Wandering Thoughts and Inane Babblings

So Long...

miroje@comcast.net — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:26:38 GMT

The end of civilization doesn't seem so bad when it looks this beautiful...

Heal Thyself...

miroje@comcast.net — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:04:51 GMT

Stand, Coward!

Healing
Core Ability
--
No cost
100ft range
6.0s cast
3s cooldown
Builds 20 Soul Essence

"Life is restored to a dead ally, and 20% of their health is recovered in the hopes they will prove less worthless to you in the future."

Oh yeah. This is the healer I was destined to be...

WAR...is here.

Bite the One You Love...

miroje@comcast.net — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:59:58 GMT

Ouch!

Waaagh!

miroje@comcast.net — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:51:52 GMT

WAR...is coming

My Space Whores...or the Reality of Repercussion?

miroje@comcast.net — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:26:10 GMT

Happy Valentine's Day, Governor Spitzer

In Whose Lifetime Will It End?

miroje@comcast.net — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:36:24 GMT

" We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. "
- Molly Ivins

"Four sorrows ... are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co- equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens."
- Chalmers Ashby Johnson

President McCain

miroje@comcast.net — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:24:23 GMT

Not that far from what I'm truly expecting...

Election 2008 -- Sponsored by Diebold

Linked out instead of farmed in because I can't figure out how to not have it play automatically...and I like arianadii's ears. :)

If you haven't seen it; it's worth the view: Hacking Democracy

Land of the Free...ish

miroje@comcast.net — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:37:26 GMT

Do I want to beat an old, dead horse with an old, worn out stick? Hell yeah.

You'd think current affairs might be of interest to this man. $4.00 a gallon has appeared on almost every front page of every major newspaper in this country.

Analysts have said that gasoline could reach $4 a gallon by this spring, due to strong demand and a change in formulation, among other reasons.
When taking the question about the $4 milestone, Bush told the reporter, "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that."

Another Contribution to the Mindless Landfill

miroje@comcast.net — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:07:25 GMT

The miniature version of this.

Hallelujah

miroje@comcast.net — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:19:18 GMT

Praise be to Google

Feeding Frenzy

miroje@comcast.net — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:33:34 GMT

The death of Heath Ledger, and the pack of salivating hyenas sniffing for any scrap of flesh to shred for the sensational and the provocative.

No pills strewn about.
No drugs on the twenty.
Calls of panic, not calls of conspiracy.

The media may be the monster, but we are the masters feeding it.

Sad. On so many levels.

The Not So Strangest....

miroje@comcast.net — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:22:42 GMT

...things remind me of lizzie_borden:

Hot Goth Chick on a Leash

Clearly, they need to move to Portland.

Maybe Politics Really Were the Way to Go

miroje@comcast.net — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:23:05 GMT

935 False Statements, and the man still has a job. I picked the wrong vocation.

The Story of Stuff

miroje@comcast.net — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:37:44 GMT

Stuff

Do you really need it?

Hotness with a Bang...

miroje@comcast.net — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:34:26 GMT

I do hope this guy gets a reply...

Shell People

TJ...the Other TJ...

miroje@comcast.net — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:59:49 GMT

I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

~Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

Bill Gates ... CES Cya Closing

miroje@comcast.net — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:40:41 GMT

...

Okay. He gets points for this one, but only because the whole guitar deal reminds me of littlebluedog and jef182.

Rocks, rocks...baby...

miroje@comcast.net — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 23:57:21 GMT

Seriously cool find from karzon:

Glass Booth

Me?

John Edwards shares a 83% similarity with your beliefs

former Senator, (D-NC)

John Edwards was born June 10, 1953. He is a Democrat from North Carolina. He served the state of North Carolina as a senator in the U.S. Senate from 2000 to 2004. Prior to that he was a member of the North Carolina state Senate. Edwards was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in2004.

Dennis Kucinich shares a 80% similarity with your beliefs

Representative, (D-OH)

Dennis Kucinich was born on October 8, 1946. He is a Democrat from Ohio. He has served the 10th District of Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996. Prior to this he was mayor of Cleveland,Ohio. Kucinich is a self-described "Wellstone Democrat."

Barack Obama shares a 79% similarity with your beliefs

Senator, (D-IL)

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961. He is a Democrat from Illinois. He has served the state of Illinois as a senator in the U.S. Senate since 2004. Prior to this he was a senator in the Illinois state Senate. The United States Senate Historical Office lists Obama as the fifth African American Senator in U.S. History.

True Friends on a Hot Tin Roof

miroje@comcast.net — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:44:28 GMT

Encouraging Words from The Divine Star:

"You'll be fine. You always are, and you always land on your feet. Well, after you roll around on your back and hit your head a few times. You're like a really clumsy cat, but you're still a cat."

Yeah. I like that.

Befitting a Baby Stew

miroje@comcast.net — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:05:32 GMT

Where most women nurture and give life to babies; I nurture and give life to rocks.

Momentarily setting aside the reality of implication, repercussion, and well-being; and viewing instead the self-created mythology we each weave to form the fabric of our lives: I've got to tell you; this particular image is fringe. Gold-lined and sparkly.

That, and knowing the final resting place for my womb will be a biohazard disposal system.

Old, but Worthy Still

miroje@comcast.net — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:59:43 GMT

If Operating Systems Were Like Airlines

Windows Air
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.

Mac Airlines
All the stewards, stewardesses, captains, baggage handlers and ticket agents look the same, act the same, and talk the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are told you don't need to know, don't want to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.

Linux Airlines
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself for free.

When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful.

You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is,

‘You had to do what with the seat?’

"Linux is a beautiful woman of enormous intelligence. Linux is a precocious child with very bad manners. Linux is a teenager who needs patience and understanding. Linux is a sullen geek who refuses to speak to ordinary people.

All these statements are true and explain why the messages Linux sends to the market tend to be as incoherent as the utterances of George Bush or Phillip Ruddock."

As If Words Are Necessary...

miroje@comcast.net — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:04:20 GMT

Another Fine Policy

miroje@comcast.net — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:23:35 GMT

Piphan's

miroje@comcast.net — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:53:51 GMT

Weekend insights from Charmain: Mississippi Woman. Katrina Transplant. Manicurist.

On hippies, punks, and rockabillies: "Weird is weird. It don't matter how you dress it up...it's still weird."

On the struggles of fertility and child-bearing: "All you really need is poverty and a drinking problem. Kids just follow along."

On the challenges of motherhood and child-raising: "I told my son, 'I have no problem kicking you to sleep' [in the middle of Wal-Mart]."

Hella great time and fascinating conversation. My nails don't look too shabby either.

I love Southern women.

Dredge...Epic Style.

miroje@comcast.net — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:22:00 GMT

Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parent’s garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.