Penelope moved into Sunset Valley with high hopes. She had limited money, but thought it best to invest in a large plot of land and build her empire there. A little hard work never hurt anyone! So, Penelope bought the plot of land at 15 Summer Hill court and couldn’t help but fill a little overwhelmed at the sight of the mansions surrounding her. This was a good place to start though!

After exploring the land she had bought, she used the reaming money she had on hand to buy the few necessities she could afford and arranged them into a meager shack.

Penelope decided it was time to explore her new town. The first place she decided would be best was the park. That way, maybe, just maybe she could meet some of the locals and possibly find a handsome man to help fulfill her dream legacy.

Penelope came across a lush lime tree and decided the fruit looked too delicious to pass up! So she harvested what she could and put it in her backpack for later.

After gathering what she could from the Lime Trees, Penelope sat down to enjoy a game of chess. All of the people she had seen in the park that day were either engaged in conversation already, old, ugly, or married.

When Penelope had tired of her game of chess, she headed over to the 28-hour Wellness Gym. Being the athletic type, she could really go for a good workout. Not to mention some free food and a nice hot shower on the first floor!

On her way to the shower, Penelope ran into Xander Clavell, a handsome young man who could possibly be the one she chose to start her new life with!

The day had been nice and Penelope had fulfilled her first steps towards her Lifetime Wish by joining the Law Enforcement Field. After her relaxing shower and with a full tummy, Penelope headed back to her make-shift shack and called it a night. Maybe tomorrow would bring better prospects her way!

Yea, this world is hurting too deeply not to give them the One true God, the One true Savior, the One true Hope, the One true Faith and the One true Love that will ever set the spiritual captives free, bring Joy to the depressed, deliver the oppressed and heal the sick, addicted and mentally ill.  

Yea, this world is hurting too deeply to not give people the full glory and the full power of Jesus Christ.

Did I ask too much?

More than a lot,

you gave me nothing, now that’s all I got,

we’re one but we’re not the same,

well we hurt each other and then you do it again. 

You say love is temple, love higher, love is a temple, love the higher law,

you ask me to enter, then you make me crawl….

and I can’t be holding on to what you’ve got

when all you’ve got is hurt

one love… one blood… one life you got to do what you should

one life with each other…sisters, brothers…

One life but we’re not the same, we get to carry each

Carry each other

One…..One….One….One…One

Isn’t it beautiful to see what team work can achieve! Maybe with team work and contributions one day soon we’ll eradicate this insidious disease that has affected all of our lives in one way or another. Let’s dance the Pink Glove Dance, celebrate the survivors, be  warriors, and educate the masses!

I wonder if the Dallas News covered this prime time drama too.

Not to be done by our Australian counter parts, the Dallas News decided to go with a story about Mark Cuban wanting to get retribution on Randy Orton for an RKO he had taken in 2003. Cody Rhodes shot back that he can bring “Cowboys or Mavericks” into a six man match with Legacy. Hey dumb ass, Cuban only owns the Mavericks. The creepy old guy with perma-grin owns the Cowboys. I’d imagine, since the Mavericks don’t have a game, this angle will happen. Cody wants it to happen just so he can not look like a twig in comparison to someone else. Too bad that they’ll probably tower over him, especially if they bring the David Hasselhoff loving Dirk Nowitski. At least the Dallas News is smart enough to not be treating this confrontation as a real assault so we do at least have half a step on those dumb kangaroo humpers. -Kevin

Thanks to Prowrestling.net for bring this story to my attention.

This is inspired by a post from a sweet innocent girl:

“It’s time to scream your silence or err, my silence. I have to talk about this and I know all my male readers will say nothing but I urge all of you to comment, regardless of gender. This time, I hope that everyone that I have subscribed to actually tells me their views on this. It’s about time I hear your voices. By the way, I know I’m a Women and Gender Studies minor, but that has nothing to do with what I’m about to say. I’m just inspired if that’s the right word, I guess.

VAGINA aka pookie, pussy, cunt, cooch, cooter, punani, twat, lovebox, box, poontang, cookie, fuckhole, cock warmer, fish sandwich, love hole, stinkhole, black hole of calcutta (say what?!), peach, meat massager, pussycat, cockring, little debbie, and whatever else you want to add is so taboo. Vagina, kya?

Vagina, what?

Ever since I was little, I had a body, (of course you had a body Namrata) and I always wondered when it was going to grow, like those women on television. I always wondered and wondered. I was a confused little girl. I used to get excited by seeing people kiss because I thought one day I would also kiss a man. See what society put into my head– I would kiss a man. There goes my option of being a lesbian and whatever. I knew I had breasts and a vagina, this entry amuses me by the way and I never talked about it to anyone.

By the time I was in third or fourth grade, I got a “training bra.” I remember my mother with me at Kids R’Us as I tried on some and that didn’t work. We moved onto K-Mart and such types of stores. God, when was the last time I walked into a K-Mart? And now look, I’m buying bras from Victoria Secret thinking the sexy in me will come out if I wear their things, little do I know… well okay anyway, and then came the time of the thongs and such.

In high school, I used to wonder how people got to hide their underwear lines. I used to think to myself “I need a pair of those secret ones!” Yes, I was a confused high school-er my first year. I realized it was called a thong. Oooooh, scandalous. My mother, as I ended up buying some thongs, would say to me how could you wear those things, beta? Who’s going to see you in them? Of course, I would see myself in them, wasn’t that enough?

We all do things because of society (and because we have no courage to do things that we want do to). Face it. If we didn’t have to go to school, we wouldn’t, now would we? How many of us would slave away reading about biology because half of you are pre-med duhh and all that nonsense? Not many, right? We do these things to earn money to get what we want, which society makes us do.

In that sense, we follow all the rules of society for society so in the end, we can be somewhat happy, if that’s what you call happiness! So, let me wear my thong or even g-string even if no one is going to see it. I want to do something for myself that involves no one but me. Now that we got that out of the way…

So, vaginas! I never talked about this with anyone. I, as a woman went through all that PMS stuff yes, but that’s all that was told to me. I don’t think anyone really says shave it- but women in general as I have noticed assume that that is what we should do. I mean, what guy is really going to like hair or as they say, a bush? So, of course we all follow this way.

On top of that, women (most women that is) hide the fact that they masturbate. Why? And then most women don’t even do it or know how to do it. Why are we so afraid to please ourselves or to admit that we want to or have? Why? Society wants women to stay all innocent.

Innocent? Who’s still innocent in America? Don’t you love my judgements and assumptions?

My point is… why can’t we, as women, be open about such things and not care? Why can’t we have an orgasm and not have to worry about giving head to a guy in return for the pleasure he gave us? Why does everything have to always be a compromise because in many ways, life is really not a compromise, especially for women. That’s the truth.

And… of course… why can’t we just know what a real orgasm feels like… many of us haven’t ever felt one, we just pretend we know. But do we really know, now that is the question…

As a South Asian woman, I can say that it’s even more taboo to be sitting here and discussing this, but I just had to come out and say it. I have always been so confused and in my own world about this stuff. I keep it all to myself because I, too, am afraid of what others might think or say about the things that I question.

PS. My vagina does not smell like curry.

PS2. No, not the video game set. This entry was obviously inspired by the Vagina Monologues. Next semester, be sure to keep in touch with me as the Desi Intercultural Youth Association (DIYA) will be performing the South Asian version of the Vagina Monologues- Yoni Ki Baat which was previously performed at UC Berkley. Interested in acting? Contact me.

- Namrata.”

Now….

A few days ago a friend of mine who’s doing her PHD asked me to come over and help her with her thesis – I thought this would be interesting, so I trudged over. Well, guess what, she told me what her topic is over lunch:

Men in Veil: Proving the superiority of women.

I really had to try very hard to not keep smiling – and I think I failed at that bit, but I was only laughing because she is so adorable: I asked her why she chose that for a topic. She replied, “I just woke up one morning and decided, yep, this is going to be my topic.” That’s one of the things I love about her – she is quite a brilliant girl who has a knack for thinking out of the box.

So, I asked her, “So women are superior in which way?” She replied, “I don’t know yet.” *lol* But as we chat, I started to see tremendous potential in the topic.

I know a few essential things about feminism; namely Wollstonecraft’s profound work and Simone De Bouvoir’s Second Sex. Once I sat in a feminism course that I hadn’t signed up for – lol – just to see what the deal was. I think I chose a good day, because on that day I was introduced to Wollstonecraft.

She really defined feminism perfectly: Feminism isn’t about women proving to men that they are equal. It’s not about women retaliating against men who try to subdue or suppress them. Feminism is about women realising for THEMSELVES that they are equal. This still seems to be the vital issue.

You see, the way Wollstonecraft explained it, if women all over the world began to truly live as though they were equal – men would have absolutely no say, nor choice, in the matter. It has nothing to do with men – in a sense, men already know; they are just abusing their power until women come to their senses.

Now, the equality of all things is obvious, isn’t it? We are no superior to a rat – our intelligence doesn’t even make us superior, infact, it urges us to be MORE responsible.

So, my friend Rana decides to approach this issue by thinking out of the box. Why concentrate on equality? Infact, why not try in complete objectivity to prove the superiority of women. What could be a better challenge than to make a convincing argument to that regard in a PHD thesis?

I loved the idea. I usually love all ideas where someone chooses to do something very challenging. So, she’s going to concentrate on Arab women, particularly on Iranian female filmmakers, who she knows quite a bit about. Which gave me the chance to check out an Iranian film – I’d never even thought to see one before. But have you noticed that Iranian films are now winning prestigious awards in art film festivals? They’ve nearly dominated Cannes for the last three years. Anyway, that’s another topic.

And “Men in Veil” – Rana wants to show that men make women wear the veil in Arab countries because it is truly the men who are behind the veil: their own inner turmoil and fears – which they project onto women. It is a reflection of them. Nice idea.

When it comes down to it though, Wollstonecraft was the master (or mistress): She was telling women to educate themselves – NOT to become yet another angry feminist. From everything I understand of what she explained, feminism isn’t about a self-righteous indignation at being oppressed. It’s much more like Ahimsa – as Gandhi taught.

Women are a completely different species to men. Saying ‘I have a vagina’ is more like a conscious awareness of what it means to be feminine – it’s not an idea, or a theory, or a fleeting thought…. it’s a state of being – of being a woman for the sake of being a woman.

What I mean is, you probably already know that most women go to great lengths to make themselves look great – they groom themselves, for men. They do it for us… so that we may find them beautiful. The innate nature of feminine beauty also lies in its appreciation.

By saying ‘I have a vagina’, I think the implication is that a woman chooses to be beautiful for herself, and not for anyone else. If someone else finds her breathtaking, then good, but even when she is alone… she finds herself beautiful. This is such an important thing, isn’t it? To not need someone else to tell you that you are beautiful in order for you to believe it.

This, I think, is what Namrata meant about wearing a g-string even IF no one else is going to see it. That is very empowering.

True, the person comes first…

The penis is objectified – and so is the vagina – and we miss the whole meaning of what it really is all about. If we don’t hold onto one thing, don’t we hold onto another? If not for our sexuality, then onto religion, or onto money, or our pride or whatever else… we’re holding on… and sometimes, we hold onto the fact that we’re a person…

It’s all supposed to come naturally isn’t it? And it does. When we don’t think about it – when we just do it – everything that comes out of us is the most natural thing on earth.

Why do we label anything at all?

‘Marriage material’ – took me a whole bloody long time to get over that ideology. For a long time what I wanted in a wife was the normal bloody set of criteria… you know… ‘virgin, cooks’ etc etc. Mostly stamped into place from heritage and family, parents… and every other environmental phenomenon that comes part and parcel with being Asian.

Breaking these stereotypes in my mind was one of the most difficult things – and I only did it because I wanted to be honest with myself. Why do I want to marry a virgin anyway? How does that make me feel better, really? I mean, in the end, does it? Ok fine, so I feel happy for a while that I’m the only guy my wife has fucked – but what kind of happiness is that? Ownership? Doesn’t feel like much, does it?

But when you’re actually IN that state of mind – the lust takes over to madden your mind with reckoning power.

If you’re a big Critical Results fan–and who isn’t?–you may have missed my regular blog updates for the last week and a half. Let me tell you what’s going on.

The weekend before last, I was completely saturated in Startup Weekend Cleveland, which in short was great fun and very educational. It starts at 6pm on Friday and ostensibly ends around 9pm on Sunday, but like most of the groups that coalesced there, our startup (a little thing called MyCleTV) is still together and still working on our big idea. But the intensive weekend is tiring, and it sucked all my energy for at least a few days afterwards. So last week was not a good time to get anything done (like blogging) that wasn’t strictly required.

This week has been even more intense though. I am finishing the four-month migration of a scientific application from a legacy Visual Basic platform to .NET. The last parts of specialized hardware just arrived yesterday at the build site. The machines were assembled at around 3pm. At 5pm the project owner told me that one completed machine will be delivered to a client next week, and another one the week after that to a different client.

Let me make one thing clear: this means that as of lunchtime yesterday, I’d been spending four months developing software for a hardware device that didn’t yet exist and now that it exists I have two days to ensure that it works. Wish I knew someone who specializes in “Software Projects That Suck!”

I was a little panicked by this.

I’m getting paid for the project regardless, because my contract doesn’t have an immediate deadline, but it’s important for the client to get the maximum possible use out of my implementation. Getting the software installed on the next go-round would be acceptable, in the sense that it wouldn’t wreck the project or cause a business disaster, but we really do want it to go live next week. My list of unresolved issues is about half a page of handwritten single-line entries. That’s a lot to do in two days.

On second thought, wait, no. The previous four months were devoted to refactoring the heck out of that unstructured legacy code. It’s easy to read and easy to modify. If the (never before tested) unsafe C# interfaces I wrote for the legacy DLL drivers for the hardware components don’t work, I know exactly where to go to fix them. The fact that my database moved to a new location is minor. Our specialized input device really does just dump bits to a buffer; it’s not that hard.

What I did

In any case, the project owner is in a hurry and confidence is important. So first thing this morning, I made a separate listing of the path from here to live rollout. It’s actually not bad at all, mostly stuff like this:

• log software installation steps so they can be replicated later
• database startup verified
• demonstrate grab of input buffer
• demonstrate foo
• demonstrate calibration
• fix coding of the Generic List of Baz, known issue there
• demonstrate Quux algorithm

That’s the essence of today’s list. Tomorrow’s goes like this:

• demonstrate functionality of X/Y/Z settings
• demonstrate saving output to database
• demonstrate saving output to flat files
• demonstrate calculation of yea certain “critical result”
• demonstrate four other items I won’t describe even vaguely in the blog

And for any leftover time (hah!) I have these tasks:

• Remove unused legacy DLLs from build
• Re-run all unit tests
• Rebuild as “production” rather than “test” code
• Bump software version in build
• Commit one last time to Subversion repository
• Create final installer package

There’s more, but you see the point. Notably, this is not a bug or defect list. It’s a progress list. We’re not aiming necessarily for bug-free; while it’s obviously important for the code to be right, that’s not the same thing as fixing things that are wrong.

The process is key

Today and tomorrow, and perhaps part of Saturday, the idea is to keep things moving forward. If I focused on a bug list, I’d be fixing bugs. I need to focus on a progress list instead, and if bugs are uncovered along the way then they’ll get prioritized.

Where I’ll be

Between now and Sunday you’ll find me either pushing this progress list, or refilling on espresso. In the meantime, help me out here. What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? What part of this isn’t Agile enough? And please share your tips and war stories about using legacy DLLs from C#.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

A moving contemporary dance piece by Legacy & Kathryn from “So You Think You Can Dance”.

so thanks to lindy, i’ve officially been hooked on so you think you can dance. i know this is probably the most gayest thing i’ve ever posted in the four score years i’ve been blogging – but i have to give it up to this breakdancer ‘legacy’. he’s been one of my favourites throughout the competition and today, after making it through to the top 10 dancers, he performed his solo which was simply amazing.

it’s kind of ridiculous how good this guy is, and even though i don’t know squat about dance, this has to be one of the best breakdancing routines i’ve ever seen in my life. make sure you check this out.

CLICK HERE

UPDATE : i take that back. after watching the results show, the new step up 3D movie was announced and the main dance crew – the legion of extraordinary dancers – performed. this has to be the best fucking dance routine i’ve seen in my life.

WATCH IT HERE

DESIDERATA

(Written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s)

My absolute favorite:

I completely agree with what Adam said the WOW moments have been so few and far between this season. Ellenore and Jakob showed everyone how good these minute and a half dances can be and it really made me wish they had been together all along. In my opinion, Ellenore is emerging as a dark horse. She has been in some of the most memorable routines so far this season and this routine really showed her to be a star. 

And in 2nd place:

I LOVE RUSSELL. But I still can’t call a clear cut winner. Jakob is still the best, but I’m not sure if he’ll be the favorite. No surprise here: I thought Kathryn was great in both her dances, but man, was Nathan a different boy this week or what? I didn’t catch last week’s results show but they must have torn him up. I think he swung too far the opposite way in his emotions to be likable this week. He just seemed so, so sad. This girl was a surprise for me: Noelle.  She had a great night esp. in the hip hop. Her partner Ryan did well too, but male ballroom dancer’s solos always seem weird.

The worst:

I knew Ashleigh would be revealed for the lame duck she is, but the bad thing is Legacy, one of my absolute favorite dancers, was partnered with her. BUT I should say, I really think these 2 looked so awful because of choreography. As Adam pointed out, we all know they can both do hip hop, so a lame routine might land them in the bottom.

In the bottom: We’re so close to the end and its getting harder and harder to predict. So I’m going to throw a hail Mary-

Girls: Ashleigh, Mollee, Noelle     Boys: Ryan, Nathan, Legacy

“I was going to witness to her.”

My 14 year old daughter was telling me of a witnessing opportunity she (almost) had on Saturday. She and her best friend were downtown perusing the second hand teen boutique and the $5 pizza shop. Near the pizza place was an elderly Chinese lady sitting at the bus stop. My daughter sat down on the bench next to her and offered her their leftover pizza slices. She may have been considering her new “Chinese 1″language skills. “I was going to witness to her”, she told me, but was not able to have much of a conversation because the bus came right then. But she was going to! God has answered my prayer and has given her a heart for lost people! I am so thankful!

After more than a month since Ubuntu/Kubuntu 9.10 codename Karmic Koala was released, here are some thoughts and noteworthy things about it:

Grub2

Ubuntu 9.10, among other recent Linux distros, now uses Grub2. I didn’t read all the release notes, and when I suddenly became curious at taking a look at my menu.lst to see what Grub2 has in store for me, I was in for a surprise. Grub2 doesn’t use menu.lst anymore. It seems menu.lst is already part of legacy Grub. Initially I disliked this, having used menu.lst since I started Linux (6 years ago). The menu.lst has now been superseded by the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file. However, the grub.cfg file is preferably not to be edited by the user, as it is automatically generated by other scripts such as grub-mkconfig. Now I think it’s a good idea to have this boot file editable by a script, which has rigid syntax and rules in order to properly create a boot config file. Of course, nobody is really stopping the hacker inside any of us to not edit the file, nor to create our own menu.lst, or even to revert to legacy Grub versions.

source/s:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
• man file of grub-mkconfig

Xorg

Ubuntu 9.10 also uses the updated version of Xorg  (as of typing this I use version 1.6.4) doesn’t use an xorg.conf anymore. As Ben Grim/The Thing puts it, “What a revoltin’ development!”. Again initially I was irked by this, but later I also realized it was for the better, since xorg.conf was becoming too cryptic for newer users of Linux. Now the xorg.conf tasks are being handled by several other config files and scripts.

Which got me thinking, since xorg.conf has already been deprecated, what of the ctrl+alt+backspace that we (or at least I) have grown to love when restarting X? It turns out, the ‘dontzap’ option didn’t work anymore, I tried it. The ‘dontzap’ directive worked for 9.04, but apparently not so for 9.10 onwards.  As a result, one way to turn on ‘ctrl+alt+backspace’ back in Kubuntu via graphical method is as follows:

Enabling Ctrl-Alt-Backspace for Kubuntu

• Click on the Application launcher and select “System Settings”
• Click on “Regional & Language”.
• Select “Keyboard Layout”.
• Click on “Enable keyboard layouts” (in the Layout tab).
• Select the “Advanced” tab. Then select “Key sequence to kill the X server” and enable “Control + Alt + Backspace”.

Or, for command line folks like me, by doing

setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

source/s:

• http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/DontZap

Deprecation of hal

Several scripts, including devkit-power and devkit-disks are being used as replacements for hal. So far no issues here, and I think so far power as well as disk management in 9.10 is doing great. I do still see hald running in my machine, wonder why that is.

Some caveats and surprises

I’ve had several issues regarding my initial install of Kubuntu 9.10 32 bit desktop. One was Dolphin crashed a few times while I was dragging and dropping files to VLC’s playlist window. These crashes happened in the first 2 to 3 weeks of my installation, regardless of my constant updating of the system. The great thing however is that KDE wallet, coupled with the revamped bug reporting of KDE 4.3.X/Kubuntu 9.10 makes it so much easier to report bugs nowadays. Eat your heart out Micro$oft. I do wish they’d fix and close the bug soon.

I haven’t really been using Konqueror a lot lately since Kubuntu 9.10 now has an ‘Install Mozilla Firefox browser’ option included, even in the live version of the OS, which is nice. In the KDE 3.5.X era I used Konqueror a lot, not as a browser but as a very useful file, ssh, ftp, samba, whathaveyou browser. Nowadays Dolphin is all that except a browser. I can still use Konqueror as my main file browser though, I might try that some time. But I’ve grown to slowly accept Dolphin in my day to day computing tasks. The previews, zoom in/out sliders,  different panels, and the widget make of Dolphin make it a delight to use. So so far no issues with Konquer in 9.10 yet.

Dolphin also makes management of drives a breeze, whether they be internal (IDE, SATA etc.) or external (USB drives, media players etc.). The Oxygen theme also looks very sleek and futuristic.

As with my installation of Ubuntu 9.04, ext4 was a marvel to behold, more so since the 9.10 version uses ext4 by default. Even with apache2 and mysql running at boot, my boot time is well under 30 seconds, even with older single core procs.  Scripts like ureadahead make booting much faster.

Conclusion – for now

Other than perhaps minor setbacks I forgot to mention, plus the introduction of some new technologies I listed above, the 9.10 version of Ubuntu/Kubuntu is a marvelous piece of work, stability, dependability,  and usability wise in my opinion. So far. Can’t wait for 10.04/Lucid Lynx.

Hello friends!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been asking you the question, “what will be your legacy?”  And so many of you have responded to us on the Pulse Legacy Line.  Thank you!

Now, we’d like to ask you to help make the Pulse legacy… YOUR legacy!  The Pulse is having a special day of broadcasting today to share the needs of the Pulse ministry and how YOU can help us continue to bring the message and love of Jesus Christ to Central Minnesota.

Today is an important day.  Would you ask God how you can financially and prayerfully help support The Pulse?

Thanks, and may God bless you.

Adam Hannan
866-568-4422
www.100thepulse.org

My friend anthony sent me a text this morning with a photo from October’s edition of performance VW mag, and the photo was of a photo Dave Mann took of me and my car at a car show from the summer.
Pretty random if you ask me Haha.

Also this month is one year for Full Lock so I’m going to try to post every day so if any one has some ideas or something they would like to see here let me know with a comment or email me at llooggaann@gmail.com