Picture Perfect

From time to time, I build websites. For the most part, websites are just text. Plain, good, old fashioned text. But a site made of just text is kind of boring. You need flare and pizazz to catch some eyes.

You need… Graphics!

Windows comes with MSPaint.  However,  it takes a lot of patience to make anything worthwhile come out of Paint.  I am sure there are a few people out there that can accomplish such a feat, so I will not say it is impossible.  I just do not personally have the presence of mind, the intestinal fortitude, or the lack of sanity to try it.

I’m sure the Mac comes with a program that is like the old colorforms that allows the user to create wonderful pretty art.

Everyone using Linux loves Teh Gimp.   Personally, I hate the Gimp.

Then there is the grand-daddy of them all, PhotoShop.  Apparently, with Photoshop, even the one girl I slept with when I was really really drunk can be made to look awesome.

I just don’t see a reason, based on my use, of going out and purchasing Photoshop.  Using the Adobe machine to create web graphics is kind of like using a Tomhawk missile to swat a fly.  Effective, but a smidge of overkill.

Along time ago, I discovered Paint Shop Pro.  At the time, Adobe Photoshop was ringing in at about $250 for a starter kit with no frills, while PaintShop Pro had the price tag of just shy of 30 bucks.

At the time, the programs were night and day.  I’m sure photo editing pros would still say that the two programs are world’s apart.  I am more than sure that on a professional level for guys (and gals) that get paid to create graphic art, there is a huge difference.

For some shmuck who is ripping everything down to web sized nuggets, I can see very little difference.  Not to mention, a lot of the plug-ins that I would use with PhotoShop, also work for Paint Shop Pro.

The newest version does a hell of a lot more than the one I started with.  At the moment I have Paint Shop Pro 9 loaded up.  It’s old (three years) but it still does what I need it to do.  It is also the last version from Jasc before they Corel took over.  I tried using a product from Corel a long time ago, and it will take a lot for me to go back.

The nice thing about Paint Shop vs. Photoshop, is that PaintShop has the ability to do vectors without buying another piece of 400+ dollar software.   You can pick up older versios for under 50 dollars, and the newest version is just under 65 in some places.

Play That Funky Music

If you are following along and keeping score, you can see that I obliterated a hard drive on my main computer. I’m slowly putting it back together. The hardware was assembled and replaced and repaired the next morning, but the software… the software is a trail of exhausting, time consuming, geek love-hate joy-misery.

The OS (0perating system) comes first. You kind of need that.

Then comes the browser. So you can (easily) grab stuff that you need from the internet. Yes, you can get stuff from the internet without a web browser.

Then comes cd burning software. To make backups of everything you do. (I lean a lot more towards CD’s because I hate wasted space.)

The order of things to come depends largely on what the function of your computer is. I run several websites, I write, I look at po… pictures, and I put together a podcast called SomaCow. The podcast comes out three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and broadcasts live on Sunday.

I have the audio editing software on my laptop, but there are times when I need a sound effect or to listen to a song on a good, quick piece of software. Since most of the audio that I deal with is in mp3 format, I need a good mp3 player.

Let me take you back in time. Picture a young me, full of vim and vigor, fresh out of the Navy. I finally landed a real job. I finally landed a decent pay check. I owned a computer, sure, but it was “overclocked” and souped up and still only reached 50Mhz of processing power. It was a hand-me down Packard Bell Hunk-o-Junk 5000 (or something like that) from my sister-in-law. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that computer. It was my gateway drug.

I had been around computers. In the Navy, my roommates, school, there were computers everywhere. But this one, this one was mine. I could break it, bash it, hack it, smash it, tweak it… do whatever the hell I wanted to do to it. Except, it seems, surf the web.

I couldn’t even get email. I tried signing up for Juno, but I discovered that the modem that was in the PB-H-o-J-5k was 14.4 baud. Remember 56k modems? Remember how agonizingly slow they were? Now divide that by four!

Juno was one of the first services to offer free email. You didn’t even need an isp. You dialed the phone number, downloaded your email, then disconnected.

Juno sent a message back to me politely asking me to never connect to their servers again. I paraphrase:

Whoa, Dude, seriously. Your modem is, like, fucking slow as hell. Do us, and the world at large a huge favor, and never again use that machine to connect to the outside world. Go, get a job, and buy a real computer. Or at the very least, a non antiquated modem.

Juno Staff

***Not an actual letter from Juno. <—for the lawyers.

It was a blow to the ego. However, THAT is how you learn computers. I have learned more by failing than I have ever learned by cutting and pasting someone else’s script.

Ok, so there I was bummed as hell. Ego bruised. I checked the bank account and took off for the computer store. I had very little idea of what I was shopping for, but by golly damn fuck, I was gettin’s me a ‘puter!

I quickly found a computer that sounded powerful enough, yet cheap enough that I could take home and call my very own. In record time, I hooked it up, set up an account with an iso, and hit the internet.

I tried to remember all the software that I was using on other computers, and websites that I had found. I hooked up IRC and looked up some old friends. During this process, I kept running into the term “mp3″ all over the place. I was curious. I hate when there is a discussion going on and I have no idea what they are talking about. (The second best way to learn.)

I researched and read and was in complete awe. I quickly started grabbing all the mp3 files I could find and started the downloads. At the time, I think there were four files online. I’m embarrassed to say this, but the first mp3 that I ever downloaded, (it was the first file to be finished) was Mmmmmmbop. Only slightly less embarrassing, the second one was Cotton Eye Joe.

I didn’t care that it was horrible music, it was music, it was on my computer, and it was mine. I desperately wanted to play this horrid tunage, but my computer started to get lippy with me. It went something like this (I paraphrase, of course).

Me: Ok, I have the files. Play the music Dr. Spanzenbaugh (That’s what I called my computer).

Dr. S: Uhm. No.

Me: Dude, Why not?

Dr. S: Cause, I have no idea what that thing is.

Me: Dude, It’s an mp3. An EM PEE THREE! DUH! (I thought computers knew everything.)

Dr. S: Well, Dr. Chunkenstein, Idon’t have any software that will play that crap.

Me: DUDE! (I said “dude” a lot back then) Why not?

Dr. S: Because you need to install stuff on me before I can do stuff. Is this your first computer?

Me: Well, yeah, it is. So, like, what software do I install? Where do I get it?

Dr. S: Do a search. You remember how to do a search right?

Me: Well, yeah

So, off to AltaVista I ran. I discovered… WinAmp. After an mind grilling couple of hours downloading it, I installed, restarted, and BAM… “WinAmp, It really whips the llama’s ass” came blaring out of my speakers. I was actually giddy. Two year old with a rattle giddy.

WinAmp stood up tall and said “I play mp3 files. Let’s ROCK!” And it did it well. It was reliable, sturdy, wonderful, perfect… just plain Awesome!

I still use WinAmp today. I have tried others, but WinAmp is still easy to find, easy to get, easy to install, and easy to run. I am often annoyed at the upgrades they have tried to pull off. I run a stripped down version with no frills, no bells, no whistles. I still run the old flat black WinAmp skin as well.

The new version, with the fancy skin, tends to load really slow, even on a heavy duty machine. I shut off the auto update announcement, because it is usually annoying and usually tries to update when I’m in the middle of something important… like a live broadcast.

At one point, I actually rolled back a few versions to rid myself of all the bloat that they tried to dump into a perfect player. I run the newest version of WinAmp now because I use the ShoutCast Plugin. The newest version works, ok. But once again, a program developer decided that they want to be everything to everyone. They want to do a whole bunch of things at the OK level instead of doing one thing at the GREAT level.

SomaCow uses WinAmp as part of delivering our show to the world, because, WinAmp, really does whip the llamas ass.

The Story of SomaCow – Chapter 23

Before I was distracted, I left off at the point in my life when I discovered that I was one half of a point too stupid to be a gifted kid.I just watched Rocky IV the other night. At the beginning of the movie, they replay the ending of Rocky III.

(SPOILER WARNING)

In Rocky III, Rocky’s long time manager, “Mickey”, dies. Rocky needs to get back in the ring to avenge Mickey’s death. Rocky asks Apollo Creed to be his manager and get him ready for Clubber Lang.

Apollo agrees, but tells Rocky that he will ask for a favor after it is all over. The favor is a sparring match. When Apollo cashes in on the favor, Rocky asks why. Apollo explains that Rocky won the last fight (in Rocky II) by one second, and that one second is very hard for a man of Apollo’s intelligence to accept and come to terms with.

That’s how I felt about being denied entrance into the coveted Gifted Program because of one half of one lousy point.

I didn’t know it then, nor did I recognize it for a long time, but that half a point had a profound impact on my life. It created a person that lived outside of the fold. A person that exists in the realm of unaccepted. This is not a bad thing at all. It allows me the freedom to walk outside of any conventional lines.

Tracing my life path, I look back and see that I have been a member of a very small and exclusive clubs throughout my tenor on this Earth. I played soccer for close to a decade and a half, however, I was a goalkeeper. Goalkeepers don’t live by the same rules as the normal players. I was able to get away with physical violence when it was needed. I wore a different uniform. I trained separately from the rest of the team. I was my own island.

In baseball, I was the catcher. Again, completely different set of rules. Different standards for uniform. I could stop the game just by standing up. When I crouched down, the game would resume.

When I joined the Navy, I entered into the Naval Nuclear Power Program. We were an elite band of misfits that operated Nuclear Power Plants.

Please Note… I have the utmost respect for the truly ELITE groups in the military. SEALS, Green Berets, Marines. Those guys are insanely amazing people. So, calling Nukes “elite” is in no way meant to diminish the true special forces.

In the NUKE field, we made rank extremely fast. We were 2 ranks higher than most people in boot camp, and advanced shortly after our first few months in the military. This seemed to anger a lot of people. We had a different standard.

When you work a 38 hour work day, normal military bullshit like uniform appearance and haircuts go off to the wayside. We were qualified on a different platform than the normal navy. In the normal Navy, they had books that told them what to study, what to learn. If you followed by that, you moved ahead in rank. If you moved ahead in rank, you were given more authority and more responsibility.

The Nukes… we qualified on watch stations. Step one, answer the phone and translate what is being said. See, the guys that were operating the power plant were not supposed to be disturbed or look away from their panels. So when the phone rang, they needed a person to pick it up, get the message and pass it along.

Next station was sitting in a room with all kinds of electronics. The main focus of the job was making sure shit didn’t catch on fire. To be qualified for this station meant that you knew a bunch of stuff, and you could be a remote guy for the reactor operator. However, you didn’t yet know enough to be an actual reactor operator.

The next step was controlling the throttles on the boat. At the station there were two chromed out BLING BLING wheels. If you turn one, the boat went backwards. If you turned the other, it went forwards. The more you turned them, the faster the boar went.

There was a bell, a pointer thing, and a knob at the station. Up on the bridge, the captain would decide he wanted to go faster. He would yell out, “Go Faster! GRRrrrr!” Sitting next to him was another officer that would repeat, “The Captain said, ‘Go Faster! Grrrrr!”

Then there was a guy who was a little lower ranked who would yell out, “Captain says ‘Go faster Grrrrr, AYE AYE! Orders from the Captain… Go Faster GRRRR!”

This was replied to by a fairly low ranking guy in the normal Navy would say “Go faster grrrrrr AYE.” (AYE is US NAVY for Arrrrrr!). So that guy would reach down to his Bell, Pointer, Knob Adjusty Thing and turn the needle to point to the section of the dial that said “Faster, Grrrrrr”.

That amazing device would then send a signal down 37 floors to the Nuke slaves that were trapped in the belly of the boat. And on our little Bell, Pointe, Knobby Thing Turny Dialy Deal Thing, the red pointer would magically move to say “Faster, Grrrr” and the bell would ring.

Now, as a Throttle-Man, our first and most important job would be to reach up and turn the knob on the Bell Pointer Knobby Turny Dial Deal A Thing A Ma Bob and turn the black pointer to point at the section of the dial that said “Faster, Grrrr”.

If we made the boat go Faster Grrrr, before we turned the Knobby Dial o Rama to say Faster Grrrr, it was our ass. Seriously. The normal Navy people took the Pointy Knobby Bell Thingie very seriously. Seriously, the bell would continue to ring (very loudly) until you made damn sure to turn that damn black pointer with the black pointer know to say “Faster, Grrrr”.

Once we made the Black Pointer say the same thing as the Red Pointer, then we could go on about our business of actually making the boat go Faster Grrr. This was a job that required someone of very high skills to do.

Actually, in all seriousness, it did require some knowledge and skills. When you open the throttles, it has a huge impact on the reactor. It’s all very scientific and if you require an explanation feel free to email me and I will see what I can do to accommodate.

Somewhere down the line a person would actually qualify to operate the reactor. Then once you were good at that, you qualified to operate the reactor when it was shutdown.

Yeah… it didn’t make much sense to me either at first. In general, an operational naval nuclear power plant is one of the safest things on Earth. This isn’t the brainwashing propaganda the Navy put on me, I shook that (well… most of that) off a long time ago.

The reactor is much more unsafe… or less safe… when the reactor is shutdown.

After I made rank for finishing school, I pretty much topped out. I was stuck in rank. But I qualified as high as they would allow me. Aside from the pay issues, this was fine by me. I had more authority than people a few ranks above me. In our world, rank meant very little. Any time that I had an issue where rank was important, I was surrounded by a dozen people that would use their rank to trump any idiot that wanted to play the stupid rank game.

If I had been award that extra half of a point when I was young, I probably would have stressed and worried about grades my entire school career. I would have made strides to be valedictorian. I would have been a ball of stress that never appreciated the incredible things that life has to offer. Like a sunset over the Egyptian desert, the view of Rome from the top of St Peter’s Basilica, the taste of a really dry martini, or the curve of a woman’s hip.

Rome Is Burning

Rebuilding a computer is easy. At least on the hardware side. The only limiting factor is the operational hours of the store where the parts are, the stock on your personal shelves, and the pieces you can get from family, friends, and work (legit borrowing from work).

The software side, that is one time consuming bull right there. It is exacerbated by my “condition”. See, I’m a disorganized slob. I have CD’s from my very first computer. It has absolutely no programs that are of any value, but I still hold onto that stupid disk. Somewhere in the back of my head I keep thinking, “I might be able to use it,” disregarding the fact that is is encoded with software that will only install on a computer that has the motherboard of the original computer. Yeah, OEM Rocks!

I’m also very bad at labeling. “Audio Stuff”, “Some Videos” , “Clone High Plus other junk”. Quick and easy access is not my forty. But I burn a lot of backup disks. I burn back ups of stuff that I have never, will never, have a use for. You know, just in case.

I burn ISO images of any Linux distro that I can download. I have about 15 different versions of Mandrake (Lord knows why). I burn back ups of freeware that was outdated in 1997.

I love burning disks, though. It’s like Linus’s blanket. I feel secure that the files will always be safe until the end of time. They probably would be if they weren’t all scratched an water damaged. Pictures, photoshops, music, audio clips, you name it, I put it on a disk CD or DVD somewhere. Somewhere. I know it is around here somewhere.

I even burn back up files of burning software. I collect stuff like a junkie.

Another software that I use because I am used to it, is Nero. I have been burning with Nero for about 8 years now, since I bought my first CD burner. Back then, burning a CD was hit or miss. Especially audio.

I went through about 12 different freewares, sharewares, and I need a refund cause it doesn’t work wares. Then I found Nero. I went from a 50-50 shot of making a good disk to 90% success. I loved it.

Most of the failures were, ummm… we’ll blame the hardware for those.

So I went out and grabbed a copy of the latest Nero for the rebuild. This is a rare moment here, but I am going to admit that I made a HUGE mistake. Nero is so overwhelming with widgets and gadgets and whositz and whatzitz. All I want to use the software for is to burn a damn DVD or CD. Ahead Software, though, seems like they want to take over every aspect of my media.

Nero has a player, both video and audio. The player is slow loading and a pain in the ass. I already have 13 other players, one more is just over kill. Nero wants to organize my computer. I already organize my computer. It’s a horrible system, but that system is the way I like it. Nero wants to do so much for me.

I tried burning an ISO (dumb down basic explanation: take a file, convert it and burn it so it becomes a disc that can boot up.) Nero said “It is all good, let’s burn this!” (I paraphrase). So, I burned. I ended up with a blank, unusable coaster. I tried again, checking all the settings and doing what I have always had success with. Results… another unusable disk.

A few more tests and I was able to burn with some success. But I’m spoiled. The old version of Nero that I was running before I slaughtered my hard drive had achieved a 100% (minues … uh… hardware issues) success. It is easier to morn the loss of a badly burned CD or DVD now that they are cheap, but I hate morning the loss of the time. (Although the time is minimal thanks to the faster speeds of burners.)

I’m a simple guy. I diden’t like Mozilla when it packaged everything into one browser/email/chef/maid/music player/tv studio all into one suite. I like simple, small, unbloated programs that do what they are designed to do.

I’ll be digging through my archive of CD’s and grabbing my old version of Nero to reinstall. Have someone from Ahead Software contact me when they debloat the newest Nero.

If you know of any small, easy, efficient, reliable burning software, please let me know.

Nero is the Roman Emperor that watched Rome Burn.

Just Browsing

After you do something stupid like connect the wrong wires and blow up your hard drive, you spend a signifigant amount of time reinstalling the operating system. Whether you go for the institutionalizm of the Mac, the Big Brotherness of Windows, or the fresh clean feeling of freedom you get from Linux, you have to spend time tweaking and hacking.

Unless you use a Mac. It’s ready to go right out of the box. You are now one of the multitude of mindless drones that are ready to start creating wonderful music from your computer… like Nickleback. (Cut throaty whine… paste nasally whine… Yeah… that’s so much more emo now. This is how you remind me of whhaatt I really Aaaaaaam…).

So, for the majority people with real computers running Windows or Linux, you get to play around and “tweak” you system. This is an adventure that can fill volumes. Or, for some, it can fill a paragraph and a half. My story is the former.

So we move on.

My personal philosophy on computers is that without a connection to the outside world you have a glorified Atari. Although I have witnessed some people burn three straight years of their lives playing Spider Solitaire. It’s like a TV without a cable or satellite provider. It’s like a tape player with only Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 or “Highway Blues” to choose from. Both are wonderful songs, but variety is the Spice Girl of life.

Ouch. Sorry about that.

Like Operating Systems, there is no perfect browser. Each one has problems.

Internet Explorer is cheap (FREE), Easy (force fed), and available (only 30 hours of downloading upgrades and everything required for it to run properly – especially if you have an older version that Microsoft has tried to bury).

The really fun thing about Windows Explorer is the archiving it automatically does for you. Even after you clean out every file that has to do with Internet Explorer, years down the road (provided you don’t do something stupid like blow up a hard drive) you can dig around and find all those files buried away in a secret little compartment that Microsoft has set up for you. NEAT!

FireFox is now the number 2 browser. It is only 3% behind IE 6. IN all fairness, the stats are broken down into IE5, IE6, IE7 and then Firefox. It took just under 2 years for FireFox to grab 1/3 of all internet users. They grabbed me. In that special place.

The downside of FireFox is that it allows you to be stupid. This is not a good browser for Mac users. Mac users are often freaked out when offered freedom of thought. FireFox offers a lot of freedom. You can customize, hack, tweak, boost, plugin, build up, other computery sounding terms, all over FireFox. The downside kicks in when you load the browser down with so much junk that it eats 90% of your RAM.

In my defense… it was a really fucking cool plugin.

Then comes Opera. Nobody likes Opera. All those high pitched fat Italian women. Eeeesh.

The browser though, it is a good solid piece of software. They solved a lot of problems they had in the early years, but it still seems bulky and slow. It claims that it is faster, but given a long enough time line, it gets bogged down.

They also have major issues with marketing. For the longest time, their website looked like a corporate website. Very cold and uninviting. Kind of like their early browsers. They should take off any day now because they have revamped Opera.com to be all webtoo-oh’ed out. It’s got glossy submit buttons and everything. Can’t go wrong with glossy submit buttons. They also have widgets which seems to be really popular with the kids these days. I’m not a fan of widgets outside of a webpage, so I see very little use for them.

Opera has come a long way in becoming a more approachable browser. Unfortunately, they now have a very big hill to climb.

The Software That I Use

Once you fry a hard drive, the first step is, well, to buy (or obtain) another hard drive. A nice clean slate.

Then spend a few hours installing an operating system. I like Windows XP, because most of the software I use and am used to, runs on Windows XP. When my hard drive went kaput, I debated on buying a new computer. The pros: NEW COMPUTER, faster computer, shiny… mmmm… shiny.

The Cons: VISTA, cash, and vista.

My machine is a decent box, and an upgrade wasn’t really necessary. So, I started down the trail of reinstalling WindowsXP.

I’m not a die hard fan of many things. I have this slight issue with being wrong. The secret is to maintain a nice vagueness. When you are vague and noncommittal, you can easily claim that you said the right answer after the right answer is revealed. It keeps me sane. Well, saner than I could be.

So, I use Microsoft stuff because that is what I was taught since I started with computers. I actually started on an Apple ][, but those never really took off. I was a master level programmer in second grade. I could clear the screen, I could make it print “Hello World, Kill me now before I grow up and find out how much time the rest of the world will spend trying to crush my spirit and keep me from succeeding.” The teacher was not amused.

An operating system is kind of like a car. No matter how new the model, no matter what all the critics say… they all suck. The only person that has ever created a computer with an operating system that does exactly what needs to be done exactly when it needs to be done is Gene Roddenberry, and even his system broke down at the worst possible moment.

So, you go with what you like. I find die hard fans of any operating system to be very silly people. They all have great perks, and they all have major pitfalls.

Windows is compatible with almost all the software available today. On the downside, it is widely available which makes it a fun target for people that have no life, no chance of getting laid, and no social skills.

Mac is secure. On the downside, it is compatible with 3 programs. It has programs that are all Mac approved, but it is expensive. I have spent a lot on software in the past few years. If I were to have the same software capabilities on a Mac, I could sell it all and buy a Ferrari.

Linux is secure. Linux has any software imaginable. If there is a task that needs done and there is no program for it, a Linux crew will create it. The downside… it is used by people that have no life, no chance of getting laid, and no social skills.

Linux people are a weird crew. They desire mainstream recognition, but fail to welcome the less than brilliant into the fold. Most of the Linux people I have experienced have the mindset that everyone using Linux is a programmer. They left out the power user, the casual user, or the brand new user.

Mac, on the other hand, has dumbed down their computer so much that anyone can step up to the plate and run a few plugins and come out with HULK starring Eric Banna (or Star Wars Episode One starring Jar Jar Binks).

Windows has tried to make it easy. As long as you don’t install any programs on Vista, or, download any files, or connect to the internet, or… you know… turn the computer on… Windows Vista is sturdy and secure.

The latest version of Windows took a page out of the Linux playbook. Utter and complete chaotic confusion. Let’s say you want to test Linux. Good for you. Learning is good. But, where do you start?

Ark Linux is easy to install, but it installs and runs nothing like any of the online tutorials tell you Linux is suppose to run. All the commands are the same, but all the basic file structure that is standard… NOPE. Nothing like it. Ark doesn’t even have a super user (or admin).

At last count there were 18 gabuggillion different flavors of Linux. Linix for Xbox, Linux for your cell phone, Linux for the Palm, Linux for Windows, Linux for Mac, Linux to Install On Linux… just for that extra security and confusion. After all, if you can’t find your files, no one else will.

So, with Vista, Microsoft said, “See how many versions you can get. XP only had four. Or five. See if we can hit 37 different version and confuse the hell out of them.!”

So what it boils down to, I had a car. The radiator busted. I had the money for a new car. It was easier, cheaper, more challenging, and more fun just to replace the radiator and keep tooling along in the car that I souped up and felt comfortable in. After all, my ass cheeks have bored out a nice dent in the seat.

Hard Drive Fried – Story On Hold

This is completely out of the realm of the focus of this blog, but it is more for my self therapy than for informing the masses or trying to get readership.

Recently, I fried my computer. It wasn’t lightening or faulty parts. It was simple stupidity. I work with electronics and computers all the time. It is my occupation. I know how to work on things electric. I also know the short cuts. I also also know, that the short cuts are often dangerous to body and equipment and are not really worth the few extra seconds.

I have recovered (mostly). I had spares for all the hardware that I destroyed. Video card, hard drive, power supply. No big deal. Although, I did spent the good portion of the day debating with myself on whether to just buy a new computer. Then I reminded me of one big thing… VISTA. So I quickly agreed with myself (I should have known it would come down to that) and decided to get crackin’ on the rebuild.

The biggest part of rebuilding is installing all the software that you take for granted. Often times after a rebuild, I forget about software that I use daily without blinking. Some programs are just silently there waiting to serve you when you need them. They are like Boxer, strong work horses that never complain.

It isn’t until you buy a new computer, use someone else’s machine, or go through a rebuild that you realize how much of a dependency you have built on some application. Small plugins that you install and forget about. You just let them work their magic. The applications that make things so much easier with a few mouse clicks. Your machine ends up customized, like a sofa cushion, curved all perfectly to fit your ass. And you never appreciate it until you sit on someone else’s ass squashed sofa.

To save myself a headache for the next inevitable crash or rebuild, I’ll be spending some time listing out some of the programs I have come to depend on.

The Story of SomaCow – Chapter 22

I took the test to be a “Gifted Kid“. It was a grueling experience, but far less grueling than having to deal with the UnGifted Kids for the rest of my educational career.

Three weeks after the test, I went through my normal routine once again. Gilligan’s Island, I Love Lucy, and Perry Mason. Then I walked down a hill and then up a hill to get to school. For me, this was just another day. Just as the past three weeks had been just another three weeks. For my mother, they were agonizing hell.

My mother was not an overachieving, push the child ’til it breaks type of mother. She did however know that during this period of time, during a crumbling economy, in an industrial town, the Gifted Program was a leg up on getting out. She did not want me working in the lung blackening pits of the steel mill. She did not see working with steel as dishonorable. My father worked in steel and she married him.

She did, however, know that her son was a lazy pansy-assed wuss who would never survive a week in the smoldering heat of the blast furnaces and smoggy blackness that my father dealt with every day.

The way she saw it, the Gifted Kids had a 40% chance not working in the pits, a 12% chance of not working in steel at all, and a 2% chance of getting laid, impregnating some teenager, and ruining their lives forever by being trapped in a loveless marriage.

When I arrived at school, the men in suits were back, standing at the door waiting for me. I wondered what kind of test they were going to give me this time. My five-year old smart ass brain actually smiled a smug smirk at the thought of mentally destroying another adult. Instead, though, they just took me aside with my teacher. One of the suited men whispered to the teacher. With that, she turned to me, leaned over (giving a slight glimpse at the top of her bra and cleavage… too bad I wasn’t mature enough to enjoy it) and handed me a sealed envelope. She told me that I was to take this to my parents.

At this point in my life, I had not yet learned that a sealed envelope from the school to my parents always, without exception, without fail, always meant bad news.

I blundered on down the  road, going down a hill and up a hill to get back home.  I bounded into the front door and excitedly handed my mother the mysterious envelope.  She tore into the package like a woman possessed.  She shredded the paper in her rush to get it out and read it.

I can remember how my mother’s mouth distinctly curled down as if she instantly turned into a stroke victim.  Her brow crinkled as if she caught wind of a rotting corpse.  Her eyes caught fire with furious anger.

Beaver, Pennsylvania   and the school board that reigned with an iron fist was big on the Zero Exception rule.  The battle to even start my education on time was bloody and bitter.

At that moment, I learned a lot about my mother, a brand new vocabulary of curse words, and how vengeance can be exacted upon someone even at the price of a child’s fragile ego.

Without saying a word to me, my mother scurried off to the phone and dialed with full fisted fury.

WARNING:  If you are offended by harsh, foul, or inappropriate language, you might want to consider skipping over this section.  Scroll down to you see “END WARNING”

Mom grasped the phone in her fist and waited for an answer on the line.  Suddenly, some poor, helpless, unaware little secretary picked up the phone.  The secretary probably had nightmares and hours and hours of psychotherapy later on in life.  Mom exploded with an lions roar.

“Put Dr. Nemean on the fucking phone RIGHT FUCKING NOW! … I don’t give two fucking fisting shits, put his scrawny white ass on the phone … Look, If he is not on the phone in thirty seconds I will reach through this receiver and rip your liver out through your ass … Yes I’ll hold.”

At this point, I thought I had really screwed up.  I had heard that tone of voice coming from my mom before.  It usually meant that my sister did something wrong, blamed it on me, and I was about to get my ass kicked.  The thing that really sucked about that arrangement:  my mom would kick my ass, then tell my dad that she had to kick my ass, then he would come over and kick my ass for making my mom have to kick my ass.  I should have worn soccer ball pattern pants to make it more of a game.

“Dr. Nemean, what in the FUCK is this bullshit?  … You know fucking goddamn well what the fuck I am talking about you fucking asshole.  ONE HALF POINT?  ONE HALF OF A FUCKING POINT?  What in the fuck are you thinking?  You do know that when your dog shits in the yard you are suppose to pick it up and throw it in the trash, not make it into a toupee and wear it you shit for brains bald fuck!”

As you can probably tell, I didn’t get into the Gifted Program.  Somehow, I missed the cut off by .5 points.  One half of a point.  One point would have been a dick move, but one half of a point, that was just blatant “Fuck you” to my mom.

END WARNING

The results of the test showed that I missed the cut off by one half of a point to qualify for the Gifted Program.  It is surprising how such a small number could have such a tidal wave of ramifications.  Because of that half of a point, my mother joined the PTA.  She then lobbied against Dr. Nemean and the rest of the school board.  Dr. Nemean finished the school year at our school and then disappeared, the entire school board was ousted, and sweeping changes came flooding in.

For me, that half of a point defined my life.

Fucking one half of a fucking point.

The Story of SomaCow – Chapter 21

I entered the school hall on my way to my kindergarten class. There I was met by a posse of suited men who hauled me off to an interrogation room.

Somewhere in the middle of kindergarten, my mother and teacher began to discuss the possibility that

a) I was a problem child
b) I was highly intelligent
c) I lacked all the needed social skills to be normal
d) I was not living up to my potential

and

e) I was a perfect candidate for the “Gifted Program”

Yeah, you smart people, that was a slam on you guys. The “Gifted Kids” are made of of three essential groups. The first is your stereotypical “Gifted Kid”. He/She (mostly the she) is a goody toe-shoes. They study hard. They rarely laugh. They focus with lazer beam accuracy on every syllable that spills from the teacher’s mouth. The driving force behind their desire to learn is to please any and all authority figures.

The second group is made up of evil geniuses. Lex Luther was most assuredly a gifted kid. These are the kids that are so advanced mentally, that it short circuited all the brain functions that deal with emotional stability. They study hard. They laugh maniacally. They focus on the teacher to know the exact moment that their back is turned so the evil child can unleash some sort of hell on a bystander. The driving force behind their desire to learn is so that they can control all those around them.

The last group? Well, it’s a very small group. This group is probably smarter than both groups combined. One small set back, though. They are lazy as hell. They could be the valedictorian, but don’t see the point. They rarely study. They always laugh. They couldn’t focus on what the teacher was doing with a gyroscope, a mounted laser sight, and a bottle of Ritalin. The only driving force they have to learn is curiosity. But even that falls short of motivation if it is too much work.

Me? I was the last group. I had touches of the second group and I put up a facade of being in the first group. But I was definitely the last group.

So there I was, being tested for the gifted kids. I knew I was a shoe in. I was obviously smarter than the people that were left behind. I was damned if I was going to be caught up in the Dumb-Rapture and be forced to sit and listen to Jeremy stutter and stammer though “SSsssseeee, SpSpSpSpSSSssspotttttttttt, Ruh… Ruh… Rummm…Run.” That would have been as bad as getting a ClockWork Orange style force feeding of Judy Tenuta HBO specials. FUCK THAT!

The suited men sat me down and began grilling me. The light from the sun outside was glaring right into my eyes, causing the suited man behind the desk to appear to be nothing more than a shadow. It was the kind of sunbeams that reflected and highlighted off of every speck of dust that was floating around the room. From the looks of things, they school could have used some Hepa Filter to clean that stuff out… cause… DAMN.

I did not take this test seriously. Had I known that one outcome of the test meant being forever strapped with the seat next to Jeremy, and the other outcome meant pure, unadulterated, unsupervised, unrestricted freedom, I probably would have buckled down and flown straight.

One more thing about the kids in my group: we love to argue. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, we see an angle that we see as correct and can support with any kind of tibbitual nugget of information and we set up a hard line and run with it. The suited shadow ended up caught in a flurry of argumentative answer.

And, it is not that we in this group are unaware that we are assholes. It is very much the opposite. However, self awareness does not always lead to self improvement. I was missing cookie day back in the classroom and by George, I was going to make someone miserable because of it.

The shadowy suited man peppered me with questions and puzzles. My impatience grew each time he took a minute or two to explain the next puzzle to me. I sat there ignoring him working the puzzle out in my head. I frustrated him because I would arrive at the answer, but by a complete different path than was instructed.

One of the downsides of being an class clowning asshole, comes when you are actually being serious. People assume you are just being n asshole and take your question with a huge grain of salt. It didn’t help that I was also an inquisitive kid.

Once, in Sunday School, I asked a nun if God had a really big watch. I felt that if God’s hours and days were a lot longer than our days, that would help explain dinosaurs and the big bang. She kicked me out of class for being a heathen.

One of the questions that has remained stuck in the back of my head for all these years came towards the end of the test. The shadowy suited guy behind the desk was already at his wits end. He laid out the scenario.

He held up a card with a picture of a man who was smiling. The guy was wearing a fedora and a blue wool suit. The shadowy guy informed me that the Fedoraed man’s name was Jim. The shadowy man held up a second card. On it was a picture of a hill. Actually, it was a triangle with the bottom missing. The shadowy man ran his finger along one line on the card and say, “Jim lives on one side of the hill. He travels up the hill and then down the hill to get to work. If Jim travels up the hill and down the hill to get to work, how does Jim get home?”

At this point in time, I knew I had won. I knew that whether I passed or failed, I still won. I could hear it in the shadowy suit-man’s voice. He was exhausted, he was defeated, he was outsmarted, and he was throwing in the towel. The battle of wills would go in the history books as a sound victory for Mickey The Kid. In sports, this is when the team that has already won will put in the third string, or just run the clock out.

I knew the answer. I knew with every fabric of my being that I should just answer the question and let the guy off the hook. I knew. Yet, something deep inside me wanted to continue punishing this poor, battle hardened veteran of the educational system. I had my confession, but still beat the prisoner to a pulp. I was being an ass.

I had spent my entire life, all five years of it, listening to my father complain about traffic. He used to tell my mom about the different routes he used to get home. My father was an ace at traffic avoidance, yet he always got home at the same time, regardless of how well he avoided the backups. I knew that there was always more than one way to get home.

I told the shadowy guy at the desk that the question didn’t have enough information. (The section of the test that we had just finished taught me that trick. They would give you a multiple choice question. A, B, or C. Then each question was followed by D- All of the above and E – Not enough information.).

The shadowman dropped the test card and said, “We are no longer in that section of the test. If Jim goes up the hill and then down the hill to get to work, how does he get home.”

I began to clearly explain that, I walked to school every day. Along the way TO school there is a section that goes down the hill and then up the hill to get TO school. And on the way home, I cut through some back yards so it is all flat. I further explained that my grandmother lived at the bottom of the hill, but to get to her house we go up a hill and down a hill. However, because my dad’s car was broken and there was a stop sign at the top of the hill going back, we normally went further down the hill and then took a road that went around the hill.

I also explained to him about our bike trail. To get to the jump that we built you had to go up a hill then down a hill. But because of the short cliff that drops off, it was easier to go a different way when returning. Going home from the jump required a bike rider to go down a hill, down another hill, then up a hill.

So I told the suited guy that I needed to know what other roads there were for Jim to take, so I could see what the best way to get home was. He answered sharply and said, “There is only one road, this one right here on the card. Up the hill and down the hill to get to work!”

So I said, “Oh, then he goes up a hill and down a hill to get home”.

It took three weeks to get the results.

The Story of SomaCow – Chapter 20

I am inpatient. I do not follow the rules. I am a barbaric asshat. I am Mickey

Shortly after beginning my educational career, I became jittery.  I felt the pace was slow, the lessons were mind-numbing, and my peers were beneath me.  Not all of them, just most of them.

I could see it in the eyes of some of the other kids as well.  And slowly, like scene out of 1984, or some other dystopian story, they began to disappear.  One by one they stop showing up in the class room.

I was utterly confused.  Where were all the smart people going?  Why was I stuck with the dumb people?  When was Mr. Z going to get here?

Then, the suited men came for me.

Back in the early years, when school was school and not just a state sponsored babysitting endeavor,  they split the kindergarten class into two half day classes.  Half the studens attended class from the morning until lunch.  The other half came in at lunch time and left when the school day was over.  I was in the afternoon class.

It was a normal Wednesday afternoon.  I finished watching Gilligan’s Island and I Love Lucy.  Perry Mason’s theme started blaring.  I gathered up my school supplies and headed out the door.

I wandered on down the road, thinking this was just a normal day.  I entered the building to be greeted by my teacher and two guys in suits.  The teacher informed me that I was to go with these men instead of coming into class.

My heart jumped into my throat and I wanted to run.  I was paralyzed in place and stood there in shock.  Something hit me in the back of the neck, I think, and I blacked out for a moment.  When I came to, I was sitting in a darkened office.  There was light bristling through the blinds that were barely cracked open.

There I was sitting in a miniaturized  chair made to fit a child’s ass.  I suddenly had flashbacks to my battles with the Gods of Education.

They told me that my teacher thought I would fit in with the Gifted kids, and this was my test.   I personally think they were trying to lull me into a sense of comfort so they could bury me alive under the janitor’s closet.

If you get a chance… check out SomaCow.