The Brain of Shawn

Vacation day. Weeeee!!!!!!

Proof I’m slightly insane, flickr style…

The biggest thing that concerns me about my recent Linux Journal article, is that people might think my hair is normally like the photo… If you’re looking for a laugh at my expense, feel free to click through.

(And please Digg the article too, if you like it and know what Digg is…)

read more | digg story

I found ‘em!!! (They had fallen off the bookshelf) Yes, I realize I’m supposed to take them at night. If I do, however, I wake up 274 times to pee. I do not enjoy waking up that many times, but admittedly, I prefer it over wetting the bed. So my new “in the morning” method is fully doctor approved.

Oh, and thanks for all the pokes.

(Read here for links to the whole story, and why it’s being written)

Blink/Sophie sat in as fetal a position as possible in the corner of a phone booth outside of Negworth, Amsterdam. Their recent merging was, of course, successful. Both minds were now in perfect harmony, and mostly open to one another. Therein started the awful realization.

“Blink, it’s so hard because our memories don’t line up exactly right. Is that because we interpreted the situations differently?”, thought Sophie.

“Well, normally I’d say yes”, thought Blink, “But our memory divergence goes far beyond what differing points of view would explain. Apart from our thread-bonded love and compassion, everything seems different in our pasts. Even our recent past.”

“Blink, we’ve both changed. I’m a little girl living in the head of… of… well, we’re in the same head!”

“I know sweetie, and I’m so happy to be merged with you.” Blink emoted love to Sophie. “Travel back in our memories though. I’m not even sure what a coconut is, and yet, you remember — no, experienced — us both living on them. Sophie, I’ve never been to a desert island.”

Blink could feel fear well up inside Sophie. Horrible scenes of Not-Sophie, emotions of pain, and crippling terror were flooding their consciousness.

“Sophie! Wait!” Blink solidified their thread-bond, and opened his entire consciousness to her. “I don’t want you to think I’m anything other than Blink. Sophie, you can see everything that I am. I love you. I can’t lie to you. I will not hurt or deceive you.” He could feel her calm down, and relaxed himself too.

Blink/Sophie worked together, slowly piecing together the horrible truth regarding the sterilization fleet. It was Sophie that first realized the fleet wasn’t destroying planets, but rather, terraforming the galaxy piece by piece into parallel universes in order to create the perfect Tragethen empire. Why destroy a planet, when enough dimensional shifting would bring forth a slave planet?

“Sophie!” thought-shouted Blink, “That explains their need for a dual mind!”

Blink/Sophie began to realize the futility in the way the Space Force was trying to defeat the Trageth. Amassing armies was pointless, and the SF officers with their single minds had no way of knowing the Trageth were just trying to keep them all busy. Just as Blink/Sophie started to plan their next move, the phone booth seemed to change.

You might notice that I have a little widget in the upper right hand corner, which I update when I take my blood pressure medicine every morning. It’s there, because I’m HORRIBLE about remembering such things, and a few folks are kind enough to remind me if I don’t.

This post shall be the official, “Remind Shawn” post. If it’s after 8:30AM EST, and I haven’t updated that widget in the corner, please don’t hesitate to slap me around a bit in the comment section. I deserve it.

(I don’t, however, deserve the kindness of you guys reminding me — but I’m just going to be thankful, and accept it on behalf of my family. They kinda want me around for the long haul, and high blood pressure sorta negates that likelihood. Thanks again.)

Yesterday, Linux Journal let me go crazy with an April Fool’s Day joke. I came up with the idea to switch our focus to an old operating system, BeOS, and pretended to seriously report on things pertaining to BeOS. The whole LJ crew got into the fun, and we ended up with quite a round of shenanigans throughout the day.

The downside is that I started working at Linux Journal a couple years too late. April Fool’s website spoofs aren’t nearly as popular as they once were, so the word didn’t get out like it might have even as little as one year ago. Still, it was incredibly fun, and for the most part was taken well by the audience. I particularly enjoyed writing the absurd little “articles” that posted on the front page. They’re very short, and linked below if anyone wants to see them:

• Video explaining the editorial shift
• Go Purple for Pentium Pro
• BeOS - The King of Recycling
• Antiquated Hardware Revitalized, Not Happy
• Bloggers are Bonkers for BeOS!
• BeOS Cluster Goes Live
• Sony Rumored to Buy BeOS
• NYC Subways Embed BeOS
• Operating System Programmers Flock to BeOS

The funniest part of the day was that a comment on the youtube video appreciated my humor, and thought my geeky hairdo was “staged” for the spoof. Uh… That’s just how my hair looks.

Thanks to all that played along, and thanks to Linux Journal for allowing my idea to overtake the website.

You have to be a geek to appreciate this…

As a public service to the blogosphere, I will give the following advice:

6AM EST is not 9AM PST. It is, in fact, 3AM PST, and not a terribly appropriate time for an online meeting.

You’re welcome.

Pictured here, you see McDonald’s new “Sweet Tea”, which apparently is meant to add to the Southern Style menu that is fashionable of late. I like tea. I like sugar. Sweet tea, however, mixes the two ingredients in an unholy ratio. While I haven’t scientifically measured, I estimate the sugar-to-tea ratio is about eleventy five bajillion to one. I’ve eaten sugar cubes that are less sweet than this stuff.

The scary part, is that upon asking a friend that lives in the south about this crazy Northern version of the beverage that is so common in the south, he assured me that it’s probably sweeter down there. (This, by the way, would only be possible by creating some tea-based super solution, which would instantly crystallize when ingested. I’m just sayin’)

Soooo…. What the heck?!?!! Y’all from down south: Do you really enjoy this sort of thing? Do you also suck the honey right out of the honey bear too? Has the heat gotten to all y’all?

Oh, and there is a particularly sweet, slightly brown snowbank outside my house.