hm

why don't any of you ever speak up

....

Friends, dark times are ahead for me. I'm not talking about money or the market. I'd kindly request that you pray for me. In whatever form you choose, pray for me. The fire is primed and I'm ready to walk through it.

Quote for my thinkers

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless."
-- Thomas A. Edison

I really like this quote. It is the philosophy that many people who embrace linux have. They say, alright, it doesn't work for this. What will? Is there something that this will work with? Will it work for this developer or that user? Will it become the foundation for a new idea?

My red Thwingline Thtapler

Transcribed for your reading pleasure!

Milton
"I, I don't care if they, if they lay me off either, because I, I told Bill that if he movth my desk one more time, then, then I'm quitting. I'm going to quit. And I thold Dom too because they've moved my desk four times. I uthed to be by the window, where I could thee the thquirrels and they were merry. But then they thwitched from the Thwingline to the Boston thtapler, but I kept my Thwingline. They have my thtaples for the Boston and I kept the thtaples from the Thwingline thtapler."

Peter
"Ok, Milton."

Milton
"And if, if they take my thtapler, I will, I will thet this building on fire."

my big project!

Alright, so this has been a couple of months in the making. I bought a computer about a year ago to learn Linux and now I'm going to do something with it.

As you know, I like to think that I'm a poker player! HAHA! See The Chad's Poker -> -> -> -> under Italian Roast. Anyway, I bought a workstation in August and a nice monitor a couple of weeks ago to play poker on. Well, I don't mind how Pokerstars runs on the new box, but I'm not a big fan of Vista. It's a huge memory hog and you really should not need that much horsepower to work. I was already on the way to learning Linux and this is inspiring me to learn faster.

I've been working with Ubuntu and Fedora. Ubuntu is supported/written by Mark Shuttleworth's Cononical. It has his African roots and philosophy of community and sharing. I dig that. Fedora is Red Hat's child. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is THE Linux that powers the big corporate servers. RH is more the commercial, production Linux and they have commercial support for it too. Fedora is really nice and clean IMO. I've seen lots of people who mod it and make it a really solid OS. Both Ubuntu and Fedora run the Gnome desktop environment as a default, but they also support KDE and Xfce if you would prefer.

Alright, the project! I run a database behind my poker to track and analyze my play and my opponents. I'm thinking that I can have the server run the database and it's engine while I play on the workstation. I'm not real sure how I can do this yet, but I'm gonna try! I'm currently in the stage of getting a workstation that will run stars like I want (stable). I'll then work on getting the database engine running smoothly and interacting well with stars. Then I'll wipe vista off of my "production" workstation and build a Fedora box for actual play. As far as I can tell (I hit google AND 2+2), nobody has done this yet, anywhere. People have played poker on Linux, but nobody has run the database that was written in windows, much less off of another computer.

Updates later.

Initiation

This is a reply to a friend who asked about me having a tough time with life. Now, this is a bit of a general thought on the past year.

"I've always tried to strive for wisdom. If I receive nothing else in this life, I choose to become wise. I feel as though if I want or need anything, wisdom will bring it to me.

I know I kind of dodged your Q and I think you deserve an answer. I believe that 2008 was that fire that defines me now as a man. Things only get harder and harder in life, but you go through initiations. I became a man last year. I had to be put to the flames before I could be forged. In life, there is no such thing as a cold-forge. Only hot. 2008 was THE hardest year of my life so far. 09 is looking better, but only time will tell. I still have many a wound to break open and clean before it can heal correctly. We are all scarred. But to become wise, we must have knowledge coupled with experience. I believe that I have knowledge. I'm just going through the experience now. Experience is often a VERY hard thing to go through. Sometimes it is hard to lift your arms. But if you are to climb Long's Peak, you must life each leg many a time when it is most difficult. You will fully believe that you cannot lift your knee even one more time. But what you do is what matters.

Well, I've stood on the summit several times. Each time I go, this lesson is only reaffirmed."

Downtime

We all need downtime. Rest is SOOOOOOOOOOOO important and people underestimate it. Peace is something that people talk about only in theory and never in application.
The only thing that will be work (other than work ldo) will be teaching climbing wed and thur evenings. I'm going to try to get 8 hours of sleep every night and spend lots of time at home.

Here's to a restful week!

why I teach people to climb

I was teaching my weekly introduction class last night and I had the opportunity to tell one of my favorite stories. Teaching people how to be safe about climbing is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life. It's amazing. This experience set THE perfect example for the love I have of teaching people my passion for climbing.

A few years back, I was working at my local gym. The group was coming in late morning and there was only 7 or 8 of them. When they showed up, I realized that they were high-risk youth. They were around 13-15 years old. They lived in a "home" with kids in similar situations. It was something of a foster home for kids who had never had much guidance or parenting, if they had parents at all. One of the girls was pregnant. The boys had tatoos and wore jeans that hung from their thighs. All of them looked physically and emotionally abused. Well, maybe I could do something about their day.
After screwing around putting on harnesses and an hour of tying knots and learning to belay, I felt that we were ready to start actually climbing. One of the boys had the WORST attitude. He didn't want to do anything but sit and pout. I don't know, but he may have been in trouble earlier in the day. He was REALLY all sorts of unhappy about his day. I don't remember his name, but he touched my life in a way that he will never know.
After basically fighting with him to get him into a harness and to participate, I volunteered him to be the first climber. I volunteered a girl who seemed the complete opposite of him in the group and probably wasn't friends with him to belay him. (She was solid, which was the real reason I chose her, but it really helped that she wasn't his buddy.) After a couple of minutes of hooking up and tying in, I had every member of the group check both of them over to make sure that they were setup correctly. I then had them all sit down right around us, just a couple feet away. Then I asked the question; THE question. "Do you trust your friend?" He looked scared to death and I could almost see the blood fade from his face. I had him take his jacket off and pull his shirt through his harness. Then I had him approach the wall.
In climbing we have lots of communication. When someone leaves the ground, both people know what is happening and they are talking to each other. This begins with a couple of commands. They recited the commands and he pulled onto the wall.
The girl very diligently pulled rope and belayed him perfectly. He climbed higher and higher, gripping the holds harder and harder as he ascended. About 20 feet up, he stopped and I could see the tears on his cheecks. He was so tense that his legs were doing what we climbers call "sewing machine leg" or "Elvis' legs." He was not willing to trust his belayer. I was breaking that right now. You could see the anguish on his face. His arms were on fire from the lactic acid builing up. I told him that he needs to do one of two things. He can keep climbing or he can sit back in his harness and lower off. I looked back at all of the other kids and they were on the edge of their seats.
After some coaching, he reached the top! Then the hard part began. I had to talk him into sitting back into his harness and letting go completely of the wall. I'd guess that it took a good three or four minutes to accomplish that. Once in lowering mode, I did my best to relax him.
When he touched the floor, his face was about a mile wide. His adrenaline had to be going about mach 2 as he wiped his tears away and untied.
Just watching this 180 of this kid was amazing. He went from a kid who didn't trust anyone and probably didn't like anyone, to someone who was building self-confidence, trust in other people, and the ability to encourage. I will never forget that day.

charity

I have been thinking a bit about my move this past weekend. I gave a ton (for me) of stuff to goodwill and I'm just thinking about that. I gave a bunch of shirts (some old dress shirts that I don't wear anymore), some over shirts/jackets, and a backpack-FULL of books (not actually a backpack; I just used it for a picture). I didn't realize the tax break and I certainly didn't realize how good I would feel about the whole thing. I'm thinking of giving more.

I have an old computer that I'm thinking of donating. It is really pretty old. I'm guessing it was built around 2000 or 2001. Since it won't run windows really at all anymore, I installed Fedora 10 on it and it seems to run pretty well. I'd guess that it would be limited to writing papers and browsing the web with its hardware state. But none the less. If you know someone who is in need and could use something like this AND would be willing to learn Fedora, I would be interested in chatting with them in the future. I'm thinking that I will use it until I get my server up and running and then look at giving it away or selling it. ($60ish, monitor included) I think the optimal recipient would be a student or single parent, etc with little or no computer knowledge. I find it much easier to show someone linux who has not been brainwashed by the Microsoft crowd. But alas, it will be about a month before I do this regardless.

funny story, I'm getting a bit full of myself for a second

Okay, so this is poker related, but I feel it's better here. (I think I posted something on this on my poker blog)

On my birthday, I played poker for the morning/lunchtime. I had lunch with Heather and climbed a bit. Then I decided, REALLY spur the moment, to go play in this tournament at a friend's house. I got there about 20 minutes late and had to wait for someone to bust. But meh, I don't mind running to the fridge for beers for people! They were greatful and it gave me some time to just watch and pick out the fishies.
So, I got in about an hour later, just after first break and started beating the crap out of the live ones. I did it in really REALLY thin situations too. Then I ran hot. my 55>AA allin preflop FTW!!!! Anyway, the fun part!
When we were down to about 8 or 9 players, I stood up for some fun! I made a big deal about it too. "Okay everyone! It is my birthday! Today I am 26 years old!" Some of the players greeted me with happy birthday, etc. "So, you know what that means right? You HAVE to let me win!" A roar of laughter broke out and everyone was cheery! It was awesome.
When we were down to 3 or 4, I hollered over to the cash game that had started up "Hey guys! I was only kidding! You didn't HAVE to let me win!" The banter is something that I will always enjoy among the card games I sit in.
Well, guess what. I won. Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to ME! Happy birthday dear CHAD! Happy birthday to me!
Then I proceeded to blow most of my winnings on a new toy. I invested in a new (to me; refurb'ed) 22" widescreen monitor for my home computer. Happy birthday to me!

so I got a couple of new toys

one of which will make great transportation around old town and to work.
The Blunt

I had a skateboard a long time ago, but never got too serious about it. I think that this will not only be useful, but relaxing too. I just may have to break out my mp3 player for my commute.

This is a tribute to a woman's heart

The heart of a woman is more beautiful than anything else on the planet. The line "I hear violins" comes to mind. I hear .... vio... lins...... One thing that I also hear, is the sunrise..... at 14,000 feet.

I dosed off at about 1145pm, August 4th, 2006 in my BMW 325i. I was woken up by a random boy from my church assigned from my pastor, Josh Ratslaff. He knocked on my window asking if I was "Chad" and then to "wake up." Six hours later I saw the third most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. (see attached) The second, you will have to ask me about when you have five minutes. The first is a woman. A woman is by far THE most beautiful creature that God has created on the face of the planet. I would imagine that Brooke would have taken her small fingers and, with God's help, orchestrated something like this....

A tribute to woman's heart.....

Loving everyone

"You know, you don't have to like everyone in your tribe, but you do have to love them."

There are a few people in my life that I don't really approve of. And sometimes it is really hard not to just let them go. But we must slog on in our relationships. It means more to people to have love than anything else.

projects

I'm posting a couple of projects so that I will actually sit down and do them.

1 Install the new power supply in the old server.
2 upgrade said server to Fedora 10.
3 get RLF running on the blog.

4 read about teh virtual machines