Brent’s Thoughts

I have debated for the last two days on how to post this entry, because I don’t want people to build an opinion of my sister based upon what they think she is like from this entry, but I still do want to post an entry about this weekend. So I have decided on telling the tale, but I would like everyone who has never met my sister to look at this in a new perspective.

My sister has epilepsy. Friday morning my sister started having seizures. This was the first time in 10 years that she has had them. She only had three, but it was decided to put her in the hospital. So that she could be checked out, and because my parents were afraid she would start having them non-stop like she used to when she was a kid. She stayed there overnight and they found that her medicine levels were a little low, but that she had no other issues and released her. It has been a little dramatic, but all in all things are ok.

When I say she had them non-stop I do not mean that her entire childhood she had seizures. I instead mean that at times when she was little she would all of the sudden start having them and then she wouldn’t stop until we got her medicine levels up. I can think of only maybe three times that she was having them as a kid. Ages 2 and 9 I am sure of, but I think there might have been another one in there. All of the times she was put in the hospital though and all of them were bad. This time though it wasn’t as bad and she has come out of it fine.

…a week can make. Last week I left work going into the weekend in a depression, but the stuff I did during the weekend helped out. This weekend was totally different, but because of some possible new jobs that I am hoping to be able to get I came out of this week in a better mood. That added to the fact that Pauline is back and I am feeling a lot better. I went with Pauline Saturday to Morgantown with some of her friends and kinda hung out. It was fun, but it also made me realize that most of the time when I am with my friends it is a one-on-one kinda thing. I guess you can read that from the earlier journal entries, it seems that I always have one good friend that I spend a lot of time with until he/she leaves and then I find another one. I have actually been better about this lately since I got the Xbox and everyone wants to play multiplayer Halo. Today (Sunday) I finally got a chance to wash my car, since it was about 60 or so outside. I then relaxed and felt pretty good about everything in general. Hopefully some stuff I am working on with getting one of these better jobs will work out and then I can just be happy with everything. Right now I have to say that the only thing I don’t enjoy about my life is my job and if I can correct that then I think I will be good for a while.

I talked with maxx on saturday and he had some pretty good ideas about some stuff that I think I am going to look into. They might be a little out there, but I guess no one ever got famous for only doing stuff that was 100% sane. The only problem with some many of the ideas that we have are that they require a base of people that I don’t have right now. Of course I guess you need to start sometime.

In an attempt to open some discussion on this site I will leave it up to anyone who reads this to post a comment on it. Here is the question respond with what you think and why you think that. Is it a good idea to start your own business and have to work to build it or is it better to hire in somewhere and have a “steady” paycheck but not be the boss kinda guy? You make the call!!

One of the reasons that I wanted this kinda format and site was that I wanted to be able to give my thoughts on things that I was interested in. Both now and when I was a kid. A large amount of the nostalgia and desire to talk about this is stuff was generated from a site called X-Entertainment. I guy there named Matt has written a lot of stuff not only about the transformers, but other things that were happening at the time that he was a kid (which is about the time that I was a kid). I don’t want to recreate his work or write like him, but I do want to tell you some things that I think about this stuff as well.

Today I found a site called TFArchive. I spent a large amount of the morning looking through the content that is availible on that site and it has sparked a couple things in my mind that I think are interesting. Some it is about Transformers specifically and some is about story-lines in general.

When I was a kid I missed out on the whole Robotech wave of Sci-Fi. I was just getting old enough to understand what was going on when FASA started taking the ashes of Robotech and creating the BattleTech Universe. Todd’s brother was the first to tell me that some of the ‘Mechs in Battletech were little more than Aerotech fighters from Robotech. He lent me a book which contained the whole history of the Robotech series in it. Read in this format it is more of a story and less of an action cartoon series, but I was still able to get the drift of the series. The interesting part of reading it was that as the story went on good characters started getting killed off. What I have found from reading this style stories since then is that it really isn’t a big deal for good characters to get killed in storylines like this. I was reminded of that today while I was looking at the storylines from the transformer television shows and comic books. In “Transformers the Movie” in the opening 30 minutes almost every Autobot that people knew of got killed. The only one that even got a good death scene was Optimus Prime. The rest (Brawn, Ironhide, Wheeljack, Prowl, Huffer, and Ratchet) all got smoked without a second thought. Now when I was a kid I thought that was pretty bad, but now after I have read the plotline from the comics that seems lightweight. In the comics Optimus Prime is killed and resurrected more times than Freddy and Jason combined. There are more deaths in this storyline then there are in the Godfather movies. One of the few Transformers to actually make it through the whole transformer storyline in both television and comic was Soundwave the Decepticon tape deck. Almost all of the other Transformers either got killed and then reactivated eventually or just got smoked. I now understand why this stuff is done. Because they have to introduce new characters into the stories so that they can sell more toys. It has been acknowledged by some of the people that wrote the movies, television shows and the comics that they were often forced into plotlines so that new toys could be put into the market.

The other thing I noticed is how cool this still seems. Maybe I am having my mid-life crisis now (which sucks since that means I am only going to live to 44 or so) or maybe these things are really just that cool and fun to watch, but I find myself downloading episodes from the television shows and finding people that have scanned the comics into their computers. It is a blast to get to watch some of this stuff with a different perspective than when I watched them before. It also makes me wonder though, what if it were possible to resurrect these shows and storylines? There are hundreds if not thousands of fan sites for Transformers on the internet. There is also a push to bring out new episodes on regular television (Actually I think there is already a new season on, though the bots are more Japanamation style) since the new wave of children have not seen this stuff and will most likely go into a Transformer phase as well if it is put out. The problem with that though is that the shows will again be driven by the desire to sell toys and action figures. Since I am sure HASBRO still owns the right to the Transformer name it would have to be underground style but would it be possible to write scripts/stories for the Transformer universe that didn’t revolve around new toys? Are there such things already out there? I am sure that there are people that are TF fans that can draw, so are there already stories in the making? Google fails to give me these answer readily, but I am investigating.

I used to think that Dilbert the comic was pretty funny. I used to think that Scott Adams was a pretty original and funny guy. Now I realize that he was simply repeating and slightly elaborating on things that are actually said in the corporate world. Now that I have worked in a situation like this I realize that phrases like “I just wanted to touch base,” or “get all my ducks in a row” are not just stupid things that people say to make jokes. They are real phrases that people in corporations say. Some of my real favorite ones are “We are a _blank_ shop here and we don’t use _blank_.” When the group next door to you have 14 machines running software made by _blank_ or how about words like “Paradigm” or “Company Vision”. These are freaking useless words that management and productivity consultants have created meaning for. The longer I work here the more I wonder how anything gets done at all. It also makes you wonder where all this crap got started and how it keeps getting prolonged when it is obvious that it isn’t productive in any way.

I left work Friday feeling beat up and abused. I don’t particularly enjoy my job anymore, and I hope to find something else to do. All I wanted to do when I went home was a whole lot of nothing. I found myself slipping into what I have started to call my yearly depression. See normaly I am a pretty up beat kinda guy, but every now and then (about once a year) I fall into a really bad depression and I cannot seem to be happy about anything. Well Friday didn’t start it, but it sure gave it a good kick in the ass. So I came home and started talking with my dad about some stuff. Mom came home and dad ask her if she wanted to go over to the farm. She agreed and ask me if I wanted to go. Recently I haven’t been going over there as much since it seems that we never have anything to do while over there, but the last couple weeks that has changed and I would say I was somewhat eager to go. We left saturday and spent the weekend over there. I worked outside a lot and felt like I actually had done something which I haven’t really felt that way in a while. At the end of the weekend I can’t say I feel any better about my job and I was still rather depressed that I had to come back, but at least I feel I moved around a little and I feel that I am reconnected to my family a little. I am sad for that in another way though, because I realize that I am approaching a time in my life where I am going to have to leave my family to start my own family and place in life. The more I look at this the more I realize that I don’t want to. I enjoy being around my family. A lot of kids grow up not liking to have to be told what to do and such, but I find that as I have grown up not only have my parents relaxed a little, but I have picked up some perspective on the issues that we had. While I am not always happy with the type of place we live, I find that I don’t really have that many issues with the people that I live with and that I don’t want to leave them.

I had a great time last night with coach Powell. I went over to their house to help Joey with her computer, and ended up going out to eat with them and having a really great time. I so enjoy being around them and listening to their stories and stuff. They also connected me to someone that might be able to help me in getting some business for my extra time. It seems that Coach Powell and Joey know almost everyone and they can always find someone to talk to.

Hey just wanted to give out some kudos to maxx and his admin scott for hooking me up with this new format. This will make it easier for me to post. It will also allow me to merge some cool stuff that I was working on as side projects into this.

Well again I have somewhat slacked off with this. I find myself wanting to spend less time using the phone line at home lately, and since my linux machine here is in a constant state of broken-ness and test cycle that leaves me commonly editing this online. Anyway, the expansion has went off pretty much without a major glitch. Jeremiah and I spent a large amount of time the weekend before trying to get everything ready, but once we had spent that time there were not any real issues. Things have quieted down a lot at work and that has allowed me to really start messing with linux in a domain enviroment, which I think is a pretty cool deal. I have also been working to try and become more knowledgable in the corporate aspects of linux. The Next Level has developed some and I think that we are on our way to getting a idea to roll with. I cannot think of a group of people that seem more interested in what we are working toward, but there is the downside of us having seperate jobs and not being able to devote the time to the group that would really make it great. Hopefully someday we will not have to have those second jobs and we will be able to develop a scheme for money : ).