My kid is having his Math exam tomorrow

And I am having a headache. He's smart, but stubborn. In the meantime, I am keeping myself sane taking pictures or my old laptop. Built around 1997, this is a Fujitsu Lifebook 735Dx, with 16 megs of onboard RAM (I added 64 more). It has a 133mhz MMX processor, a 1,5G hard disk, one USB port and connections for keyboard, mouse, etc., etc.

I got it a couple years ago, with Windows 95 installed, and it was supposed to be next to useless. Now, it runs Windows 2000 Professional, uses K-meleon as a browser, Office 97 as word processor, Irfanwiew as a graphic viewer and editor, Final Draft 7 for movie scripts, PDF creator for (of course) PDF creating from almost any type of document, Foxit as PDF reader, Winamp 2.95 for media files and CDs, Infix PDF editor, Native Wind's docx2rtf to convert those docx files into something readable, win-rar as a file compressor and a USB portable utility as antivirus. I also used a program called 2000 Lite to remove some of the junk Microsoft loves to add to their SO's, like the games, internet utilities, the Explorer browser (not bad, but I'd rather have K-meleon or FireFox), Windows Media Player and a bunch of other programs.



I also installed all the programs I use for work in an old 1G mp3 player that doubles as an external hard drive.



So, after shaving the OS and leaving all the programs in an external disk, I have a very fast and responsive system, with plenty of room for documents in the hard disk and the external drive.




I also have an almost black desktop and almost all the icons into the taskbar, instead of the desktop, in order to save start up time.



I am aware of the limitations of this system, but let me tell you that it works faster than my Vista desktop, that keeps asking for permission to do anything, takes too long to start and is prone to update itself at the worst possible moment. In short, I love this old piece of junk, and it has proven itself extremely resistant, to the point of taking a fall and still be usable. The lid was broken and I fixed it with some epoxy. Try to do that on a new laptop.



Yep, I love this machine.

Bad tummy

Acid reflux can be a very bad thing. And well deserved too. I am paying for my bad habits at the age of 40. I have to admit that the last few years have been trying and sometimes I don't eat too well. Frito lays and Coke are tasty, albeit not a very good substitute for real food. Well, according to my good doctor, coffee is out of my diet, Coke is very limited and all the crunchy and greasy stuff will have to go. I just had a chicken salad and feel just good. I'll be back into tacos and other abuses soon, but I have to let the old furnace fix itself.

Anyway, this is a good time to consider some other adjustments in my life. I am facing the subsecuent loss of personal mass and have to do something to keep me in shape. I'll probable get weigths and bodybuild again. Just the basic muscles to keep my chest more prominent than my belly.

In the meantime, I am preparing a consideration on the possibilities of humanoid life in the Universe and its rammifications on a religious and social level. Stay tuned.

And while you wait, something totally unrelated. This videos crack me up.

Onix is back!!!

... And pissed off.

Is there a point about writing here anyway?

I don't see it at the moment. Nobody ever comes here anyway. My life is messed up, I hate my work and my marriage is in trouble. Hot damn.

Sorry, but I don't like Obama

I have tried to stay away from the U.S. elections, since I am a journalist, and that could appear non-ethical, but since I am posting here as a private person, I decided to give it a go. First of all, I would like to point out something very important: I am not a racist person. I was even engaged to an African-American lady and for me, one of the most beautifoul woman in the world happens to be Angela Bassett.

Now, after all that information about my position on race, I am (hopefully) ready to say this: I don't like Barack Obama. Not a bit, not as much as I like John McCain anyway. And don't get me started on Hillary Clinton. My political leanings are democratic, but I don't feel atracted to either one of them. The reason, at least in Obama's case, is that I think he's too green, and eager to demonstrate how great he can get as a president. I agree that whoever gets elected as a president, at least amongst the democrat candidates, is bound to mark a new era in U.S. pollitics: Either we get a black president or a female president. As a Mexican national, some people may argue that I am not entitled to an oppinion, but I rather have neither. Not a green, but astute senator, who has been dealing the race card pretty well on his behalf, or a lady that strikes me as a trying to be as charming as her husband was as a president. I loved Bill Clinton, but I don't like his wife.

I'll rather deal with McCain. In my view, he has the experience and skills needed for the job, a job that was taken away from him by the moronic warhound of George W. Bush in the Republican primaries in 2000. The only problem is that he's too old and most of the young voters are leaning in Obama's favor.

In any case, I think the winner of the presidential elections will be Obama, precisely because of the younger voters. Not my best choice for the job, but I hope he gets good advisers on economics and foreign policy, which should be the priorities for his presidency after 8 years of Dubya being a failure at both areas. And perhaps, he should consider checking the FEMA and similar agencies, specially after the massive failure they registered in the Katrina aftermath.

And Happyness got me M&M's

All the weekend I felt like the lowest, most despicable being on Earth. I needed to chill, to relax, and decided to look for some music at the Jamendo website. If you remember the old days at MP3.com, you'll figure out what Jamendo is: A place where musicians share their creations for free. I dediced to go search for some relaxing music and found something really good. This is the first artist I liked and here's his music for your consideration.

 

Stidiek is from Spain and really good. I'll post some more artists when I have the time.

And I went to see "Iron Man"

Last Friday, I got into a discussion with my wife about paying my mom's rent and me arguing with her that it may be just my problem, but when she uses our money for her family I am never in opposition for it, even if it's "her problem" and not mine. She wanted me to make her a desk, using some wood doors we discarded, and I got myself into that chore, not really wanting to deal with her anymore. After doing some other stuff, I went to bed around 2:00 pm (did I mention I work the graveyard shift? I do so in order to take care of my kids). I finally woke up around 6.00 am and went to work with my father in law. You see, my wife had been working with one of her brothers in an industrial cleaning bussiness, but they had a very bad discussion (as ussual) and she resigned, deciding to continue on her own. Problem is, she doesn't have any workers, so she decided to have another one of her brothers, a cocaine addicted moron, who happens to make a lot of money, do the dirty work for her. In the meantime, I decided to go to work with my daddy-in-law in order to get the knack of the bussiness.

Lucky me, I was late and the workers had already left. I stayed with my mother in law for most of the morning, leaving just to have lunch or to try and get some of the morons who owe my wife money to pay me. They never do and some even react as if offended by me. She arrived in the afternoon with the kids and we wen to see the new "Iron Man" movie. That was a ride, the movie is fun, Robert Downey Jr. is excellent and it's probably the only superhero movie I had seen that did not leave wanting. I really think it's better than the Spiderman or X-men movies. More realistic and grounded. I love it and recommend it. And here's the trailer, just in case you don't know what I am talking about:



And, least we forget, here's Black Sabbath playing what's probably one of the best songs ever created. I am pretty certain you already know the title.



And that movie was also something very important: It made my day, my kids loved it and even my wife enjoyed it. It was a good day.

Carcass, some videos

This is one of my favourite bands, just one of the few death metal bands I like.

This is the video for Heartwork, from the album with the same name.



I wish I had hair like that again. Here's another song from the same album, "No love lost."



And from their last album (at least up until now, since they seem to be reuniting soon), "Keep on Rotting in the Free World," more in the vein of "Death and Roll" than their previous efforts, starting in hardcore, into death metal and later incorporating more metal elements.

And I miss her...

I had a great couple of days with my family. No homework, just some carpentry and lots of rain. My wife was nice for most of the time, considering that she has a stomach infection and she can't scream as loud as she ussually does. My kids are sick too, but that won't stop their never ending quest to become proud followers of Dennys The Menace. I could not believe it, but I found jello in my sock drawer, amongst other things. The problem, I think, is that they have been indoors for a long time. I plan to take them to the movies to see that new "Iron Man" movie. I am proud to say, the Spanish language version of the trailers is written by me. Now I can really say that I have a job in Hollywood and everybody will see it. I just wish I had the time to keep writing, and a USB memory that works on Windows 98.

On Saturday, if everything goes exactly as I don't want to, I'll be working either with my father in law or the youngest of my moronic in-laws, cleaning the guts of an industrial complex. I hate the very idea to cram myself on a tube in order to remove goo and industrial waste, but I guess I have to do it in order to keep things cool with my wife. She's planning to open her own bussiness of the sort, and I'll be damned if I let her do it on her own. I am already severly in debt thanks to her lack of planning and love to spend money I don't make, and I don't want to let her screw me even more.

Ulytau, new age/folk/metal from Kazakhstan

I found this band, as always, by accident, and I have to say that I like it very much. The title of this entry pretty much describes what type of music they play. Hailing from Kazakhstan, one of those ex-soviet republics nobody knew about before the fall from the Berlin Wall and afterwards, they combine rock influences with Huno-Kazakh instruments and traditions, pretty much sounding fresh and different, but at the same time very accesible. I found some videos on YouTube, one of them showing them sharing the stage with none other than Steven Seagal, the martial artist-actor (of sorts) that sometimes dabbles in music. And the result is nice enough. And I have to say, the violinist/singer happens to be one of the prettiest women I have ever seen.

Here's a live rendition of the song "Teriskakpay" (I have no idea what that means, okay?)



And here we have "Adai", and it seems to be patriotic of sorts.



Now, I have no idea of the name of this song. I am getting the CD soon, and this song is pretty cool and that violin lady looks quite fetching.



And here we have something really energetic, "Jumyr-Kylysh", or "The Legend of the Gray Wolf", and according to the video, seems to portray a traditional huno-turk hero similar to Kipling's Mowgli. Anyway, this song is pretty rocking and the video is cool.



As always, please enjoy and comment.

Very cool short movie about Lucifer

I'll just leave as it is, with no comments. Just see it and let me know if you like it or not. By the way, I was looking for something related to Lucifer, the post-Jovian sun on "2010." But this is a nice find anyway. I particularly love the body design for the dragon, more in line with animal geometry on Earth than the traditional renderings. Save for the head, of course.

Darwinian God or irresponsible father?

God, as I said before, if it really exists, could pretty well be classified, on scientific terms, as a mayor motherfucker and a bastard. How else could you explain the wanton destruction and devastation caused by natural disasters or the damage inflicted on Earth life by mankind? As a father, mother or whatever, God is lousy: He/she/it is letting the kids play with matches and pour gasoline all over the floor, while he/she/it is trying to watch "Cristina" or "Maury" on TV.

Or maybe the big guy/gal/thing is more interested in the evolutionary process of a species than in just preserving it because it's something with a sentimental value. While not intervening as an active force, God weeds the most unviable elements by just letting them be consumed by their own mistakes and their incapacity to deal with potentially obliterating changes in the envinroment. The survivors of nuclear war, ecology disasters, or a gamma ray burst from another galaxy would be very much suited for whatever may come afterwards. In the end, God's favourite children could turn out to be a bunch of roaches.

As a parent, the whole idea seems awful to even consider. But, who's to say we are in such privileged position in the order of creation that we are of a special value to a deity whose existence can as easily be proven and disproven? Now, if we take an atheistic route, we have to consider life on Earth as an accident, something that just happened by a set of circunstances manifested at the same time. And accidents can happen again and again, at least until something critical breaks and the whole machine falls apart. Without an engineer to fix it, the machine is bound to decay.

In any case, as with most situations, the only peoples (or species) worth saving may be those who try to save themselves. Like in Aesop fables, ask divinity for help only if you plan on do something yourself. But if you suceed by your own effort, then the whole plea to the gods ends up being pointless. Maybe there's no God, or God is just inexcrutable.

A consideration about aliens

I have been reading the first two books on the "Space Odyssey" series, namely "2001" and "2010." I went to Wikipedia to check for some information regarding them and found out that the late Arthur C. Clarke created what he called an "orthoquel" to the stories, a set of elements that move on a paralel fashion, not directly related, to the original Odyssey. According to the Wiki entry for the Time Odyssey series, "not-so-benevolent godlike aliens start an endless mission to regulate the development of sentient life in the Universe, in order to prevent all other species from harnessing too much of its energy, which would only accelerate the inevitable entropic death of the Universe, thus rendering sentient life impossible at the end of the universe. Consequently, these 'Firstborn' are destroying all intelligent species."

Somehow the idea got me wondering about how it could relate to the UFO situation at present. As far as we know, no verificable contact with other intelligences has ever been made, and it would seem as they are either not that interested in us or are trying to avoid us. If so, and if we accept the existence of the UFO phenomenon as interplanetary visitations, then the whole idea of them monitoring us with friendly intentions has no sense, unless we are a subject of study on the same level monkeys and meerkats are to us, interesting to behold, but not worth the possibily of contact. Now, how about if we are being monitored in order to keep us in check, to see that we don't have access to technologies that could potentially endanger not just us, but some other species as well. So far, all our destructive potential has been focused on us (as species) and maybe someone wants to see that it remains that way.

Also, I have to expose another idea. Regarding meerkats an monkeys again, if we had a tribe of those animals suddenly developing a technology that would harm many individuals, like meerkats developing fire or flint weapons, and engaging in warfare with other tribes, would human naturalists intervene? Certainly not, that would be against the spirit of scientific observation. Maybe they would pick some corpses and save some live specimens for study. I think the same could apply to alien observers on Earth. Don't count on them to save humanity, just the spoils of war/ecological degradation/cosmic disaster. That won't make them good or bad, just plainly scientific.

Anyway, on a side note, I just found I have the original and complete soundtrack for "2001: A Space Odyssey" on a cassette tape that has been forgotten on my office desk for years. Maybe I should digitize it in order to keep it for posterity.

Nightwish - While Your Lips Are Still Red

To start things up, here's a song that got me ridiculously romantic. Enjoy.

Nightwish - While Your Lips Are Still Red