Essential Programs
-------------------

Open Office - http://www.openoffice.org/
WinHTTrack - http://www.httrack.com/
Eraser - http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/
PeerGuardian - http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
Firefox - http://www.mozilla.com
Free Download Manager - http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
uTorrent - http://www.utorrent.com/
7-Zip - http://www.7-zip.org/
The GIMP - http://www.gimp.org/
Trillian - http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/
ACDsee Classic - http://www.tucows.com/preview/194991
DirectX - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.mspx
AVG Antivirus - http://free.grisoft.com/
Jetico Firewall - http://www.jetico.com/
Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
LAME MP3 encoder - http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~raa110/audacity/lame.html
Tracks Eraser Pro - http://www.acesoft.net/
Windows Media Player - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/
Ad Aware - http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
Spybot Search and Destroy - http://www.safer-networking.org/
k-Lite Mega Codec Pack - http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm
Media Player Classic - http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
TrueCrypt - http://www.truecrypt.org/

stolen with no compunction whatsoever

I want a Ninja.

Read that again. I do not want to *become* a Ninja. That, while in itself would be awesome if I could just take a pill and become one, is not what I am talking about. First of all, while I like challenges I am not up for years of isolated training in some temple in Japan in the wilderness; only eating rice; doing backbreaking labor for some shrunken old man who I know could rip out my own spine and show it to me as I was falling to the ground:

Ninja Master: “Ha, ha. Dat’s yours!”
ME: What the…*thud*

No, in spite of cool forearm scars from carrying boiling hot cauldrons and skills that would be the envy of all, I would rather have a Ninja than become one. Not have like a slave was owned by a cracker in the south. But perhaps a life debt was owed to me by him because I saved his sister from rape or I pulled him from a swirling pool when he was only 5 and ever since not drowning he has spent the rest of his life doing the aforementioned training and once completing it tracked me down to declare that he is on my servitude forever.

Don’t get me wrong, I would treat my Ninja with the utmost respect. Besides the fact that I am a decent human being and I know that once he has sworn a life debt to me he must serve me in every way, I would rather not have a disgruntled ninja in my keep. I want him very gruntled actually. Sure there will be cultural differences and we will never like the same shows on TV. But while I am watching Scrubs, Ryu would be off with his shuriken practicing unbelievable moves on all the flour-filled dummies we would have in our training room. (Um, of course there would be a training room…he’s a Ninja!) So hanging out would never be an uncomfortable thing.

Why do I want a Ninja? I think it is obvious and every man reading this post is already envisioning the possibilities that would be endless if you had a Ninja at your disposal. And I am not even talking (yet) about the nefarious things you could get away with if a Ninja was in your keep. In fact, to appease the gods and possibly make my dream come true, (I did one time take a very drunken Asian friend home from a party who could have easily been taken advantage of…who knows, she might have a brother, and that brother might be looking for me right now…If he is, this is for him: “Hey, Isaki! I am in Arlington. Just reply to this anonymous post and we will hook up. Grab a little saki. You can explain to me the details of your life debt. You know, whatever.” …but I digress.), I will stick to all the non illegal ways I would use my Ninja. Well, slightly illegal but not bank robbing etc.

How will he make my life better? Let me just list a few ways:

Metro: No more waiting in lines. Everyone will be watching the black pajama-ed man with only his eyes showing, and what are obviously various weapons of death on his back or in his hands or what have you, and no one will be paying any attention to me as I slide right through. If anyone breaks any of the common courtesy laws of public transportation, the katana will become unsheathed and said offender will be sliced in half.
• Walking on the left on the escalator? *Swoosh* Two halves of Tourist Joe lie on the stairs that I will now step over.
• Trying to get on before I get off Pushy Native Metro User? *Slash* Now, consider that a warning to everyone else.

Clubs/bars: Now I can go dancing without having to be elbowed by Frat boy Jack as he a). tries to simply stand on the motherf’in dance floor while the rest of us dance
b). tries to grind his crotchticular region into the poor girl in front of him who is just trying to bust a move to Robin Thicke’s “When I Get you Alone” (sing along:

Well does she want me to carry her home now?
So does she want me to buy her things?
On my house, on my job
On my loot, shoes, my shirt,
My crew, my mind, my father's last name? )

Said offender will have a garrote wrapped around his neck so quickly and drug into the darkest corner to be gutted so quickly that even if the bouncer was paying attention instead of marveling at how huge his arms are/wondering how he will wipe his own ass tonight, he wouldn’t even know what had happened.

Library: Can’t reach that book? Wire with mouthyhook thing will shoot out of his sleeve/arm/wrist and grab that top shelf book and bring it to you Mortal Kombat style (“GET OVER HEEERE!). By the way, you (reader), SO just said that out loud.

The possibilities are endless but I know your attention span is dwindling. Let’s just say that there is nothing, NOTHING, which having a ninja (like a midget friend) around wouldn’t make better.

So pardon me as I need to hit Chinatown and look to see if there are any drowning children (it sure did rain last night!) or perhaps a bullied girl whose honor I can save and therefore get my own Ninja.

Now this is impressive --

http://www.pipersprecisionproducts.com/m134_6mm.htm

It's a BB minigun, capable of up to 3,000 rounds per minute.
Mmmmmm......I want.

One of the most subtle pieces of humor I've ever found, very british in its delivery --

"As he walked past her in the traincar, he glanced aside and thought, 'Wow, she's reading Nietzche.' As he passed, she looked up and thought, 'Wow, nice buns.'"

How do you define definition?

Language has always been one of my passions - the entomology of words and phrases, the evolution of meaning over time. More than that, I'm facinated by the way that we use language to view the world around us, how it can shape and influence the world within us. The philosophy of vocabulary.

It's not a new idea, by any means. The ideas follow themselves back as far as we have words to describe them. Orwell, Marx, and further, religions that believe that names have power, that to know something's name is to have power over it. Think about it. Assemble your expectations, examine how you look at the world.

Our spoken and written language is a symbolic one. Each collection of letters is a symbol for a sound, each collection of sounds is a symbol for a thing or an action. Our language is a representation of reality. We understand the world through symbols, we transmit information through symbols - I say cat, you see a cat in your mind. The cat that I see is not the cat you see. The language of symbols is flawed, the images are unprecise. You need more words to define the first, words for colour, size, shape, texture, position - the transmission is never exact. Each extra word brings you closer, but you can only spend so much time describing a cat, and like a ball thrown at a window, halving its distance in infinately smaller increments, you're never. quite. there.

It goes further. How do we describe something for which we have no word? Our understanding of our world is through words. If you have no word for it, you use others - descriptions, definitions of form. What happens, though, if you have no words for something? How can you comprehend something if you have no tools for it? Take that to the next logical step - If we define our understanding of the world around us through the fundamental connection between language of and reality, can it not work both ways? God spoke, and the usiverse was created. Nifty thought, neh?

Before I meander off, here's one final interesting tidbit - the longer a word, the more exact its meaning. A short word can have many, many uses, but the longer it gets, the greater its precision. Ever wonder what god calls himself?

Meandering thoughts:

In todays corporate world, it's often normal to feel that you're nothing more than a cog in the great corporate machine. The sad truth is that you are a replacable cog. Welcome to the machine. Being replacable isn't all that much of a problem, however. We're all replacable, when you get right down to it. We're all unique, just like everybody else. The trick is not to be irreplacable, the trick is to not be redundant. However, standing up, pointing to your workmate, and repeatedly screaming "REDUNDANT!!!!!!!!!" over and over again may not, in fact, be the best way to ensure job security.

The first post is always the most difficult, like trying to introduce yourself to a beautiful woman. So many things to say, and nothing really sounds good enough.

Atlanta has proven the truth of the old adage - individually people are intelligent and capable. Beware of the power of stupid people in large groups, however. A whiff of a gas shortage, and what happens -- there's a run on the gas stations causing, you guessed it, a gas shortage. Then Perdue deciding to freeze prices to prevent price gouging. I wonder if people would have been as eager to fill the tanks on all three of their SUV's if they had to pay $7 a gallon for gas. I wonder if the shortage would have been as bad if the laws of supply and demand had been allowed to control the marketplace.

In a perfect world, it would have worked. Supply is low, demand is high, price goes up, people decide to fill only one tank of gas, instead of all their cars and 20 more gallons in gas cans. They only take what they need, the supply lasts longer. In a perfect world. What do I think would have happened? Easy. Gas pushes $7 a gallon. People are outraged. There would be shootings. Fights with gas station personnel. After all, don't we have a right to our gas? Just like we've got a right to a job, and a car, and all the other bullshit that people used to have to earn.

Ah well, such is life. An imperfect world. The center has not held and we're slipping a little farther from the center every day.

Now, that wasn't so difficult. Perhaps I'll introduce myself to the next beautiful woman that I see.

Or maybe I won't push my luck. ..