A Dream in Which One Cosplay’s Their Self
Some dreams are awesome and some make no sense. A few are terrible while others are terrifying. Then there are those dreams that make you wake up in a state of “what the fuck was that?” I have been having a greater volume of these sort of dreams as of late and I am not sure why. The latest one lodged itself quite thoroughly in my head.
A few weeks ago I was talking with Jessica about Adventure Time cosplay and she asked me if I’d ever want to cosplay Prince Gumball if she went as Fionna. I had forgotten about this conversation until last night’s dream.
The setting of my dream was out in a foresty area that gave me the feeling that it was somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula. The sun was out and there was a nice breeze, but everything looked weird, as if it had been put through several GIMP filters. After silently roaming around the wilderness, I realized that there was a lady there with me, talking with me and not noticing that I hadn’t been listening to her. When I looked at her, it appeared to be Fionna- that is when I realized that I was, apparently, Prince Gumball.
The conversation eventually fell toward cosplaying. This Fionna girl – she sounded like Jessica – casually asked me if I’d cosplay a Thomas if she were to ever cosplay a Jessica. She proceeded to say how it would be weird to try and get the colors to be as dark as the ones they wore. All I remember my “self” replying to her was that it would be terribly hard to get their hair, “for how does one get their hair to be so dang frizzy!”
If anybody had seen me wake up they would have seen a bubble above my head with a rather comical question mark, I am sure. That has to be one of the most trippy ways I’ve remembered my head cataloging information.
Consolidating an Online Identity
This year I took a new approach to the whole “New Years resolution” idea: instead of coming up with something philosophical and witty I decided on just doing. There are a lot of things I have wanted to do in the past and this is the year that I will do nothing but move forward with no excuses. One of the biggest things that has been bugging me is the “fractured” nature of my online presence. Rectifying this has been on my “to do” list for about fifteen months now and it is about high time that I do something about it.
Over the course of 2012 I found myself reading a lot about online influence and identity thanks to the wonderful community that is Google+ (and a fellow named Jeff Jockisch). The more I used that social network, the larger the pull was for me to stop using my GMail account and use an account that meant more to myself and to others. What was originally a very personal account has become mired in my public network.
So far with Google Takeout and their other data migration services, I have been able to backup all the data I wanted (minus email) and am moving everything over. It looks to be that everything will be finished in seven days’ time. Some of the accounts, such as YouTube, I have just simply closed so that I can start up a new one with my username of choice.
As for other services such as Twitter, they have been kind enough to allow people to change their username, and by extension, their URL.
It feels really nice being able to consolidate my online presence. The past fifteen months I had procrastinated doing this because I had been thinking of it as a mountain, when really it was a mole hill the entire time.
Have you started on your resolution? If you haven’t, why not?
In the great and wise words of Yoda: “Do or do not- there is no try.”
Hermes, Reborn!
My little messenger is alive and useful once again!
Nearly one year ago to this day my netbook Hermes decided to take a dive. And by a dive I mean something on the motherboard decided to fry, leaving me with a pile of unusable computing hardware. Luckily it did not damage anything else inside the machine, so I was able to successfully retrieve my data. I thought the netbook was lost, however, which made me sad. At least it had served me well enough to afford Azzurra, my current laptop. A few months of tinkering with the netbook’s guts brought me to finding a piece that was blackened; I de-soldered it and soldered on a replacement piece. Still no go.
Two months ago I decided to put Hermes back together one last time before I tossed him to the wayside, and apparently there was a spark left in ‘em after all: there was the Dell boot screen! My excitement was tempered by a suddenly hectic work schedule that left me wanting to fix it up for use at work, but couldn’t. Until tonight. Hermes now proudly runs Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) Beta 2. This is the fastest I remember this machine running, aside from the ultra-minimal Arch install I had going at work before Hermes’ demise. But we won’t go there. And for the record, I am and always will be an Ubuntu/Debian kind of guy. Arch was fun while it lasted.
Now I finally have a quick runabout machine for when I need to fix things quickly and on the go. As much as I love Azzurra, it is a pain to unplug and try to hold in one hand whilst furiously coding with the other.
Ohio LinuxFest, Ubuntu Marathon, and MySQL
Last weekend I went to Ohio LinuxFest and learned a ton of stuff, in addition to finally meeting some of my Ubuntu and Whube friends in person. I now understand why people have the longing to travel. Visiting Ohio, meeting and making new friends (not to mention all the networking) is something that I never thought I would have such a blast doing! The Ubuntu Ohio booth was quite friendly and full of fun, as was the MySQL booth. I’ve never had so much information jammed into my headspace and retained in one weekend.
A lot of what I learned during the talks and classes at OLF, I was able to put into use immediately at work, which has shown a ton of improvement already. Especially in the MySQL department – I have learned so much and found out tricks on making an old machine and database run much better (one of which is: upgrade from 5.0.7, haha). A lot of my grievances and issues with Ubuntu have also since been mitigated and I am going to be testing it out again. Some of the issues I had with Unity seem to be fixed and/or removed with 12.04 and beyond.
On a random note: I’m listening to the Ubuntu Marathon on Ubuntu on Air has been pretty entertaining and has made programming at work, quite pleasant. As of this post, we’re halfway through hour 15 of 24 and Daniel is teaching us how to DJ with Ubuntu. I’m diggin’ it. (You should see his post on the charity challenges that have happened over the course of the night.)
What a scattered post! I’m tired.
Can Has Car Fire?
Today was most certainly an interesting day! I woke up at five in the morning to get ready to go into work a few hours early, as the boss-lady was picking me up since I had no other ride (and she’s just plain awesome). We were only about fifteen minutes into our drive when the car started smoking terribly. Now, it had been smoking a bit before when she arrived; we put water in and the smoke that was left was just some oil burning off. However, before she arrived, she notified me she’d be about thirty minutes late due to some work-related items. This was all fine and dandy until about an hour after she originally was going to be at my house.
I received a text. “Well I guess there’s a firs time for everything… smoke pouring out from under hood… pulled over on I-5… just north of the 56th exit. We may be a little late to work today…” Despite the setback with her vehicle, I found out that my boss finds humor in everything. Apparently there was a snap and then smoke. Oil had spurted all over the engine block and poured out from under her car.
So as I mentioned before, she arrived at my house with her smoking car. Boy does oil smell fowl. And I mean that literally, for after a bit it started to smell like fried chicken.
While we were on fire, there happened to be an Aqua Clean tanker truck across the intersection from us. The men in the truck didn’t hesitate one bit; they pulled into the intersection and effectively forced traffic away from us while hosing down under the hood. I had called the fire department but by the time they arrived, the fire was contained and the car no longer smoldering.
