fantasy_prone's Journal

4:33pm: Urgent Security Update!
Well the priority is low, and the message insecure.

It has come to my attention that I have the nickname of Photoshop. I have no sweet clue what I did to earn this one. Anyone who spends any amount of time with me will, without doubt, recall my dedicated usage of the GIMP. Yes, I do take a lot of pictures, but that only makes me deserving of nicknames like Carsand, Fuji or Kodak. Photshop? It even lacks imagination. I prefer the nickname dubbed by Windex, Network Jesus. Or just plain NJ as Gus liked it. Better still were the names spun off NJ: The Ethernet Entity, The Modem Messiah, The LAN Lord, The Broadband Buddha. That rang of thought at least.

I mean calling me the GIMP you could take advantage of the double meaning at least. Apparently too the person who dubbed me this is not fond of me. Which would explain the lack of imagination. What I mean is this: This person does not like me, thus this person avoids me (I am going to switch to a genderless pronoun now, and since they is plural I am reduced to using it), it would therefore never call to me by this nickname, it does not need to make any sense since I will never hear it. By that reasoning I might as well be called Pink Asphalt. How about Peanutbutter Steel? This person, it, seems to be a floccinaucinihilpillificator. If you are unsure of that word you will have to use the OED as most dictionaries do not carry it.

Well I promised a friend I would write this rant, so mission accomplished. I have little else to add today. I leave for Calgary on the dates mentioned by Katie (who does not like being called Katherine) in her (but it is funny because her birth certificate reads Katherine) LiveJournal entry (of course she has a cousin named Katherine and she wants to reduce confusion, so never call her Katherine!) so you can refer to that for the dates. I talked to my father on Sunday and told him about the dates and flight numbers. We then proceeded to talk about rivers that we could canoe next year. I was all gung-ho about the seven week trip down the Thelon River, but he seemed to prefer the Bow River, which is a two day trip. Well I will attempt to convince him when I see him in a week and a day.

12:47pm: I like my Java...
Yeah, not much happening. Have spent the day aligning some optics. Where it is nearing the end of the year, I want to get the last of my work done. All that needs doing is the alignment, soldering the entire circuit into a box and finally amalgamating all the little proggies I have created. Kevin is running a spectrum right now, so I have to wait my turn to use our green laser.

In other news, I have decided that I by next year I will only be using Fluxbox as a window manager for Xfree86. I have learned how to set up my own shortcut keys for everything, so it looks like my computer will forever be unusable by the majority of the population. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, I have prepared this comic to make you feel better. It made me laugh.

Have to prepare a presentation for Friday morning. I will do it in prosper, of course. This will actually be the first latex document I prepare in Fluxbox. Happy days. I do almost wish that I had to prepare a presentation for every friday, or at least once a month. It would keep me on my toes and off my ass.

10:41am: Shattering More Popular Misconceptions
Anyone that knows me will know that I love to contradict. If something comes out of your mouth and I do not think it is backed up by anything, I will rip into you about it. Well, sometimes I do not have the ammunition and so I go away and learn more about whatever the subject matter happens to be.

I have two things to comment on here. First has to do with pain tolerance. We have all heard that women have a higher pain tolerance than men, because they go through pregnancy. Now that sort of argument makes some strange assumptions: 1) Pain tolerance is defined by the amount of pain that you should go through in life. 2) Pregnancy is the most painful event a human normally experiences. 3) Pain tolerance is necessary to go through pregnancy.

A little bit of research destroys this argument.
For those of you who can read those journals, look up pain tolerance gender bias. Moreover, I participated in a pain tolerance experiment in the hospital earlier this summer, I asked the doctor if he noticed in studies a gender bias in the difference in pain tolerances. Sure enough, he said that men clinically have a higher pain tolerance. I have a very good evolutionary argument for this:
Men historically were hunters, if we became injured while out hunting we had no choice but to limp home. If the pain took over and we collapsed out in the wilderness we would surely die. Thus the weak died. Women historically stayed at home and took care of babies and the home, during a pregnancy or any other injury, a woman could collapse and wait for the pain to subside, there was no danger.

Well that is that, I will stop talking about that one now, unless someone brings it up. However, one more. This has to do with the right-brained left-brained notion that many people toss around. A bit of research will show you that the left brain is responsible for language, analysis of specifics and spatial coordination [EDIT: I am wrong here, it is actually the right brain which is responsible for spatial recognition]. The right brain is responsible for visual recognition, the analysis of wholes. The left side of the body is also responsible for the immune system and fighting off depression. You should note that this polarity changes if you are left handed. Furthermore, in people of high mathematical aptitude, the usual polarity is not seen. This link contains information about the study. The hypothesis being that a strong inter-brain communication is responsible for math skills, not a strong left brain. So the next time someone points a finger at me and tries to pigeonhole me, I will remind them of my above average math scores and what it implies. Until then, watch what you say around me. I bite.

8:39am:
Your Heart is Red


What Color is Your Heart?
brought to you by Quizilla

5:18pm: First Entry
I figure I might as well put something here.

I fell asleep at 7:00 am this morning. Had a nice five hour sleep and am now up and ready for a new day. Had a lost soul night, that is what kept me up. Wondering such things as "Who am I?", "What am I doing with my life?", and all the things that go with it. So I grabbed my camera and took off into the night. I found a nice building with some interesting patterns that I took some shots at, I appear in a few of them, which is fun let me tell you, when I have to run accross a courtyard and get in pose in less than ten seconds. I need models.

Then I went over to a pubic parkade and climbed it up to the roof, the sixth floor. Now do not misunderstand, by climb I mean I walked up the bloody thing. I got some nice monochromatic shots in there and used a cute little, bright red, plush toy as a prop. Then the security guard noticed me and came to see what I was doing. We had a good long talk and then I headed on my way. I ended up downtown talking to some drunk people and then I walked over to the citadel as the sun was starting to come up.

A lot of people out there only credit humans with "higher" emotions. But as I was waiting for the sun to rise in one of the larger cannon turrets, I turned around and noticed two pigeons kissing each other. It was truly bizarre.

I came home a much wholer person.