Things that I hate

This is something that I've been contemplating writing for a little while now. I know that everyone has things that they just can't fucking stand no matter how many times they are forced to deal with them. I'm no exception. In fact, being as proficient with the English language that I am, saying that I actually "hate" something should be considered to actually have some force behind it. Though I do often choose to use other words like, loathe, disdain, and abhorred. But then again when confronted with some of these things I revert to simply saying, "Fuck", a lot and cursing the existence of said object of my "affection". I'm not going to get real deep into these, it's just going to be quick, down, and dirty.

Things that I Hate:

1. Stupid People - I'm not talking your run of the mill below average IQ individual, I'm talking about repeat offenders. People that continually say the most inane fucking retarded shit. People that mindlessly regurgitate rumors and hearsay as though it were gospel. People that teach their kids to be fucking morons because they don't want to be outdone by their offspring. The kind of people that couldn't point out their own fucking home town on a map or can't tell you how many stars are on the American flag. Stupid, mindless, useless, wastes of flesh and perfectly good oxygen. The gene pool needs a little more bleach, these fucking assholes are breathing my air.

2. Pooping - This one is different, because try as I might, I just can't get around it. I've always been a very clean person. I shower every day. I take care of my teeth. Even when I was a baby, I've been told that I would wail like rape victim if I made a mess in my diaper. While I don't scream about it anymore, I still just don't like the whole filthy act of it. I think it's proof that there is no God. If we were created in his image, don't you think he'd figure some other way to get rid of our waste? He could at least make it smell like roses or something.

3. Doing things a certain way simply because that's the way it's always been done - If that's not the most fucked up retarded reason to do something, I don't know what is. Fucking evolve, people. Shake things up a little, improve things. And I'm not talking about coming up with some high speed solution to a problem that isn't there, I'm talking about shit like views on homosexuality or everyone in the Middle East hating everyone else in the Middle East. What the fuck is up with that shit? Gay people have been around for fucking, well as long as people in the Middle East have been trying to kill each other, probably longer. Specifically, I apply this to the Marine Corps. We've got a lot of fucked up little rules put in place by someone 15 years ago because one asshole got in trouble and now the rest of the Corps has to pay for it. People need to get educated and re-evaluate the status quo.

4. The government raping the education system - We've gotten ourselves into a sad state. First it was language programs, then it was music programs, then it was physical education programs. Where will we stop? We've now got a system that tests our youths knowledge on Math and Reading, that's it. Where the fuck did Science, Art, Music, Philosophy, Economics, and Government go? Sure, we have those classes, and you have to "pass" them to graduate high school, but do they matter? NO! The No Child Left Behind act was the icing on the cake. What happened to getting held back a year. We're so apt to let gifted students skip grades, but why not hold some back. Why not pay teachers enough money so that people actually want to become teachers. We spend billions of dollars on shit we don't need, why not redirect some of that money to things we do need, like better education. Who is going to solve the problems we're making now when we're producing citizens that can't fucking read?

Drowsey rantings from the back seat.

On my way to Turkey for a base run. I’m really glad my battery is lasting for the time being. It’s a six hour drive up there. I can’t wait to get a cheese burger. I know it’s only been a month and a half since I waved farewell to my beloved homeland, but nothing makes you miss home more than knowing you’re eight thousand miles away from the nearest In N Out. I wonder how well a Double Double keeps… *stares thoughtfully into the distance*

To pack for my journey I decided to use my brand spanking new Swiss Army backpack which boasts sufficient space for my 17” behemoth of a laptop, I got hustled by Amazon.com, again, though not entirely an impulse purchase, as I’ve been in the market for just such a satchel for some time now. Much to my surprise, the dedicated compartment for my electronic companion is clearly only large enough for a 15” computer. I can however squeeze it in, though just not where it’s intended to go. I’m torn between leaving it the way it is and trying to send it back for the right model. I did purchase the bag specifically for its 17” design, but I do plan on one day getting a smaller laptop. We’ll see how this trip goes. If I can live with it the way it is, I’ll just leave it be.

Beware the wrath of a disgruntled former lover. Nothing you can say will be enough. Nothing you could possibly do, short of offering barred jugular for evisceration, could serve to satiate the blood lust. There isn’t any way you could ever understand. There isn’t an ice cubes chance in hell that you could even fathom the pain that you’ve inflicted with your cavalier approach to the relationship. Never mind the facts. Never mind that you gladly went out of your way to make them happy. Never mind that you think she has an amazing body. Please forget that the sex was great and not just about the physical connection. And oh by the way, sir, whilst you are forgetting, purge from your mind that you ever considered a future with such a far superior individual. You are not worthy.

I’m having a pretty good time out here in Damascus. It really isn’t anything that I thought it would be. I was expecting great expanses of nothing but sand. Not that Syria is in short supply, but there is far more vegetation than I thought there would be and it’s actually quite mountainous. I especially like the last part. After living in Riga, which I’m convinced is one of the flattest places on Earth, I’d really begun to miss the jagged landscape silhouetted in the morning sun. The city proper is chaotically impressive. I could do without much of the traffic, but I don’t drive, so It’s not one my main concerns. There are fountains everywhere. It seems that they are a display of power. As if they are defying the desert. I don’t know how big a feat it is exactly, but they too are impressive. The old city is everything I expected it to be. It’s packed full of little shops. Some of which I could literally touch the back wall of by just leaning in from the outside and reaching over. The effect is actually quite deceptive. You’ll walk past a series of miniature shops and speckled here and there are decent sized walk-in stores. Then you’ll go a bit further and an ornately inlaid set of double doors will open to a hidden courtyard restaurant that is kept secret by these sell anything closet stores. Contrary to my preconceptions, they have most modern services, though the internet sucks, you just need to know where to go. And it’s delightfully cheap. You can go out three nights in a row on 20 bucks. It’s not short on its oddities though. Some of the customs and norms still throw me off, but being away from home for 5 years bouncing from country to country gets you used to such things. I have to say that the best part is the diversity. There are lots of students and ex-pats from all over the world and the Syrian people are very welcoming. I don’t miss California any less, but my stay here is turning out to be more comfortable than I had expected.

Yahoo! sucks

Damn it YAHOO! What the hell are you thinking? Here again you’ve taken a simple service and perverted it. All I want if my fucking email. I don’t want you to track my search history and suggest custom advertisements. I don’t want you to give me the weather for every location that I’ve logged in from in the last 12 months. I don’t want an up to the micro-second status report on the people in my address book that I haven’t talked to since I joined the Marines. Why can’t you leave well enough alone? About 6 months ago, Yahoo changed the interface of it’s email portal yet again. Adding dozens of new features that nobody uses and rearranging everything. I’ve gotten used to it though. I’ve been using the same email address for going on 11 years. Like clockwork, as soon as I figure out the new spread, they go and change it up. This latest rendition though has got to be the worst. It’s almost gotten as annoying as those fucking Facebook quizzes. The new and improved spam blocker still lets through the porn, the penis enlargement ads, and all the Nigerian scams that it used to. The picture previewer is still ass achingly slow, and the size of the emails you can send hasn’t gotten any larger. Sure you now have enough room to keep all the lolcats and propaganda, but you still have to send the files one at a time. I’m out! Gmail, here I come. If you need to reach me, shoot your traffic over to aaronpleas@gmail.com. Better spam protection, virus software, and better yet, it’s brand new and I won’t plaguing everyone with whatever zombie emails I may be sending out. The interface is better, simpler really. If you want to write a novel, get some publishing software. If you want to keep up with your social networking, get on Facebook. If you want to send an email and just an email, Yahoo is no longer the answer. Besides, sooner or later, Google will own stock on everyone’s soul anyway so you may as well make it as smooth a transition as possible. Jokes aside, it’s a better service. You can tell that they took the complaints and mistakes and really focused on making a superior base as an email service provider. Rejoice! Email is simple again. Though I must say in advance, if you start sending me forwarded emails, you will receive some serious hate mail.

My Monster!

I figure a good way to dust off the old blog would be to introduce the newest member of the collection of electronic devices that one could easily mistake for a family member if you only heard of how excited I get when I talk about them.

Everyone, please meet (no, I don't seriously name my gadgets)

Lian Li PC-A70 Tower
EVGA Micro ATX Motherboard
Saphire Vapor X
Corsair 1000W Power Supply
Intel i7 2.66GHz CPU
Kingston 64Gb SSD
Seagate 7200 rpm 1.5Gb HD (x2)
OCZ 2Gb ddr2 1600 (x6)
LG Blu-ray RW

So here she is, I demand that anything that takes up this much time/money in my life be referred to as female. The build is going smoothly enough seeing as I've never done one. I'm going to be running Windows 7 straight off of the SSD. I literally salivate over how fast this thing should load up. I also purchased a fan/heat sink combo to replace the stock one that came with the CPU. However, for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to put the damn thing on. I spent about 30 minutes mounting the AMD bracket to the heat sink. The holes for the screws were just ever so slightly smaller than the screws themselves. I eventually, through a great deal of effort and some minor perspiration, managed to attach one to the other only to find that there wasn't any conceivable way to mount the fan to the processor. Hopefully I can get the AMD bracket off. Because, as you may have noticed, I don't have a AMD processor/motherboard. *Epic Facepalm* I guess I shouldn't just tear into my new toys and start putting them together next time. In any case, I bought all these things to do it myself to learn and to be able to upgrade parts later, so I'm fine with what I'm working with. I'm taking pictures throughout the build so maybe I'll have those up on here sooner or later. I'm off tomorrow and am already excited to get back to putting it together.

*Update*

After eight hours of anticipation I finally got off work and came back home to take another crack at finishing my build. After realizing that I had put the wrong mounting bracket on the heat sink, I decided to give that another try. I got the AMD one off and managed to put the correct one on without too much hassle. But it's on there now, I don't think it's going anywhere for a while. I had a couple of minor issues along the way. I still can't figure out how to hook up my 3-pin power indicator to the 2-pin spot for it, I don't seem to have enough SATA cables for all three of my hard drives, I don't have a corded mouse to use when I start up Windows, my motherboard manual says I have 6 fan ports and I clearly have only 4, and there is the fact that I can't turn it on... I don't know what the issue is. I have power according to this little blue light next to the 24-pin plug in and the 8-pin is also in. I also have reason to believe that there is power because the fans turn over for about a rotation before stopping. But other than that, there is no indication that the thing is getting juice or doing what it's supposed to be doing. I can't get to the BIOS, which I was kinda excited about because I've never messed with it, and my monitor (AWESOME) isn't getting a signal from the computer of any kind. I've got out resident techno geek coming over some time this week to have a crack at it, hopefully he can shed some light on the issue.

Racism

As you may or may not have known, on the 16th of July a police officer, Sgt James Crowley, in Cambridge responded to a 911 call which indicated a possible break in at the residence of Henry Gates a Harvard Professor.

Gates, "a top African-American scholar", and a friend were returning home from a trip to China. During the trip Gates lost the key to his residence and upon returning decided to break into his own house. Now I don't know that shoving my shoulder into the front door and destroying the frame would have been the way I would do it, but last I checked, it's perfectly legal to break your own stuff. As long as you aren't hurting anyone else in the process, you're good.

A concerned neighbor, Lucia Whalen, who I would love to have as my neighbor on account of her concern for the general safety of the neighborhood as a whole, called 911 when she observed the supposed break in "at a distance". She did mention that one of the individuals "looked Hispanic" but also that she "wasn't really sure".

Sgt Crowley responded to the call in uniform. When he arrived at the residence he called into the house asking for the individual he could see through the front door window to come out on to the porch. Gates, as he later learned, replied that he would not comply and demanded identification, which Crowley freely gave. Upon learning that there was an officer present Gates brought up the fact that he was "a Black man living in America" and that this was all a race issue. Sgt Crowley asked Gates to join him outside because he couldn't transmit back to his office due to the closed space and Gates' yelling. To this Gates replied, "ya, I'll speak to your mama outside". Gates also indicated on several occations that he was "not the type of person you mess" with and that Officer Crowley didn't, "know who he was"

There was some more back and forth between the officer and Gates but due to the excessive loud arguing and disturbance, Gates was arrested for "Disorderly Conduct".

I'd like to leave it there, I really would. But before I go on, it should be known that all Gates had to do was prove , professionally and with respect for a uniformed officer, that he was rightfully in the house and that would have been the end of it. Certainly one would have appreciated such a speedy response if someone had actually been breaking into your home, why not take it in the same fashion?

As easy as it would have been to leave the whole thing alone as a, shall we say agrevated misunderstanding, it turns out that Gates is a personal friend of our recently elected fearless leader. I don't know about you, but as an older brother, when my little brother calls me up and asks me to beat up the school bully, I'm going to tell him to take care of it on his own. I'm not using the term "big brother" lightly here either. What kind of society are we living in when you can make a personal call to The President of the United States and ask him to demand an appology from an officer that was rightly doing his job. And oh, by the way, Sgt Crowley has been called upon as a guest speaker several times to teach classes on racial tollerance and embracing the diverse culture in Cambridge.

I know this has been all over the news and Jay Leno is going to be telling jokes about it until the next guy takes office, but I've just got to say that it's this "reverse racism" that is keeping racism alive today. I've heard a lot of negitive feedback on the term reverse racism. Somehow people are bringing up old issues from a past that we only know about today through history books as new issues every single day. I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist. Sadly, it does. But why? When was the last time a white man actually owned a black man? When was the last Irish migration? The last Japanese internment camps closed 60 years ago. The most recently in the spotlight are those from the Middle East on account of some a relitive few individuals who are haild by their own people as being extremeists that pervert the teachings they say they are upholding.

The key to ridding the world from racism is education. Oh wait, Gates is "a top African-American scholar"... This guy is responsible for the teaching and shaping of the minds of our future leaders and if you ask him to step outside to talk he replies, "I'll speak with your mama outside" This is what I'm talking about, not just at the lower levels of our society but at all levels. We're all Americans, people. I don't tell anyone that I'm an Irish-American. I'm not Irish. Sure I'm proud of where my ancestors came from but I'm more proud of where I came from. If Ireland gets in a war, the only reason I'll ever be there is if America sends me to back them up. If Angola or Zimbabwe or The Congo gets in a war do you think our "African-American" populace is going to catch a flight down there and sign up to fight the bad guys? I don't think so. And just to make drive the point, several countries in Africa are in some sort of cival war...

So now Officer Crowley, Henery Gates, and our very own President Obama are going to meet at the White House to discuss the events and "have a couple of beers". This is where we're at folks. After your big brother beats up your enemy, be sure to invite him back to your place for some beers.

I suppose it's time to make what has become my monthly, ish, update.

What's going on, you might ask? Well for those playing at home we're running on 4 months that I've been waiting for my visa. I was supposed to be out of Riga on the tails of May. But some Syriain dude has gotten it in his mind that I'm better suited to stick it out in good 'ol Latvia for a while longer. Not a bad place to be stuck, really. The warm weather is great, the women are beautiful, and I'm putting in some serious time on my bike. The only part that sucks is the not knowing what's going to happen to me, or where I'm going. I'm slated to go to Syria, but if that takes too much longer, I'm getting pulled from that and sent somewhere else. If I go somewhere else, it could be another two months of not knowing where to or when it is that I'll be going. Now don't get me wrong, I love being spontainious and the excitement of knowing I'll be in some random part of the world in three months is great, but it's hard to make plans, ya know? I can't plan on staying here. I can't make plans for back home. I'm just trying to enjoy the time that I have left. So far, I think I'm doing a pretty good job of that. ;)

We just wrapped up another inspection. I rocked the house, again. *happy dance* Nothing like getting recognized for a job well done. Making up for 5 months of slacking off in two weeks is just as hard as it sounds. haha. But seriously, I can't believe how jacked up some of this stuff is. And at the highest levels of our command. It's rediculous. I've got tons of shit I don't need and not enough of the gear that I do need. Whatever, I'm going to get it all straightened out.

Still don't have my stuff. It's been a long time but if you remember my last post, I talked about the Latvian packing ninjas that came and lovingly wrapped my earthly possesions with paper and sent it to a warehouse pending orders to Syria. I gotta say that living on two weeks worth of clothes is one of those thing that nobody likes to do. I've gotten to the point where I think I'm just going to go buy some new clothes. Shoes for sure though, the ones I bought at payless May 08 are falling apart. lol

That's about it for now kiddies, be sure to check back in next month for the what I hope will be the end all be all answer to the unanserable question, "where is Aaron's visa?"

Pack Out (AKA TMO)

Before you ask, I'm not on the way out the door yet. I just don't want to have anyone else have to oversee the boxing up of my things. Partly because that's just one more thing that someone would have to do on their day off that they don't want to do and partly because I have a specific way that I like to pack my stuff.

You never realize how much stuff you've amassed until you start putting it into boxes. Before you know it you've filled all the boxes that you moved in with and there is still stuff laying about. That's exactly what happened this time. I really don't think that there are a whole lot of things that I've purchased since I've been here. But whatever those things were, they seem to take up a lot of space.

The movers came yesterday to pack up my things. I didn't know how exactly the whole thing was supposed to work, so I had already packed everything myself. It all came out to 12 or so managible boxes, neatly stacked and ready for transport. They showed up with their own, much larger boxes, and all the other packing materials they would need to pretty much pack my room from scratch. I'm still glad that I did the initial packing though or I would have been here all day watching them tenderly wrap my things in paper. So in go my small, managable boxes into their larger boxes. My boxes of clothes were unpacked and paper wrapped and then stuffed unbetween the boxes as padding. They incountered a problem with my computer and monitor. The boxes weren't big enough on their own to hold the computer box and the monitor, so they made a bigger box. They taped up the sides of the first box and then slid another box down on top of it. Genious!

I ended up having them pack up more of my stuff that I wasn't sure what to do with. Now my room is as barren as it was when I got here. Just two weeks of clothes and some uniforms. And my laptop of course. I'm still waiting on that visa though.