is this thing on?

It appears that I may have left this a little too late. I'm not talking about the months its been since I actually generated any content on the web, but more directly about the minutes since there stopped being any sun shining gloriously down onto the deck at the 'drette. Oh well, since I'd made the decision to wander out onto the deck with my laptop, a cider and an mp3 playlist and finally post something so in the words of Hunter S Thompson; buy the ticket, take the ride.

I've realised I'm not young any more, deducing this fact from a large variety of symptoms. The ones which aren't physical all seem to stem from the fact that I'm no longer as impetuous as I once was. A point proven very neatly by the fact that I actually checked that impetuous means what I thought it meant after I'd typed it. Measure twice, cut once. It's a lesson which took quite some time to sink in.

There are many upsides, but there are also some downsides. One of these is that I don't spam drivel onto the web as much as I used to. I can confidently state that because I know that the only people who will read this are the ones who have been giving me hell over the fact that I don't post any of my own words any more.

Hi guys. Thanks.

Don't Be Fooled

Sitting on the deck of the 'drette, idly reading the last few pages of
a William Gibson book, drinking strong coffee as the sun rises on
another Melbourne day. My father told me, just recently, "don't be
fooled when people talk about the 'good old days'. Those days are now,
this is it; you're living in the golden moments".

Abbott's Worst Nightmare

From what we've gathered, Tony Abbott's worst nightmare would be
watching a live, high definition webcast of gay people on a boat
having a debate.

Starcraft 2

Back in the heady early days of my multiplayer gaming addiction,
crowded into garages and lounge rooms, when my buddies got bored with
me schooling them at Quake we would play Warcraft 2 and later
Starcraft. I was never as obsessed with real time strategy games
anywhere near my love of Quake, but I have very fond memories of blood
rushed ogres and unleashing swarms of zerglings apon my friends.

12 long years after the original, Starcraft 2 has been released and
has reinvigorated my interest in RTS gaming. As is my usual approach
to gaming, I skipped over the single player campaign and dove directly
into the online multiplayer portion of Starcraft 2. I watched a couple
of tutorial videos on youtube and learned how to do the cheesiest and
easiest rushing strategies, using these to do pretty well in the
ranking matches. In hindsight, getting placed into the gold ladders
wasn't a smart move as the players I'm facing actually know more than
how to build up a rushing force in the 1st 5 minutes of a match. I
threw some of my ranking matches for the 1v1 and 4v4 ladders and got
ranked in silver for these, where I'm actually able to hold my own.

I've been watching a lot of replays of the very very good players
downloaded from the amazingly slick sc2replayed.com and learning a lot.
I still suck but at least I have a bit of depth to my strategy if
someone is able to counter my early game attacks. The fact that the
game rewards aggressive play really resonates with me. I can't see
this developing into a true obsession, as I'm well aware that the time
investment required to compete at top levels in Starcraft 2 would be
insane especially because the top guys have been playing the original
game for the last 12 years. However I am really enjoying finding the
most annoying tactics and using these to piss off my enemies. I've
also found that a few quick games of Starcraft 2 puts me into a great
mindset for poker.

"Who called in the fleet?"

Well, You're a Time Traveller

"I'm going to take a picture of my firstborn and use age progression
sofware to figure out what he'll look like when he's 16. Then I'm
going to frame the picture and keep it as a centerpeice in our house,
something he'll grow up looking at. Then when the appropriate time
comes, and he realizes that the picture is of him, I'm going to try
and convince him that he is a time traveller."

Lifted from lamebook.

Judged

"The link you are accessing (fuzzyslogic.com) has been blocked by the
Barracuda Web Filter because it contains content belonging to the
category of: Tasteless & Offensive."

I almost blogged

... But then my internet connection died, my firefox crashed and I
lost the epic post which I'd just written about dungeons and dragons
(both the old school dice based game and the new massively multiplayer
online game) and how I'd decided that if I was going to grind anything
that it should be poker. Value betting super thin, making genius hero
calls and generally reading people's souls is way more rewarding than
any virtual magical shoes.

hey microsoft

How about we don't display windows updates prompts to terminal server users?

Yours grumpily,
Fuzzy.

work whinge of the day

Hi Symantec Software Engineer,

I believe you're responsibile for the symantec liveupdate application.
I'd like to punch you in the face for having a "your PC needs a
reboot" popup with only an OK button. Then I'd like to stamp on your
throat for having the little X in the top right of the window still
continue with the reboot.

Thankfully, since this is a server OS after all, windows alerted me to
the fact that other users were logged into the host and gave me the
option of cancelling the reboot which you'd forced on me. How very
lucky that I'd logged in direct to the console for another reason.

Regards,
Fuzzy.

hold on tight, things could get strange

I'm currently in the process of moving my online pressence from one
server to another. I'm toying with incredible things like DNS and conf
files.

Take a moment and consider those poor electrons which are zipping
around inside this globe spanning network we've constructed. I'm doing
the equivalent of organising a shit load of old fashioned traffic cops
spread all over the globe to learn that fuzzyslogic.com is now hosted
on a different node of the net.

Boeing Phantom Ray

Blerk

Thanks to everyone who took the time to inform me that I haven't posted on my blog for a long time.

Life is good and things are well. As I edge up on my 31st birthday I'm often left contemplating how back in the middle of 2009 I, so totally honestly, told people that turning 30 didn't worry or scare me in the least. I had conversations with my close friends about how hitting the big three oh had given them pause, as they realised that they were now officially "not young". Me, I still felt young.

I proved that I was young too. A young fool prone to making mistakes. By the time I reach 31 I'll have realised that being "not young" is all about learning from those mistakes. I won't even begin to list the things I've learned during my 31st trip around our wonderful sun, but they mostly revolve around me being slack, unorganised and lacking a plan for the future.

I'd heard a line in a stand up spot one time which made me laugh; until a man gets to be 30, he still always has the thought in the back of his head that he could go to a temple high in the mountains and train at the feet of masters and become a ninja. Once he gets to 30 he realises that he may have left it too late.

Luckily I never had any strong dreams of becoming a ninja. I just want to be an interesting person. I want to be someone who people are glad they're around. Someone who walks through doors and receives big, warm and loving smiles from the people he's joined.

This has been happening to me more and more lately. I like it.

I just want to be half the man my dogs think (thought?) I am.

Gaming Can Make a Better World

fear and loathing

I want you to understand that this man at the wheel is my attorney! He's not just some dingbat I found on the Strip. He's a foreigner. I think he's probably Samoan. But it doesn't matter, does it? Are you prejudiced?

- Raoul Duke (from HST's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

Unexpected

Since moving into the 'drette I've found that I had seriously been failing in my TV viewing for not regularly watching Media Watch and Q&A. I'd even go so far as saying that making anyone who watches TV, forcefully if required, to absorb Media Watch.

Blerk

I wrote the following into the "about me" box in my facebook profile. It probably does as a bad a job of painting a picture of me as the majority of combinations and permutations of english words.

I like to be a positive, active and happy go lucky person. I am an eternal optimist who loves nothing more than flying by the seat of his pants. Easily distracted and prone to rambling off on strange and unexpected tangents. I'm armed with a quick "out of left field" sense of humour and an open mind.

I love communicating with people who are passionate about the topic at hand.

Verbal wankery I guess.

In other news, my life has wiggled its way around and has settled back into a curiously comfortable and deja vu'y arrangement. I'll be working in an interesting IT job, living a share house with an awesome group of guys and juggling a lot. The big difference between my life now and 6 years ago is the weather. I'm loving Melbourne summer but am a little concerned how I'll deal with my first melbourne winter.

But that is an age away. I just like to run the thought around in my head to ensure I don't take the current wonderful weather for granted.

Taking things for granted is probably my biggest fault. Maybe I should edit in a mention of that on my facebook profile...

Stop. Contemplate For A Moment.

You're an organism that can control the chemical make-up of the environment which your mind is contained in. Simply by the act of thinking, you can alter your biochemistry and feel any emotion. Try happiness. Or joy, joy is damn nice.