published. Okay, I'm out for the day. If I'm not back tomorrow send a dominatrix to tell me what a bad boy I am. (I'm seriously thinking of skipping tomorrow in the hopes that someone will do that.) Good day to you all.

Late Edit: I've added the link to my Library Thing profile in the World's Beyond Section on the side. I've also replaced my Hamlet quote with something I wrote myself a bit back. Comments are fine.

O how I love to resurrect old things...

So, maybe this will hold a bit better this time. Who knows I may lose interest after just this post yet again. Don't count on anything very regular as we all know I'm bound to just go wandering off after some tangent thought that obliterates all recollection that this even exists. In any case. Onward, for you Crystal (because you probably don't know yet and I know you'll get an RSS on this) I graduated last May with my degree in English - Creative Writing (woohoo). Now all I have to do is find a job (I love my parents!!).

Things I currently find fun. Well John just introduced me to this thing called LibraryThing where you can put all of your books into an online library and so forth (no I haven't yet finished listing all my books it takes a while to get books, find the ISBN, enter it and then select them). In any case that is something I'll probably find entertaining for a while because they may send me free books to review (and I would never tire of free books).

Next up we have my daily entertainment. I began to help work on an online browser based video game (honestly I'm not sure any of you will enjoy it as it is a text based strategy game that eats your soul...I mean life). I no longer play it though because it just takes up so much time however I still help test new developments, find and kill bugs, and I believe I may start doing some actual coding for it. Anyways it is thematically based off of the television show Stargate and Stargate: Atlantis (how I found it) but theme is about as far as the basis goes. Here is the link. If you happen to check it out you'll find me beating people on the forum under the name of Thade (it's an anagram of death how clever am I?). In any case that's that. Other current areas of entertainment for me are watching House (which is on USA all the time now so the DVR has like 10 episodes to view at a time for marathons) and going to my brother's house to see my niece and nephew. All in all I lead a very uninteresting life at the moment. After having talked to John and Tiff the other night I want them to move to London or Paris and take me with them so I can get a crappy job without a work visa get found out and deported so I can begin my career as an American Political Activist (a very brief stint in a foreign jail could possibly be beneficial as well). O well the stuff of dreams.

Anyone out there interested in helping me write a cyberpunk television show? I've already got about 3 episodes outlined just need to actually have someone focus me into writing them (focus is always my issue I'm so much more an idea man). Toodles (that isn't used enough), I'm signing out.

O like a phoenix

Okay so today is March 6 of the year 2008. Let's just go ahead and admit that I'm not perfect. I know groans of disappointment and despair are echoing around the world as people read this. In any case first things first, I believe that death is the only definition of life, therefore I must come to grips with the fact that regardless of my personal belief that science and medicine will extend life expectancy to beyond 200 years I'm much more likely to die before I'm 80. Thus I must begin getting on with the whole living for a purpose thing. Now the hard part.

What the hell is my purpose? Yes, yes, a rather esoteric and pretty meaningless question to ask, especially rhetorically, even worse when I don't know the answer myself. Well, for the time being I'm going to go ahead and examine what possible purpose I could have by exploring other avenues that are currently available. Namely, what am I passionate about? Now most people would consider this an easy question to answer, they'd spew off a list of at least five if not twenty things which they feel they are genuinely passionate about. I however was once broken up with by a girl because she said I lacked passion for anything. At the time I thought the girl wrong but she was all to right. I really could give two shits about everything. Is this really a bad thing? Well, I'll worry about that later. I've just endured another sleepless night and now that it is near 8am I"m thinking of doing something rather unproductive like veg in front of the TV watching idiotic stupidity or veg in front of the TV playing meaningless unrealistic video games. Ah, the choices of the quarter life crisised white anglo protestant male. At least I'm not out buying a sports car....wait that's because I've got about $100 and no current money making prospects....

Is anyone actually reading this?