AI Output >/dev/null

What is wrong with me?

Brandon Brooks — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 19:46:05 +0000

Not so surprising, I haven’t posted in a while. Not that it really matters as the point of this was merely an outlet. As the name suggests, it is not really for human consumption.

Something is wrong with me. Yes, I know, something is wrong with all of us. That is not what I mean. I mean there is some sort of malfunction within my internal process that seems to be breaking down my being. I liken it to depression, though it seems more complicated. I have very little ambition to do anything at the moment. Even waking up seems to be more effort than it is worth. Even as I write this, I battle in my mind. The outcome of what I hope to accomplish isn’t worth the effort it takes to accomplish it. The problem is, nothing is matching that criteria. I’m going through life on some sort of auto pilot while my internal dialog spends most of its time in a utopian cloud, though it manifests itself in nothing as even it is over-saturated with whatever is my affliction.

My mind is yearning for something epic, some sort of epic creative outlet. (This, though it may be considered a creative outlet, lacks any epicocity.) As a counter, the requirements of my responsibilities, obligations, and promises prohibits what I currently consider as a cure for my ailment.

This situation is not uncommon. It has occurred frequently in my past. Its cyclic monotony only increases in intensity and apparently in duration as time progresses. I fear some day its intensity will grow beyond my capabilities of containment and consume the essence of my existence.

Some sort of bi-polar undifferentiated schizophrenia. I say undifferentiated because it is somewhere between paranoid and disorganized schizophrenia. How’s that for a self diagnosis. In the end, they just say “Stay on your medication” even though it seems they don’t fully understand the medication’s effects. My current medication seems to be ill equipped to handle whatever it is I really have.

If only it really mattered.

Sea of Chaos

Brandon Brooks — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 04:53:44 +0000

I was asked to cross a sea.
I billed them for the time to swim.
When the one who came before me drowned,
I built a boat and sailed ashore in safety.

Microwave

Brandon Brooks — Thu, 19 May 2011 19:12:07 +0000

Microwave radiation has the effect of destroying living organisms. Therefore it is un-probable that sustained growth would exist in an environment subjected to a relatively constant exposure to microwave radiation. It would follow that any modern microwave oven would not be capable of sustained growth in the microwave chamber, if it were used often.

Furthermore, ownership of a community device does not indicate the sole responsibility of maintaining the cleanliness of the device. This responsibility falls to all members of the community using the device. If the note pertaining to the cleanliness was prompted by a member of that community, I would suggest this message be
reiterated to those community members.

In retrospect, it may be asumed that ownership indicates responsibility of maintenance, rather than community responsibility. If this is the case, I gladly bequeth the ownership of said device to the company and therefore
abdicate my responsibility of maintaining the cleanlyness of a community device.

Dell

Brandon Brooks — Fri, 13 May 2011 02:41:49 +0000

Being in the computer industry for over 14 years, I have had a lot of experience with Dell. They are a good company. Their equipment is high class, their customer service is top notch, and their prices are reasonable. So needless to say, when the companies I have worked for were clearing out equipment, I purchased them. My last company purchase was a Dell Precision 380. It was a beast of a machine when I bought it for the company, and it made for a nice home server when I purchased it from the company. Unfortunately, due to my lack of maintenance, dust built up on the power supply. Not just a little bit of dust, it was a lot of dust. You guessed it. It burnt out. Thankfully it did not catch fire and burn the house down. Because that would have been bad.

If you have ever been inside of a dell case, it is a marvel. They have a well thought out system. Screwless drive cages, snaps, and clips make taking things apart more like Legos. Getting anything in and out is great. When things are under warranty, you get the new part, replace the old part and send it back. Simple as π. I love it.

Now, when it comes to consumer products, (i.e. those who don’t keep the warranty up to date), things get… a little sticky. Sure you can find some old used parts on eBay, or purchase them through Dell, but that gets expensive. This power supply I was talking about was $80 new and $30 – $50 used (supposedly in working condition). Okay, any power supply will work with the motherboard, so a $50 brand new one isn’t bad. With one small exception. It doesn’t quite fit as nicely as the ones with the clips and snaps and all that jazz. Okay, so it is a little ghetto, but it should work. Wait, it gets better. If you are not familiar with the Precision 380, it is big. Full tower 20″ deep, 25″ tall kinda’ big. Not so convenient if you want to convert it to say a media center / home theater PC. Okay, so I’ll just find an ATX case that will fit the cabinet. This is not as easy as it seems. Apparently, this massive cabinet we have is small for ATX HTPC cases. I found a total of one from NewEgg that would fit. Twenty five bucks, not bad, I’ll get it with the new power supply and transfer everything over.

I have seen a lot of motherboards in my time. I can tell you what the vast majority of the chips on the board do, and know the pinouts on all of the connectors. Okay, so I know I can Google all of the pinouts so I don’t have to “know” them. Anyway, that is not the point. I got the case and power supply today. I had already previously completely disassembled the computer in preparation. I get everything organized and set out so I can put things together. I grab the motherboard and stop… bewildered, puzzled, and confused. Something is wrong, but I can’t seem to put my finger on it. The board is not going to fit, but why. I’ll tell you why. Dell motherboards are right handed boards. Yeah, normally you take the right panel off of a case to access it. With dell, you take off the left panel. This means the mother board will not fit any case but a Dell case. Oh dear.

So, I spend quite some time assembling all of the components into the original case. It is relatively smooth with all of the snapping and clipping. The power supply, since it is not Dell, doesn’t fit in the snap contraption, but the mount points line up so whatever. I get the motherboard in, the processor fans, the two optical drives, the four SATA hard drives in, reattach the internal speaker, front communication panel, and all of the air flow hoopla. Wait until the TV is free (it is the only non laptop monitor in the house) and connect it all up. I am plagued by a blinking orange light. Not so good. I check the motherboard for grounding problems, reseed the memory and video card, double check all of the connections and try again. Blink, blink, blink. It’s taunting me.

I stop for a moment to think about how all of this got started. I then proceed to kick my own butt. What went bad? The power supply. What happens 8.5 out of 10 times when a power supply goes bad. Oh, yeah. Stupid me.

Now I have a new case and power supply with a bunch of inconvenient paper weight pieces. Who knows if the memory is good, if the processor is good, heck even the drives could have been blown. Today, just hasn’t been good to me. And I was so excited too. Oh well, tomorrow is a new day.

Welcome

Brandon Brooks — Thu, 12 May 2011 17:47:10 +0000

First and foremost, let me welcome you to my blog. You are a rare breed, as this blog is read by hardly anyone. This is somewhat by design. It is not that I mind visitors, I simply don’t publicly publish or direct people here. It is a place for me to output brain dumps, or simply write as if people are listening or care. I know there is Facebook, Twitter and all of those communication devices, but this is mine. It is a place for me to talk to the voices in my head. If you happen to overhear, that’s fine.

For obvious reasons I chose WordPress. I could have written my own blog site and themes and all of that, but why re-invent the wheel when people have already done a great job.

If you are here, and you are not me, then you probably already read a little about me on the main site, or know me already. Because of this, I’ll spare you the boring details. We’ll see how often this really gets updated, but I have a dialog going on in my mind on a constant basis, and I needed a place to store them in a more permanent format.

Often times as I lay down to sleep, I have fantastic ideas and my mind is able to traverse a wickedly complected web of relationships in moments. There is a stage between being awake and being asleep where I am able to access a true virtual reality where only the rules I create exist. Physics, chemistry, love, all things react as they should. ‘Should’ being relative to my personal perception. Common sense tells me many of these ideas aught never to be brought to light. Nevertheless, it is quite enjoyable to indulge myself in my own utopia.

This output is and will be directly from this world.