Ideas and Lonely Nights

I'm in Ohio right now at a real estate seminar...away from my wife...it sucks. Learning a lot, but I'm not sure if sleeping alone is worth it. Give me a few years and I might...MIGHT be able to handle it better. But based on how amazing my wife is...probably not.

Anywho. Had an idea today for my graphics company logo. As a suggestion from my father, I should do my website graphics under a different name, as to make sales for that industry easier to do. It also provides me a company name to do transactions under. Which brings me to the logo.

Yes. It's a butterfly. But as a company logo...I don't think that's to...gay. For the record. Those commercials make me laugh. Not because I really care...but because the same people who really care about that generally have no problem dropping swear words in public. The term "gay" now means stupid, or dumb. That's how society works. A word is used incorrectly, and if it has a large enough following, it sticks. A word is what society makes it. Grow up, and learn to not take offense...instead of wasting tons of money on commercials that no one cares about (in fact, makes fun of), and go feed some starving children somewhere. I digress.

Yes, it's a butterfly. A guy butterfly if you're wondering. Very masculine. But seriously. It's for a company logo. Also, I have an idea to either use diffrentgraphics.com (the mispelling of the word diffrent being a play on the word different in the fact that it's a different spelling) ...or just stick with the actual thing, differentgraphics.com. Anywho, leave your thoughts please!

Knowledge is power.

In more ways then one. It allows you to have more fun, and enjoy life, and also allows you to accomplish things easier.

After struggling for hours and hours with how to make forms on the internet do what I want and integrate it into wordpress...I remembered plugins. And yup, for sure. There it was. A form plugin that integrated it beautifully. I could have saved myself from hours of staring at code. At least I'll know better for next time.

In other terms of knowledge, I mostly speak of music. I found a cool band today named Owl City. Click here to listen to them! ...very relaxing...

Anywho. Work is work. And some other things are going on behind the scenes that might turn out very well for us! But I'm not going to count my chicks before they hatch. So you'll hafta wait and find out!

Limer me an ick!

A boy and a girl both fell in love and called each other "honey".
They stayed and they married
They moved and they carried
And now they have no money!

Karmageddon

Lets face it. We have it coming to us. We abuse the power God has given us, and in the end it will prove to be our downfall. Kids with matches.

Until recently, I was pretty set on the world ending in only 1 scenario. Nuclear Holocaust. Wait. Nope. Not that. Definitely not that. Why not that? Because we all love ourselves too much to let that happen. Self indulgence is the answer. The end of the world will come when Star Trek comes to life before us. Take it as a dumbed down version of "The Matrix", though eventually it might come to that...but lets hope God strikes us down first. What I speak of is "holograms". That's the tag Star Trek gives them anyways. It's a fantasy world, where you can play out any scenario you want. All 5 senses are stimulated in the process. You can interact with the world, and the world can interact with you. Don't believe it's close? Check out: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/. Using our bodies as controllers for games. How funny of me to actually think that the extremes of self indulgence would first originate in anything but the video game industry. It caters to a crowd of people who are very comfortable with new technology. And for that reason, they can keep pushing the lines of fun, with addictive. Yes, I know fun is always addictive, whether it's sports or video games, people can get addicted to fun. What I'm talking about is an actual addictive behavior. Think of the ramifications if they could trick your brain into actually thinking it's in a fantasy world. You're the hero, you can do anything you want, everyone loves you. Then coming out of it, back to the real world. You'd live, work, and sleep, waiting until you could go back to that world. A world where you are essentially a god. I could see people becoming truly, chemically, addicted to that feeling.

That, to me, was the only avenue for the end of the world, until a few days ago. I watched the last Dollhouse episode of the season. For everyone who doesn't know the premise of Dollhouse, it is this:

Echo (Dushku) is an "Active," a member of a highly illegal and underground group who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas. Confined to a secret facility known as the "Dollhouse," Echo and the other Actives, including Sierra and Victor, carry out engagements assigned by Adelle, one of the Dollhouse leaders. The engagements cater to the wealthy, powerful and connected, and require the Actives to immerse themselves in all manner of scenarios - romantic, criminal, uplifting, dangerous, comical and the occasional "pro bono" good deed. After each scenario, Echo, always under the watchful eye of her handler Boyd, returns to the mysterious Dollhouse where her thoughts, feelings and experiences are erased by Topher, the Dollhouse's genius programmer.

[spoilers]In the end. The company "Rossum" that funds and created the technology for this organization, decides to sell these bodies as "anatomy upgrades" for the very wealthy. Basically, stealing someones body, so they can live forever. The company then goes even larger and darker by helping the great political powers of the world stage a world-wide coup. The technology has gotten to a point, where they can wipe someone clean by using a single advanced sound wave. So they send out mass calls, over the phone. Everyone who picks up, is wiped, and given programming to kill anyone who is not wiped. Everyone who didn't pick up their phone, is hunted. The world tears itself apart.[/spoilers]

Obviously. If the end of the world was my choice between these two, I'd choose the first, much less scary in the physical sense. But the first is more scary in the spiritual side of things. In my opinion, I'd say the first is more likely to occur, because it will take less technology to figure out how to stimulate and trick a brain, then it will to learn to wipe a brain of persona and be able to fill it again. And once everyone can live in their own fantasy for cheap, who would want to live in the real world?

...scary.

FYI: For anyone that cares. Lancelot died yesterday night. We held a short ceremony for him this morning, it was beautiful. Then we buried him next to Lady Guinevere. Lancelot...you will be missed.

Schrödinger's Cat

Viruses and how to not get them.
1. Do not surf the web. Meaning, don't google something, and click around in every site that you don't know. If you need something, use a trusted site to get it. Bookmark trusted sites that you go to often. Just because it came up on a search engine, does not mean that it's a good site. This means not letting your children surf the web too. They WILL download WHATEVER pops up.

2. Raise your security on your browser. Make it ask you before installing 3rd party programs and the sort. Then, if you're on a site you don't know or trust, don't download what it's asking you to. And never download anything from a site you don't trust, even if you think it's something you want.

3. Don't accept CD's, USB drives, or floppy disks from strangers. =)

Also. If you're doing this, you won't need a virus protection program, which is generally what bogs down people's computers. They complain about having a virus and their computer going slow, when really it's the virus protection program they have on their computer.

Good firewall protection is provided by most operating systems, and routers, use of those will prevent people from hacking into your network.

Remember, a computer doesn't do anything until it's told to. It doesn't surf the web and ask for viruses, you do.

Shouldn't've got a Mac

It should be a word. Honestly. Double apostrophe's. What do you even call that? English wasn't exactly my favorite class. Conjunctions? That sounds right. But! This is not the main topic of this blog entry! It is Macs!

Where to start? I think I'll do a brief list of pros and cons, PC's to Mac's. And for the sake of the generation and what they're battling, I'm going to use OSX vs Vista for operating systems.

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Macintosh (OSX)
Pros
- Extremely hard to glitch up the OS doing regular day-to-day activities.
- Hardware works more effectively because it's built by the same manufacturer.
- Basic operations are made easier by OSX for the common user. (Connecting to the internet, installing programs, watching movies)
- Less Virus problems. (I say less, because there IS viruses for OSX whether they want you to believe it or not. "http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/02/macosxleap.html" But hey, if it messes up, you're taking it to an apple store, you think THEY are going to tell you that the problem was a virus?)

Cons
- Frustrating for more advanced computer users when doing in-depth things. (Like organizing the file system because installs don't ask where to install stuff.)
- If something does malfunction, be prepared to pay out the butt, because the only people who can replace parts is Apple. And they "love" their customers.
- Every corner seems to pop-up something! Yes, I know it's customizable somewhere...but hey, if they're gonna hit PC's for stuff that is also customizable, all's fair.
- Prediction: Virus central. Face it. Hackers will always be around. As Macs increase in popularity, so will viruses. Hey hackers! New OS to pick on since Windows has been #1 for the LONGEST time! Until this point, there has been no need for hackers to focus on Macs. If they wanted something, it was most likely on a Windows OS.

I'll openly admit I dislike macs. I do not in general dislike mac users, though some of them get on my nerves. I dislike the Apple company in general because the way they've gone about doing things. Their mudslinging campaigns that further defile my TV watching experience (something I already hate doing). I love how they don't really say anything about their product, just why you shouldn't buy a PC. I disdain, nay, abhor that approach. And shame on Windows for doing the very same thing. However, I would like to point out that $ means more then any of the crap Mac says on their commercials, which can all be rebutted. Which is why people will continue buying PC's. I digress.

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PC (Windows Vista OS)
Pros
- Cheap and affordable.
- Despite my efforts, I've been unable to rebirth the blue screen of death on Vista. However, in general, easy to lock-up if you wanted to.
- Almost all Software is made for Windows.
- Plug-n-play ability is phenomenal.
- I could go on, but for the sake of a regular user, this is what they would enjoy about a PC.
Cons
- Open access to the more intricate processes of the OS provides regular users with an easy way to mess something up.
- Installing requires using an installation wizard, which will sometimes confuse a regular person who isn't computer literate.
- Amounts of viruses built for windows.

Ask me about any of the previous Windows versions and I would agree with about anything you hated about them. Unstable, easy to mess up, and some aspects of it...wtf? But Vista...was a work of art. Everything bad about the old ones, they fixed. To me, Vista seems to be for the logically inclined person, and OSX for the visually inclined. Take it a step deeper and I'd say that Vista is for the regular computer user, I wouldn't say advanced, because you don't have to know everything about a computer to know and understand how everything in Vista works. And I'd say OSX is for the computer illiterate. Very straightforward, easy-to-use, hard-to-break.

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Operating systems aside. PC vs Mac. The machine itself. I see NO reason to pay to extra money for a Mac. Since Apple released the OSX for PC's and Windows for Mac's, I believe in large the OS battle is a matter of preference, while the hardware (PC or Mac), is more of a money issue. If you want a better working system, buy a Mac. Be prepared to pay the ridiculous premium though. If you want a solid system, for much cheaper, with awesome upgrade ability, buy a PC.

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In way of preference between Operating Systems, I think that both sides throw out a few concerns that by-in-large, don't matter.

Viruses (The biggest one brought up)
Earlier I predicted that OSX will become the epicenter in an exciting new generation of viruses. This is because enough people are using them now, that it might actually be beneficial to the hackers to spend time in making viruses for them, where as before it wasn't time effective. But when it comes down to it, hackers will make viruses for EVERYTHING. 10 years from now, when another OS takes the spotlight, saying it doesn't have viruses, it'll get hacked. Not getting viruses is contingent upon the USERS. A computer can't do anything it's not told to do. The reason a computer gets a virus is because the person sitting in the chair, don't blame the OS. I'll make a short list next post on how not to get viruses.

Drivers
Windows has always gotten crap for having to install drivers to plug in something to use it. Now that Apple has opened up OSX to the PC, they'll start having those problems to. The reason they didn't before, is because anything you plugged into a Mac, was built by Mac. PC's on the other hand, leave open a whole avenue of jobs to 3rd parties that want to build peripherals for their machines. Along with these attachments comes a CD generally, with instructions to your computer for it to know how to work the attachment; these are called drivers. If the computer didn't use the attachment correctly, it was generally the manufacturer of the attachments fault, NOT the operating system. Driver problems are hardware based. As new hardware comes out, it'll take a while for any OS to include those drivers in default installations. Therefore, NOT an issue in OS preference.

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In closing, deciding which to buy is totally based upon what you're looking for. If you're not a usual computer user, and don't know a lot, you'd probably be better of paying extra for a system that is harder to destroy. If you've been using computers your whole life, save the money and buy the system that gives you the freedom you enjoy. So next time someone tells you that their Mac is better then your PC, or vice versa, politely explain to them that it's based on opinion only.

I'm TK, and I'm a PC...Vista rocks.