Technical Difficulties, Britney Spears, and Life

Just a quick blurb that’s a far cry from any of my other posts: technical problems.

As most/all of my readers know, I am a DJ for GridStream Productions, an internet radio station that I started a billion and two years ago.  I’m currently on hiatus due to some crazy new (but crazy cool) living situations that have my time pretty occupied.  I plan on getting back into the mix somewhere between Monday and Thursday for a regular show, so I’m setting up various systems to allow as much.  The chief problem: sound.

My “main” system is currently a laptop, because I need the portability in the new and constantly-changing household structure.  It has onboard audio, which absolutely sucks.  A few months back, in the expectation of this dilemma, I bought a Sound Blaster X-Fi external USB sound box.  It’s awesome, save for one gut-wrenching problem: a quarter-second delay between what’s spoken into the microphone and what comes out of the speakers.

That might seem like small beans to some, but trust me, when you’ve been DJing for 8 years based entirely on hearing your own voice through your headphone in order to assess your volume and tone in real-time, a quarter-second delay is akin to a similar delay in the controls of a first-person shooter.  It literally makes me nauseous.  I feel like I’m going to throw up just 30 seconds into a set, and I cannot speak correctly.  The automatic compensation my voice takes makes me sound like I’m drunk (which, believe it or not, is unusual for me).

So I tried back-stepping to the on-board audio card, which I know some of our DJ’s seem to use without a hitch.  It still sucks, it’s crackly and quiet, and there’s no way I would ever be able to DJ with this low quality “high definition” nonsense.  Realtek/intel audio devices can kiss my pasty-white ass.

Back-up systems currently include my old system, which is as of now boxed up in a corner of the bedroom, and the kids’ computer, which is in the living room.  The kids computer has on-board sound as well, but the external sound card has much less of a delay (like a tenth of a second) on a desktop machine than it does on a laptop, for some strange reason.  This kind of delay is more an annoyance than a serious issue, and it’s definitely doable.  Major problem is that it’s the kids computer, and I’m not entirely keen on installing and using software on a machine that they are allowed to go insane on.  Scary stuff.

Still, it seems like my only option right now, so I’m strongly considering that one.  I can set the laptop up next to it to log into AO (because the monitor on the kids machine is a piece of crap, but that’s why it’s on that box, natch).  I’m liking this idea the more I think about it.

In further news, Britney Spears is hot.  Latest video (plus HD download links in the info) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EjtbB4_4ek

She’s all woman now, and if anyone thinks she’s “less” attractive (in vox or appearance) than she was before having the kid, you need help.  She WAS a kid back then, and now she has the voice, the face, and the body to put on a hell of a show.  Combined with some of the best mixing work I’ve ever heard in pop music, I’d be amazed if she doesn’t continue to top the charts with every release since Circus (which is still my favorite song by her – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVhJ_A8XUgc )

I would normally feel a little problematic about doting attraction to a pop star during an awesome relationship, but that’s the one thing that makes my current relationship so awesome: I’m not hindered by self-censorship.  Sprklygrrl knows how incredibly awesome she is, and how I’d pick her over any other woman on the planet (and no, trust me, I’m NOT just saying that on the off-chance that she’ll read this), because she, unlike other women (e.g. Britney Spears), is the most top-notch attractive, coolest, intelligent, and down-right kung-fu chick I’ve ever imagined.  The fact that she actually ALLOWS me to sleep with her simply boggles my mind.  But I do not dwell on this.  Gift horse, mouth, you know the drill.

Next topic: vacation.  I’ve been on vacation for the past three days, and I’ve gone to work for the past two days, and I’m due into work in a couple hours from now.  Some vacation, eh?  I do it to myself, I know.  I accept and continue in a job that I know is killing me with stress, but I cannot end it for the combination of fear (that there is not another job out there for me, especially in Michigan), and confidence (that I am fucking kung fu at my job).  Still, times like this, I really start to rethink everything.  I’m only allowed 10 days of vacation a year, and I have yet (in 10 years now) to ever actually use that many, primarily because the job is so demanding.

I think that’s enough for now.  This entry has been almost entirely mindless rambling.  I’m okay with that.  Don’t know if you are.  Don’t much care. ;)

More later. (goddess forbid)

Job Prey – 1 Page Only Please

I should probably start this little observation with a disclaimer: I am not looking for a new job, as I like mine (or at least how good I am at it).  I find it both silly and ironic that I would feel the need to say that I’m not looking for a job, considering the things I am about to say concerning how people hunt for one.

Someone close to me (my wonderful girlfriend) is on the hunt, and different aspects of job-hunting have been getting brought up, which started to bring me into my current observation.

When I was the person going through the resumes to hire for an open position in my company, I saw a lot of the same thing.  Long, drawn-out notations of personal willpower and longevity, followed by three pages of short-term jobs and twenty-six letters of recommendation.  To me, these are throw-aways.  The more work it looks like you put into a super-polished and ultra-fancy resume, the more likely it seems that you are overcompensating for the lack of the very qualities you seem so desperate to make cases for.

Now I’m seeing these “top 10″ lists on the web that she’s going through, and they’re so worthless.  “Top 10 Things Not To Put on a Resume”, and “Top 10 Things Employers Look For”, and all I can do when I browse these lists is see yet another attempt to draw looks and attention to the author through some all-encompassing set of commandments by which anyone looking for a job must follow.

I have no such list.  Having taken resumes and conducted interviews myself, I feel that I have some experience in the field, but at the same time I admit that I do not have the sense of empowerment and naive life security that a top-level executive might have in any particular field.

Nonetheless, I know what I was looking for:  One page defining one’s experience pertaining to the field that I’m hiring for.  I don’t want a written record of your life goals, and I don’t need a stack of letters written by former colleagues explaining how much awesomesauce you have.  If I need to know more about your personality, I will conduct an interview based on the experience I see on that single page.

Oh, and for the love of Goddess, don’t put it on scented pastel card stock.  Plain white paper, please.  Or an email (WITHOUT flair) is just as good.  I want to see that you’ve worked in fields that are demanding in the aspects of professionalism that pertain to the position you’re applying for, and that you’ve been able to stick with them.  If you do not have the experience to your knowledge, I want to see that you’ve at least gone to school for something that pertains to it.  I look at year ranges.  If it says 2000-2005, I’m interested.  That means you’ve kept a job, and are willing to put in the time necessary to learn a new one.  If it’s twenty things with the same year on either side of the dash, it means you can’t hold down a damn thing, and I don’t care HOW well those individual things pertain to your experience.

In fact, it’s safe to say that if I were hiring for a front-desk clerk position and I only got two resumes… One is a single page showing that the person worked in retail for two years and in fast food for another three, and the other is four pages of various executive administration positions held for not more than a few months at a time and followed by encouraging letters of high recommendation from all those employers, I’ll interview and consider the former first, every time.  Humility goes a long way in attaining a new position.  Sure, I want someone with self-confidence, but chances are far greater that the latter’s ego is far too high to accept that the workplace might be a bit overwhelming at times and the staff consists of people whom this person may actually need to get along with on equal grounds without a self confidence level that could be reclassified as an attitude.

A long-term commitment to a high-stress work environment is just that.  You have to accept that you’re going to be molded in the way the potential employer wants to mold you, and you have to provide that company with a balance of two things: the experience in employment (or schooling) that might pertain at least partially to the position you’re applying for, and enough of a blank slate that can be worked with in creating the employee that the company ultimately wants to have.

One page.  List only the pertinent experience.  Spell shit right.  Save the rest for the interview when you’ve got them curious.  Then, during the interview, be yourself, but balance your confidence with your humility.  Admit that there are things you don’t know and are very happy to learn.  Be friendly and read the faces of your interviewers as you speak, increasing slightly the social maneuvers that bring about positive responses, but don’t overdo it.

Anyway, nuff said.  Whoever wrote most of these “Top 10″ job-hunting lists seem like idiots to me.  But again, what do I know?  I suppose chances are just as good that the idiot executive working in the top level of some major company really has no clue what the real world is like, and will only take resumes printed on fancy card stock with included letters of recommendation from the Queen of England.

More later.

Things That Are Definite; Ironic

It is often said to me, and perhaps to you as well, that “nothing is ever black and white.”  This of course denotes that nothing is a 100% guarantee in a world where “anything can happen.”  Logic, however, can deduce the most likely scenario and quite often even establish that scenario as so likely to happen that it might as well be addressed as a “definite”, with any exceptions occurring within the realm of wild luck.

Examples of these definites, those that betray the whole “nothing is ever black and white” hypothesis all too often, are listed below.

* There does not exist a sound spontaneously emitted by an automobile that can be classified as a “good sound”.

* There is no culture outside certain parts of the southern United States that believes spitting during the course of a conversation is good manners.

* Openly weeping is rarely displayed when one is feeling particularly open.

* Closed-mindedness is never displayed while one is feeling particularly closed.

* Common bonds are always singular in nature.

And then there are those obvious things in life that simply drip with irony when you think about them for longer than a moment.  As you likely know if you’ve read any of my blogs these past 10 years, I love irony even more than I love dark chocolate.  Which is saying something.

* A blood oath is when one person convinces another of their trustworthiness by injuring themselves.

* The vast majority of those who complain about the greediness of their country’s government repeatedly cast election votes for career politicians.

* The acids in sugar-free soft drinks are as equally corrosive to the teeth as sugar, and cause damage to enamel much quicker.

* In 2009, a chemical was added to the paper in common cigarettes to make them, as quoted in the regulation, “Fire Safe”.

* Fat free ham exists.

* So do earth-tone pastels.

* Those who are genetically predisposed to mental illness are twice as likely to procreate.

More later.

Bitter Times

When fortitude and apathy
Begin their compromise
We sink and sink unblinking thinking
Woe is all our lives
To treasure something for it’s good
Despite it’s bitter times
Is hurtful to addictive tricksters
Bent upon old lines.
They say to every ear be lent
“woe is all our lives,
we live in fear, the end is near
This leader tells us lies!”
But little do they know themselves
So few can realize
That previously vapid leader
Brought us to these times.
So sit upon the edge of days
I watch with eager eyes
This speaker with unbroke demeanor
Tells us hope on high.
Regally he challenges
and faces down old lies.
I cannot still my ache of will
When hatred still applies.

More later…

New Life and Old Annoyance

November goes on with changes aplenty. I haven’t blogged lately, mostly based on two factors: my recent addiction to facebook (shoot me) and the fact that my life has been a hurricane of change these past two months.

I don’t like elaborating on my own life details and I don’t have much time on lunch hour, so a summary: New cats, new girlfriend (very serious and living with me now), new budget, new plans, and with the exception of my dayjob, pretty much an entire new life. Nuff said.

I’ve been having some more experience with the birthers and Obama haters lately, especially in the indirect catching of their chain mails to each other and the pure unbridled passion of their blind, ignorant hatred.

Want to stump a racist redneck right-winger? 2 simple questions for them:

1. If you don’t want a public health insurance option, why? Answers that don’t count: because Rush/Beck/Savage/Hannity said so; because the government will follow up by telling me where to pee. If either one of those were related to your potential answer, please pick from your extensive gun collection and shoot yourself.

2. Were you aware that the Medicare plan you and/or your family member(s) are on is a government program? If you’re in denial about this or have some reason to believe all the redneck rumors that a newer more extensive public option will result in “pulling the plug on grandma” despite all the evidence pointing otherwise, please don’t waste the bullet, just stop breathing.

I’ve been spending a little time going over the different posted reasons and details behind the right wing pundits and rednecks hatred of Obama and why it is borderline insane bloodthirst for the man, and you know what I’ve come up with? Nothing.

Unlike the wide array of reason, evidence, and proof behind the public disapproval of Bush The Moron, there is absolutely zero valid reason for the disapproval of Obama. It’s nothing but an endless string of completely meaningless rhetoric based on various indirect attack strategies, including but not limited to the relating of obama’s presidency to various crimes committed by black males in rural areas, and the assumption that Jesus is still alive somewhere and strongly disapproves of the man. That’s how baseless all the hate is. For the most part, it just seems that rural white America hates Obama because he’s half black, and they are desperately making up new lies and public attack strategies to convince themselves and each other that there must be some more viable reason behind their hate.

Sorry, kids, there isn’t. You’re just idiots who fear anything progressive because you were trained to fear it by your idiot parents.

More later.

Chaottica and Effecta

Chaottica

Chaos theory shows that, given enough time and variables, anything can happen, but the probability of certain things recurring is much greater when and if they can happen a first time, provided that those environmental variables increase in stability with the passage of universal time beyond the first occurence.

You do not have a soul that will continue to exist and be self-aware beyond your death. However, the fact that you exist now leads to all likelihood that, given enough time in the continuity of the human species, you can and will exist again.

This is NOT the classic definition of reincarnation, so wipe that thought out. Reincarnation says that you have a soul that will separate from your body and immediately or soon after enter another. This is not the case at all.

When you die, you cease to exist, but the stage is set for you to exist again, provided that the human species continues to evolve and breed for a long enough time and with enough volume that the probability of your next existence reaches the critical mass of inevitability. This might take hundreds, thousands or even millions of years in universal time, but that is moot, since you will not exist, therefore you will not experience the passage of that time. You will not exist again with any memory of who you are now, but it will be you, and from your perspective the time will not pass at all, you will be born again instantaneously, with a clean slate, somewhere else in time.

As with reincarnation, this is also not to be confused with any individualistic notion of Buddhism or similar philosophies that base themselves around the self with concepts like karma. “Effecta” is the notion that ALL humans can and should work together to continue laying a strong foundation on which the species can perpetuate itself. This includes but is not limited to climate awareness, socials ethics, and the firm yet honorable governing of society.

Effecta, or universal karma, is currently very low in this world. The population is increasing too quickly, and more importantly, it is doing so without building a strong enough foundation for it’s future generations.

In this way, the increase in effecta by individual contribution is required by us all. Doing so is both selfless and self-preserving, if it is done so with the knowledge that without effecta, the odds of your continued existence and rebirth are severely diminished.

Probability and chaos theory is the essence of Chaottica; it is the fundamental concept by which all things in the universe work, and it is under the long term influence of positive probability increase (effecta) that we can both continue as a species, and insure our own continuation as individuals with conscious thought within this species.

More later.

Spirit

Given: the human brain stores and organizes memory.

If: the human soul exists as an entity apart from the physical brain, and can continue to exist after human death.

Then: Can the human soul retain no memory of it’s own? Does it’s existence necessitate the brain in order to develope and retain the environmental variables and experience required to create a personality?

I think this has to be a yes, unless some evidence can be found otherwise. The individual soul, if it exists, must use the physical affects of the human brain in order to develope and retain memory, experience, and personality. Hence, if the soul does continue to exist before life and/or after physical death, it must exist in a purely “blank slate” state.

This kind of evidence tends towards a conclusion that there is no “soul” beyond the personality created by the brain in it’s developement, as the entire potential relationship of the soul with the functioning of the brain does not indicate that we NEED some sort of spirit in order to be developed, social, and self-aware. All we need is the brain.

I wish — I HOPE — that I am wrong. But I don’t think I am.

EDIT: scratch that. I think I am right, and it isn’t a bad thing. Epiphanies of a sort be occurin’. Definitely more later.

More later… (I said that)

The LTK Static Yule Loot List

Things I want for Yule/Equinox/Xmas/what-have-you…

A gift card (Visa/Mastercard/AmEx/Amazon/etc) of any amount

Iphone chargers (plug/usb/dock)

Black or gray button-up shirts & work shirts (XXL)

Undershirts/underwear (XXL)

USB drives (portable HD’s and/or key drives)

Food and/or coupons with which to buy food

Speedy points!  (speedway gas station points, speedyrewards.com)

CD/DVD racks (small compact ones to place on a desktop or dresser)

color & black ink for HP Deskjet D1455 (or a new small printer w/ink)

travel luggage

Anarchy Online game time cards/codes (yes I’m serious)

iTunes gift cards/codes

wireless USB keyboard/mouses

batteries (AA, AAA, and 9-volt)

90- to 120-pound paper stock and lamination material (for full sheets and/or cards)

TURN-BASED pc games (i hate real-time stuff, I get distracted and lose)

audio books (preferably science fiction)

hugs

More later…

You know…

Sometimes I’m just not a very “up” person.

More later…

Government Means Governing

The government is not too big. It is not even big enough.

Say that to a right wing loon, and their response almost always comes from one of two places:

1. They are well off due to whatever position enables them to remain blind to the rest of the not-so-well-off world, and so they spout off the repetitive (and downright false) fear-mongering fed to them by their representing political party who’s obvious goals include retaining the ability to keep the rich as rich as possible and keep them from ever believing the voices of the legitimately poor by using the minority of those poor who remain that way through nothing but their own laziness as examples of how all poor people must wind up that way.

2. They are not well off, but live in some rural right-wing “real America” location in which the only exposure they have to the world outside their town is Fox “fear the left” news and brainwashed church goers who will believe any politician so long as they claim to go to the same church twice a week.

Fact is, as has been proven time and time again, that capitalism only works with the appropriate amount of regulation. As we all know (but the far right still refuses to accept in a “la la la not listening” kind of way), when you let the CEO-driven private market set the rules, they will inevitably manipulate and change the rules in order to further their own causes, and they will ALWAYS do so at the expense of an ignorant lower income bracket that will sit back and take it up the tailpipe because they simply don’t know that they are being screwed (and more often than not, they actually believe that they are being screwed by the “liberals”, usually via some made-up rhetoric fed to them by the pick-a-pundit selection of conservative radio hosts available to listen to at any given moment.)

Capitalism CAN work, but ONLY if it is regulated by a governing body who’s job it is to protect the people who voted them into office in the first place. This is WHY we have a government, for fucks sake! How can the far right continue to garner and increase support for keeping the government as tiny and powerless as possible while the CEO’s financially rape us every single day without any regard for fair treatment?

I’ll tell you why: they’re in the pockets of those CEOs, and they’re easily convincing America otherwise by saying “hey, I’m in the government and I want to keep us small for YOUR protection, it’s so selfless and sacrificing of me!”. No, it’s not. You’re the one getting what can only be called “legalized kickbacks” from the very same companies that are grouping up and lobbying to keep you in power and keep you lying to the people about your intentions. The RIAA, the health insurance industry, the superbanks… Big Oil. All those who have the power to profit from American ignorance so long as that ignorance is legitimized by the official spokespeople of the government that set the first rules of corporate power in place.

More later.