Vincent The Dragon

Well the trip to the Huntsville space & rocket center went well. The Saturn 5 is HUGE! and I got to touch the SR71 Blackbird I have been fascinated by that bird since I was a child. The boys enjoyed themselves although it saddened me that they had no knowledge at all about the history of the space program !

On the way back we came upon stopped traffic in Tennessee...then five police cars, two fire trucks, two ambulances and three life flight choppers and the coroner showed up...two of the ambulances left without their lights going, thats a bad sign...2.5 hours later we saw the remains of a 4 door sedan that had the top and the entire driver side cut away

My computer problems continue...it's not software..a fresh install of windowsXP on a different hard drive crashed with the same STOP error and since I did not have the NVidia drivers installed yet, it's not them...Will try running Memtest86 for several days...

Well, I should be in bed but...

BSOD's still plague my computer. Grrr. It's down to 4 things: 1) pci video card not compatible with motherboard(not likely) 2)pci video card is bad (not likely but possible) 3)motherboard or memory has failed when I installed card (not likely but possable) or 4)Windows has corrupted itself in some way (likely)
Looks like I need to do a fresh install and see what happens.

I may have a new furbaby...
Let me lay out the day...Thursday. We are short a guy at work so its been a bit hectic, Meouth(one of the indoor cats) has developed a urinary tract infection. I noticed that there was a bit of blood in the urine and she has been squatting all over the friggen house, so Thursday was her appointment. Now Thursdays are long days for me as that is the night we have our Scout meeting. I don't normally go home on Thursdays as I would only have about 20 minutes until I would have to leave for the meeting. I came home to see two of the outdoor cats setting in the middle of the road, something they don't normally do.

Upon stepping out of the truck, I hear what they are out there for...The tell-tale Mew of a kitten...She is about 6 or 7 weeks, a bit skinny and looks like she has worms but is in good health, comfortable with people as she ran right up to me and let loose a loud PURRR...

Awe man, I don't have time for this and I have enough kitties...I was late for the meeting. The kitten is in the garage with the three outdoor cats. They seem to mostly ignore the kitten and are not aggressive toward her...

It is unlikely that anyone will come to claim her, I have a feeling that she is a drop off. I have not seen any kittens roaming the neighborhood and kittens don't normally stray alone...If she stays that will make nine cats...I must be crazy..

It's raining outside, I think I will make a quick run out to the garage and check on things..

OK We are taking the Scout Troop to the Space Museum in Atlanta Georgia. We are leaving from the church Sat at 6am, driving for 4 hours, spending 4 hours at museum, driving back...

Minor updates the the blog include adjusting the CSS for the title, installing Smilies, and installing the PhotoBlog pluggin and starting the layout for the Gallery; I have been doing that at night rather that the things I should be doing like dishes or cleaning the house...

PHP, MySQL, Apache and a local copy of B2Evolution(blog software) are now present and functioning properly on my home server. I took the cd that came with the Teach yourself php, mysql, and apache and made a coaster out of it. The installation instruction in the book SUCKS HARD; instead I removed the cocked up install and used XAMPP with worked great. Now all i need is a CSS teaching book, finish reading the two PHP books I bought and I should have enough knowledge to get this blog site looking the way I want..or at least i might understand how the damn thing works in the first place.

So far compy has been blue screen of death free due to new video drivers that were released two days ago, I hope that fixes to issue or the next step will be a fresh install and I have no desire to install windows plus about 30 apps plus the hassle of rebuilding several databases of info. Like the Yahoo archives and all the various unfinished projects I am currently getting around to procrastinating on.

Other things i did today...brought Fancy, my dog, into the vet for her yearly shots (she is great health except for a bit of plaque on her molars) and assisted mom and others with hauling off old furniture from Grandfathers house who's health has reached the point of needing facility based care. :(

Getting old sucks, i need to remember to stop doing that...I know, Chocolate, yeah that will fix me up...

Blue screens still plague my compy. Scandisk found some corrupt volumes, but i don't think that is the problem. Yahoo IM is now crashing, upgraded it, made things worse. Not that I think about it, I had YIM running everytime the blue screen pops...

DND character sheet is done, I sat in on a session and watched. I think I have a good feel for the game mechanics but i still dont understand how the effective character level thingy works for a multiclass character...I think I will did into in a bit tommorrow when I am setting in the hospital for four hours strapped into the chair getting my Remicade treatment.

Thus ends another work week...started out busy then petered out into nothing...

My computer had been giving random bluescreens, I thought it was driver related as it started after I installed a second video card for a second monitor. Nope seems the original video card is now overheating due to the air flow changes in the comp.

I think I have my DnD character sheet worked out. Man this system is overtly complex...I don't quite understand the game mechanics, but as yet I have not seen it in action. I will no doubt slow the group down until I get the hang of what modifiers to use for what and what actions to take. The DM is allowing us to fur it up a bit since we are all furs. I rolled using the stats for a ½ elf ranger but my character is a Fox. I don't care for the way Dragons are portrayed in the game and since i have strong fox ties...

I wonder if the weather effects other peoples emotional state as much as it does mine. Last week is was warn and sunny, it was running around without a shirt on warm. I was happy and fine. This week is cold, rainy, overcast and I feel blecky

It's Friday evening,,,I feel I would like to be doing something with somebody...I think I'll have a beer.

The first day back from vacation can be summed up in one glorious word.
...Bleah...

Don't get me wrong, I like my job. I'm good at my job. I am a unique asset that takes any challenge sent my way. I am therefore never not busy.

Still I can think of a million things I would rather have been doing.

The IronClaw group I was playing with via chat seems to have fell apart due to some of the younger members having responsibility and parental issues. Bummer, too, I was really getting into the story line and was writing the adventure into a story...well actually I was writing it around a yiff scene...The remainder of the group wants to run a Ravenloft D&D. My noobishness will hamper my abilities if I decide to participate. I have been out of the RPG scene for 15 or more year and I was never "really" into it as there was nobody to play with. Starting into a d20 system with no prior experience in a group of really experienced players seems a bit daunting and I am not sure the Goth theme fits me...We will see...

One of my vacation projects is partualy done, see url (click on 'The window is in !' above).

Now i just have to put op the siding, gutters, soffit, fascia and paint and that will close out (re)construction on that side of the house.

I am actually glad that my mandatory vacation time is now, for some reason i have had a clarity of thought that i have not enjoyed in some time now. My imagination is alive and well, it's probably a prelude to a thought bothering me that i might be coming out of remission and back into the more icky parts of the Crohn's disease i have. i think the clarity i have enjoyed has been sparked somewhat by the JadeClaw game i am involved with via a chat session. It's rather late night and by then my mind has had time to lower the defenses and screens i seem to erect so i can (dys)function in daily life. Somehow i don't think i will get all the projects done that i had planned to do. The two i really need to do are replacing the window in the dining room and changing the transmission fluid in my truck.

My new favorite band is Blue October and this one hurts

Black Orchid
Have you ever been so lonely, No one there to hold? Pull me in or disown me, And then climb inside.
My arms are open wide.Have a look inside.

It is not that I am scared to learn, Why I'm empty inside. hold my hand or show some concern, If I live or die. My eyes are open wide. Help me look inside.

I hear the water drip from the faucet. It's sweetly falling in tune. I'm gently closing the closet. I fall to the floor, and crawl to my room. The thought of ending it soon...Just let me sleep in my room.

Hear me cry! cry! Cry! I hear a knock at the front door. Don't come in! I try to look at you But I can't stop shaking. Leave me alone. Just go away. Mother I'm so scared.

Empty bed and all of the sheets are gone, They're wrapped around me and you. All is quiet but the drop of a gun. I want to belong...to someone...But maybe life's not for everyone.

Well, here it is; my first real Blog. For those of you who don't know who i am don't feel bad as i am nobody anyway.

This site takes the place of my old website (dragonbathhouse.com). The install of the software did NOT go as planned. i was going to use Greymatter buy i did not like the way it worked/looked and it seems to be a dead product. i moved on to MovableType and spend the better part of two days (up until 2:30am) to decide that it just was not going to initialize the MySQL database and that i lacked the programming knowledge to figure out why. Sooo i moved on to B2evolution which was up and running in about ten damn minutes! It's is going to take a looong time for me to learn the coding i need to know in order to get the templates to look like what i want them to. i have been out of the loop as far as html is concerned for several years and wow am i out of date!

the purpose of this little endeavor is most likely a sad attempt to make sense of my bleak little existence and perhaps try to come to terms with who i am and possibly stave off those feelings of terrified loneliness