Cloud Computing

Cloud computing seems, to me, to be a level between personal computing and the thin client model.

A thin client (or dumb terminal) is a computer which has limited capabilities, instead leaving the heavy computing to remote servers. Thin clients use less power as a result of their lesser abilities compared to an average PC.

With cloud computing, you would use your PC’s web browser (or standalone web application) in order to use the capabilities provided by many (not necessarily powerful) computers working together for that purpose. I believe that this is functionally equivalent to the use of a thin client.

The similarity is apparent, but the difference is the more important aspect. With cloud computing, you don’t deny the capabilities of your own computer. There is no reason why your data must be stored remotely, on some unknown computer. Using a web application might require that the servers have a working copy of your data, but that does not imply that they need to store your data permanently. Supposing that one can rely on the organization providing the cloud service to keep the working copy secure and in tact, deleting it completely only when done with it, then the reliability issue is trivial. Of course there is still the need for a reliable connection.

Then again, the door is opened for true thin clients. What is a netbook? It is a limited capability notebook. To cut costs, the use of less capable OSes made sense for netbooks. After all, a netbook was meant to do but a few things: web browse, word process, email and very little else. Think about it; who needs a powerful PC when a cheap netbook can accomplish the same things by use of cloud services? Word processing can already by done online (e.g. Google Docs), and the only non-online aspect of email is choosing where you keep your messages stored (e.g. use of Outlook vs use of Hotmail).

Cloud computing really isn’t anything special if you already use email. The trust you place in a web service like Hotmail is considerably great, depending on the content of your email. It might not be that special, but it is an important part of our computing experience. To be able to access and modify documents where ever we are, whenever we want is a great convenience. A more professional entity (e.g. a private company) would most likely want its own servers handling its own special purpose computing, but the idea is the same, so long as some remote client is utilizing those special purpose servers.

In essence, cloud computing means that computing becomes more convenient. It also means that hardware requirements for the end-user aren’t a concern. Consider the idea of “cloud gaming” (OnLive). Imagine playing processor/graphics card intensive games without even owning a discrete video card. Of course, the main concerns relate to internet connection; how much bandwidth (speed), and how much bandwidth (caps) do you have? If the computing part of gaming is off-loaded, then that leaves the displaying part (relay of video/audio), and – depending on the quality – can be very bandwidth intensive.

I haven’t really said anything interesting, but it is satisfying to lay my thoughts out here. To sum this entry up (tl;dr), the concept of cloud computing isn’t anything special, but its implementation makes for interesting conversation.

Washing Windows: Partitioning

It’s been ages since I’ve posted anything. To be honest, it’s because I haven’t had anything interesting to post about. Well, it could be argued that I never had anything interesting to post about in the first place.

Anyways, I want to talk about Windows XP again. I didn’t really see the need to clarify that I was using XP before because the only obvious alternative to that is Vista, and… well, why would anyone talk about Vista? But seriously, with 7 on the way (and the release candidate sitting on one of my hard drives as I type), I think it is time to specify my version. Perhaps I did specify before, but I can’t remember (it’s been that long).

What I want to talk about is partitioning XP. Just a quick warning: don’t do any of this unless you’re confident enough. I take no blame for any loss of time or data relating to what I describe here on in.

With any installation of Windows, you need at least one drive. It doesn’t have to be “C” so I won’t say it’s the “C drive”. I’d like to call it the “system drive”, but that’s not quite right.

Now, this might sound stupid to you (it certainly does to me), but XP itself calls that partition the “boot” drive (just check Disk Management in the Microsoft Management Console). When I installed XP on my laptop, I created three partitions; the third partition is the one that I chose to install XP onto. The first partition I created was 8MB large. (Yes, that’s MB, not GB.) The second was about 1.5 times the size of memory on my laptop.

Obvious the second partition was for the page file, but the first? You see, when I chose to install XP onto the third partition, XP couldn’t just use that one partition for its installation. It needed to place the boot loader (ntldr) in the first partition. That’s the so-called “system” drive.

So far, so good? First partition contains boot loader and is the system drive, second contains the page file, and third contains XP itself and is the boot drive. The two titles are swapped as far as I’m concerned. All three if you count the “swap drive”.

Now, when I got XP up and running, I decided that I wanted to create some more partitions for better organization. I made a fourth partition for temporary files (cache for internet files, temp and tmp folders, etc.).  My sixth parition was for my program files, and my seventh was for my documents and settings (well, at least the settings, but I keep documents elsewhere usually). The last partition was for my media files (videos, music, etc.).

Maybe you are wondering how I managed to separate my temporary file folders and program file folder from the “boot” drive. It’s quite simple, but can be very annoying if mistakes are made. Believe me – I screwed up the first time. The “trick” is to modify the registry. It’s easy to do, but many would perceive doing so as intimidating if not downright scary.

For the program files folder, the “obvious” way is to just copy the contents of the folder to the partition, and then make a change to the ProgramFilesDir value. The problem is that old keys and values with hard-coded references to the location of the old program files folder. Because of them, this simple change results in not being able to delete the original program files folder. Of course, the solution is to find those hard-coded references and change them to the new location. This is easy to do. Just export the entire registry, thereby creating a .reg file, then modifying that .reg file (which is really just plain text). Just use notepad or whatever and replace all instances of “C:\Program Files” with “X:” (if X is the drive letter). One thing to be aware of is that XP still contains 8.3 naming in some references. In short, instead of using “C:\Program Files”, it will be “C:\Progra~1″. In my desktop installation, there are still such references in the registry.

As for the temporary files folder(s), you should do the same thing using “C:\Windows\Temp” for your search. An interesting point here is that XP actually has registry values for both “temp” and “tmp” folders. There’s no real point in having two separate folders, but that’s exactly what I have.

The Documents and Settings folder can be changed similarly to how Program Files was changed. The one thing you might wish to know is that each user has a folder in the Documents and Settings folder, and in each of those is a folder for temporary files for that specific user. Why not relocate those to the temporary files partition already set up? That’s what I did. Wherever you have “%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp” you can change to “Y:\Temp\%USERNAME%”. Just remember that the system temp folder should be something like “Y:\Temp\system” instead of just “Y:\Temp” so as to keep the system temp folder separate from the user temp folders.

I won’t flesh out the details because if you’ve managed to figure out what I’m talking about and are confident enough to try this out, you should have no problem working it out by yourself.

I plan on re-installing XP on my desktop so as to achieve a nice partitioning scheme similar to that of my laptop. Maybe you are wondering why I would bother. The answer is that it makes things seem neater. One thing’s for sure: my laptop’s XP partition has only 1.13GB of data (fully updated) and doesn’t need to be defragmented as often as it did before. Of course, I’m using a stripped down version of XP with some services removed (nlite is your friend), but I’d expect similar results even with a normal version of XP.

Have fun!

Wages

Well, I’ve been busy. School work on top of midterms.

Anyways, I want to talk about wages since I’ve been thinking about what I want to do after (or before) graduation. Shall I work, or shall I go to graduate school? Shall I do co-op before my time runs out? If I go the graduate school route, I can hold off on thinking about where my money’s coming from some more, because graduate school will most likely be completely covered by the school I’m accepted to. But if I choose work, then wages will come into the picture. How much is enough?

I don’t think I need that much money in comparison to what I think I’ll be making when I get a job. Some would say, “if” I get a job, considering the world’s economy, but I’m not worried. Actually, I’ve been spending my money on electronics and more food than is necessary for myself recently. So, that got me thinking – if I can live just fine with the money I’m getting funded with now (enough to get by with, with the occasional toss in of money from my dad and digging into my savings account), then how much would I need if I weren’t being funded for school, and had finished my education?

This question is something that doesn’t apply to everyone, since most people have to take out student loans. I consider myself fortunate to be given as much as I am. But given similar circumstances, with no debt to speak of, how much money would one need to live a basic life?

My rent is affordable, and my housing (an apartment) is sufficient (nice size, nice location, nothing fancy) at $650 a month. Food and utilities for one person I overestimate to $650 (I order pizza a lot, so if I were to be more economical, I could surely save on this point). I don’t have a car, and currently don’t pay for transit (covered in education), but it would go for around $100 a month (for one zone, I believe). Throw in $100 per month for something special (not including eating out, since I’m pretty much paying for that already), and I’m sitting at $1500 a month. For 12 months, that’s $18000. That’s my overestimate of how a budget for one person could look given optimal circumstances (affordable housing and reasonable cost of utilities and transit). The actual number of work hours for a full time job is 37.5, and the number of weeks worked in a year might be 50. Then the wage required to sustain basic living expenses plus a bit extra is $9.6 per hour. The current minimum wage where I live is $8. Not quite enough, but take into account the extras I gave myself, and you have a decent living wage right there.

The problem then is the circumstances by which one reaches employment. If you had to take out a student loan throughout education, then you have to pay it off. If you didn’t get post-secondary education, having to support a family makes all the difference. The government needs to subsidize education and family expenses in order to make the living wage make sense for those people. Otherwise, to call it a living wage is a slap in the face.

My naive idea is to have the government directly subsidize parents’ wages. The employer will pay from its own pocket exactly what it would for any other employee, but throws in the 50% of that wage they received from the government to give to the parent employed. That is, an employed parent will make 50% more than a non-parental employee in the same job. Why 50%? Because if both parents are working, they’ll be double dipping for the bonus (perfectly acceptable). When one parent is working, it means that he or she is making enough to get by on one salary. Then instead of money, the parents benefit in having one of them always at home to take care of the child. Also, given that the one working parent makes twice as much one of the two working parents, then the bonus amounts to the same value.

The problems with my naive approach are many. What if the working parent is making far more than minimum wage? Then the cost of subsidizing someone who doesn’t even require help monetarily will be very high. The solution is to cap the amount they receive. Why not just give them the difference between their wage and the “minimum parent wage”? We don’t want people to intentionally take easy, low paying jobs which will not benefit their situation in the long run. After all, do they expect the extra wages to last forever? They shouldn’t, as the subsidies should cease when children reach a certain age. That solution of capping however affects the idea that one parent should be able to work and let the other stay at home, receiving the same bonus as both would receive totally for working for half the salary each. Obviously, the logistics of implementing any kind of social system is complex.

The case of the debt-ridden student is similar in a way: if the government can subsidize education through subsidizing universities, then that will help students in the long run (debt can be a chain that holds you down for the rest of your life). But where does the government find such money – taxes? Taxing is ironic, because they’d just be taking money from the people they’re helping in the other situation. On top of that, they’d also be taxing the single, non-parental worker. What I’m saying is that to tax the poorest that we’re trying to help is counter-productive. So then, this implies that taxes should come from those who can afford it.

I know there are rich people out there who think that the government doesn’t deserve to stick their fingers into the pocket of someone who worked hard to make the money the government is about to take away, but come on! I painted a picture before of how much one person really needs to have a living wage. So then, we can ask, why does anyone need the gross amounts of money that some people make? The excuse that they worked hard for it is ridiculous. Even if they worked three times as hard (which is unlikely), are they entitled to ten to thirty times the amount as someone else? To make the claim that they worked hard to learn in school is also pointless; after all, there are others who would have gone to school, but the only thing that prevented them from was the cost of education – such an excuse could not be used given the funding suggested earlier, but only if such funding is comprehensive and sufficient. If a wage is determined by the amount of sweat we produce, then we would surely expect it to be based on a linear scale, not exponential. However, that’s not the way it is. Therefore, to produce a result that is more in line with our expectations, it makes sense to tax more – slightly exponentially – proportional to the amount of money one makes.

When people stop working so hard because all of their money is being taken away from taxing, that’s when we know we’ve reached just beyond the right amount of taxation. Why work so hard if you’re going to make only so much more than the employees working under you? There needs to be a balance; harder work does justify higher wages, just not so disproportionately. If one high tier money-maker decides to drop down a level because the stress of the job isn’t worth it anymore, then let someone else step in. This is the way it should work. By then, perhaps the workload will be more balanced as well. Instead of having one at the very top, have multiple people at the top, for less money (each), less stress, and more thinking power. Sharing responsibilities is the ultimate goal in such a system. Why should one person be responsible for so much? Why does one person need to make so much money? Is it ego, or greed? Neither of those is a laudable attribute for any person. Pride is important and drive is valuable; ego is worthless and greed is too.

Obviously my opinion on these matters is naive and probably unrealistic from many aspects. I’d like to think that theoretically, such a system is possible, but who knows?

So, I started off talking about how much I’d need to live decently (not all that much more compared to the minimum wage right now), but then talked about how there are situations that change the meaning of a living wage. Then I talked about how there are those who are so far beyond “just living” that it makes sense for them to be the benefactors of the worse off of society. Even if they don’t agree, if they continue to work as hard as they do now, then obviously the idea wasn’t such a deterrent to hard work after all. Furthermore, what good is it to have an elite few controlling everything? In my opinion, my humble opinion, though important, is not necessarily useful; however, it is not worthless. Input from more people is a good thing; whether or not their opinions are accepted, they can be appreciated and understood for what they are.

Race and Obama

With Obama having been elected President of the United States of America, there’s been a lot of talk about what race he actually is. Race, not just in America, has always been a complex subject. After reading a bit of a discussion about the difference between “African-American” and “black”, and having seen some confusion for the anti-symmetry of “African-American” and “European-American”, I will give my own understanding of this.

With regards to the generic “X-American” descriptor, this is simple. Someone who is of Irish descent will have no problem with Irish-American, especially if he grew up in a primarily Irish-American neighbourhood. Since there wasn’t any particular segregation of white people, different European-American sub-cultures were merged into one large “white” American culture.

On the other end of the spectrum, black people were segregated from that “normal”, “mainstream” and “white” culture, and essentially forced to live in ghettos. Thus, they came to share a sub-culture together, and became known as “African-American”. As mentioned before, this type of sub-culture can occur in the same manner for other peoples given the same type of circumstances (an area in which the majority of people share some common descent; e.g. Irish-American). Obviously, if the different types of Africans weren’t mixed together, then there’d be more distinction given to which type of African one actually is rather than the catch-all term.

As for the general terms “white” and “black”, this was mentioned earlier. Although Europeans may find such a term offensive, Americans do not. This is for the obvious reason that the cultures are quite different. American is not so much a race as it is a culture (although Native-Americans would probably like it to be used for their own), so when describing race, the term white is used for that whole pool of people with some kind of “Caucasian” background (perhaps, I’m not an expert on the exact terms). Likewise, black is not offensive for the those who identify with it (that’s black people, duh).

For Asian-Americans, I think the distinction is made clear more often; one hears “Chinese-American” or “Japanese-American” since I’m sure there are those who have pride in being of their own specific race. It’s the same for Native people, since there are so many different peoples, to be lumped together with others may not be too offensive, but it’s a matter of pride to identify with one’s own specific people.

To summarize, race is a complex subject. Barack Obama may not be “black” in the sense that he does not “directly” share the history of the American culture of black people, but he does have the genetic qualifications as well as skin colour (despite being half-white, most Americans would visually recognize him as black). He is most definitely African-American, just as the son of an Irish man and an American woman living in America could call himself Irish-American (though he may choose not to). It’s just that there’s more emphasis on it (a point of pride of one’s background) if raised in a primarily “X-American” neighbourhood.

In reality, it’s better if people forget about these things, and just accept that colour should not be an issue in the first place. I’m happy Obama was elected and hope that he can do his job in garnering respect for his country (something it doesn’t get from other countries/people of other countries too often). Whatever his race, I hope he can do a good job.

Quickie: Dragonball Z – Saiyan

Just a quickie

I’ve recently been watching Dragonball Z again. The first time I watched it was when I was a kid of course, and by chance I found videos of the dub on Youtube available to watch. Yeah, I don’t like dubs a whole lot, but since I watched the dub originally, it didn’t bother me so much.

In any case, there’s always a controversy over naming conventions used by dubs for the original Japanese versions of words. The uncut version of DBZ was more accurate in terms of what the original intended, but there are some discrepancies due to Anglocization. There are also blatant renamings done in the non-uncut versions (“Hercule” instead of “Mr. Satan” for a very obvious reason).

One of the Anglocized (that’s “Anglocised” for non-North Americans) words is Saiyan. The word “Saiyan” was actually used on an official toy, but the Japanese say Saiya-jin because it makes sense for them (literally, “people of Saiya”). A similar term Amerika-jin (or “America-jin” if you want) means “person of America” (an “American”). You should see the obviousness of why Saiyan makes sense for an English-speaking audience. The only real complaint that could be used here is the pronunciation of the word Saiyan; it’s spelled “correctly” in terms of an appropriate Anglocization, but it’s incorrectly pronounced “Say”-an instead of “Sigh”-an.

This is really just nitpicking…it’s a dub that I wouldn’t be watching if it weren’t for boredom and nostalgia. However, it’s fun to point things out that others didn’t know about.

Another example is “King Kai” (in Japanese, you can pick any one of “Kai-oo”, “Kai-ou”, or “Kai-oh” apparently comprised of the kanji for “god” and “king”). Why not “God King” or simply “Kai-oh”? And that technique Goku (or “Son Gokuu”) learned from King Kai is called the Kaioken (in the dub, pronounced “Kay-Oh-Ken”; in Japanese, it’s obviously pronounced like “Kai-oh” with a “ken” attached), but the reasoning for it’s name isn’t clear in the dub.

Yep, dubs tick people off for silly reasons, but it’s also a pain when those same people don’t actually get their nitpicking right. Myself, I don’t mind “Saiyan”, as it’s a valid “translation”/interpretation of Saiya-jin… the dub’s pronunciation is surely incorrect, but at least it’s a valid re-invention of the term for an English audience.

Bed and Breakfast

There are two neighbouring bed and breakfast homes. One is home to a young-ish man who, for the most part, appears to be easy-going, and seemingly lazy when no one’s looking. The other is an older woman who believes in being as busy as possible, never leaving any imperfections in appearance and utility.

One day, the older woman sees a couple leaving the younger man’s home with smiles on their faces. They look pleased, don’t they? the woman thought to herself.

Over time, she began to notice that the young man was gradually getting more and more guests. She herself had always maintained a steady base of guests, so the trend was rather surprising to her. She finally gave in, and headed over to the young man’s home to see how his operation worked.

She rang the doorbell, and within a minute, the young man was at the door with a smile on his face. He spoke, “Welcome to my home. Please come in.”

Strange, she thought, he should have asked for my business first. Despite her confusion, she entered his house, and was immediately surprised to see that it looked rather, as opposed to professional, like a home. She had always fashioned her own bed and breakfast as being a more focused version of a hotel. For her, everything had to be neat and tidy, and when a customer was in, she had to appear to be doing something at all times. For this young man, it appeared to be the opposite.

“Please have a seat,” the young man said, making way for the dining table which lie solely in the kitchen area. “I apologize for the appearance of things, I have yet to begin cleaning after my previous visitors.”

Ignoring her want to tell him that he should always be ready, she instead said, “I have noticed that you are becoming quite popular recently. May I ask how this happened?” The young man appeared a bit quizzical.

“Well, I suppose it’s because I give them a smile coming in, and give them smiles through and out.”

Remarkable, the older woman thought. Simply remarkable. “So then, you don’t have a business plan?”

“No, madam, I do. When they come in, all I care about is letting them into my home. If you think about it, they’re your potential employers. You must impress them with who you are. They don’t ask for qualifications, and judgments can be reserved about the state of the home. The most important thing is that I be likeable.”

“That’s preposterous!” stated the woman, unable to hold herself. “You can’t run a business on personality!”

“No, madam, you are correct. When they come in, I only care about being likeable. But when they have chosen to stay with me – ‘hired’ me if you will – I focus on doing my job. And when on the job, you are defined by what you do, rather than who you are. I suppose you could say, you need to be recommendable. And I would suppose that that’s how I’ve come to garner some popularity.”

“But,” he continued, “I don’t worry about such things. I simply remember my motto: a smile coming in, a smile through and out!”

[This analogy was thought up by myself just recently. When entering the workforce, your likability is very important, as there are very likely a great number of others with approximately the same qualifications. When moving on from previous work, being recommendable plays a greater role, and personality is no longer used as a primary judge for employment. But in either case, your goal should always be to do a good job, not to keep your job.]

The Machine that I’ve become.

I wanted to avoid using a dramatic name for this entry because I don’t want to say much.

I just woke up, after staying up too late again. I couldn’t just press through as I usually do, so I went to sleep at 5am. I woke up around 11:30am (just ten minutes or so ago).

The first thing I *felt* is that I wanted to go back to sleep. And for some reason, my mind visualized doing a restart.

When you start up Windows XP (with Welcome Screen and what-not turned off), you get a dialog box asking for a user name and password. The “Options” button (it’s pretty pointless), when clicked, will reveal another button to reboot. When I woke up, and wanted to go back to sleep, I had a vision of clicking the reboot button in that dialog.

This vision appeared so quickly, without any actual thought process, that I found myself surprised. And I woke up to tell the tale. I don’t mind becoming more automatic, as that can help productivity and efficiency. But, in this case… it’s kind of like added overhead. I should be able to go back to sleep without any extra sensory stimulation (excuse my non-standard wording).

However, if the common thing to happen is to think “aurally” that “I want to go back to sleep”, then I suppose there’s not much of a difference. It’s the difference between “hearing” words and “seeing” pictures, and both seem to be acceptable with regards to how the “inner mind” functions.

Perhaps I’m not surprised by the fact that I “saw” something instead of “hearing” something (which for me is the default way I think), but by what I saw.

To conclude, my automatic and unintentional visualization of restarting Windows to represent going back to sleep… simply proves that I’m a computer geek. You’ve heard the expression (haven’t you?), “I’ve got *** on the brain.”

Now I want Arby’s.

[Edit: Added P.S.]

P.S. I think this will be interesting if brought up in one of my upcoming classes. One is about the social implications of a computerized society. The individual doesn’t seem to be a focus in that course, but it would still be interesting to talk about. Another upcoming class is an introduction to psychology; enough said.

Back – from the past!

I got back from Gasshuku Spring 2008. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and it did surprise me a bit. I’m not a super-social person (I’m an introvert), but I was able to make some friends.

So…I drank. Yes, beer and my first taste of 151. That’s an unforgettable experience, especially as it was only this one girl (whom I’ll avoid naming) and I who drank that stuff. I don’t blame anyone for not drinking it as well, but for me and her, it was a challenge we had with each other. The first shot (double shot wasn’t it?) for both of us was kind of to get things going. Then we decided to play a drinking game. The rules were kind of fuzzy, but it was just blackjack. Guess who had to do a second one first…yes, I have bad luck. I wanted to walk away, but I had to honour my wager. So I did, and it was pretty rough. Luckily, she had to do the next one between us. There were others playing, but not seriously and they refused to drink as well.

So, we had them at 2 hits a piece. We used carrots to soothe the burn until they ran out. After that we used tomatoes. This challenge didn’t last much longer, as I managed to avoid the final shot. I won’t go into details, but I felt pretty bad that I effectively made her take the last shot. Well, she quickly admitted defeat after that, but she still contends that she could out-drink me if she had eaten more earlier. Well, I hope to find an opportunity to test her theory out.

I seem to have gone on a tangent (although that was the highlight of the event for me), as Gasshuku is actually about kendo. I got hit by acute anxiety and hyperventilation during the second practice on Saturday, causing me to embarrassingly cry and leave the practice for ten minutes or so. I guess it’s what’s called a panic attack, but I don’t remember panicking about anything in particular. It’s happened before, but each time is just as hard to take as the last. Luckily, I don’t get them very often. Unluckily, I do get them from occasionally.

As for the actual kendo, it was frustrating being the only one without any sort of bogu. I felt quite alone and struggled with stamina. I was able to run pretty well in the morning on Sunday, but at that point I was still recovering from the slight effects of the 151 from the previous night. My stamina of course was lacking for the rest of the day.

I was thinking it was a pretty good weekend, and I still do, but I regret not paying more attention to my personal hygiene, specifically with brushing my teeth. To be honest, I don’t think it mattered about showering (someone else admitted to not showering at all), but I should’ve done something about my teeth. I don’t often get the chance to speak with women (I’m a Computing Science student), so when given the opportunity to speak with a pretty woman (which is what happened), I need to be more aware of myself. Being self-aware, of course, should not mean being awkward. But for me, that’s how it usually is, y’know?

This entry I think is the first one that expresses my own personal situation, so I hope it’s interesting. As a side note, I do brush my teeth and shower regularly, but there was something about Gasshuku that lulled me into being more lazy than I usually am.

For the most part, I don’t really care what others think about me, but there are exceptions. A woman I find attractive is an obvious exception. I sometimes fear that I’m being dishonest when my personality shifts in those cases. I’m conflicted; I want to make an impression that is favourable, but also that stands for who I am. And I worry if I’m thinking over things too seriously; perhaps she was simply being friendly, but I can always hope (watch out: weak and passive expression) that she might think of me, or come to think of me, in a certain way. (Phew! What a wuss!) Then again, if I’m truly as hopeless as I believe I am, I’ll screw things up regardless of her initial impression of me, whatever that may be, for whatever reason.

Is anyone else tired of reading this drivel? I make myself sick sometimes. And relying on alcohol…ugh.

On a positive note, um… well… I’ll keep doing kendo. I was considering stopping, for fear of inability and uncontrollable anxiety. I’ve also decided to rent bogu from sensei, so it won’t hit the wallet too badly until later when I’ll have recovered from my recent spending and actually buy a set.

For anyone who cares (only me I guess), keep your fingers crossed. I may be hopeless in reality, but I’m hopeful in heart. Or is it the opposite?

My Lord De’Cries

I have decided that if I should ever apply for a name change, I shall change my last name to De’Cries (pronounced like “decrees”). It suits me well. The word “decries” means to belittle, which is a something I’ve done quite a bit in my lifetime. Also, to decree is to command (in a formal manner). Incidentally, my last name (which is actually a first name) can be said to mean “ruler of the people”, and my first name can mean “god has given”. Put them together, and you get “god has given a ruler of the people”. Pretty nifty, eh?

But seriously, my last name has no real importance to me. To be honest, none of my names are particularly important. However, if I were to select a name for myself, it’d have some importance; it would be an identity for myself. Sure, the name I came up with plays off of my current last name, but it’s unique. It also has that added meaning (to decry is to belittle).

My second semester of kendo has finished, and I’m expected to buy bogu now. I’m pretty tight for money after buying my new hardware, but I’m considering buying the cheapest set of reasonable quality. The word zekken appeared, and I had to learn more. It’s basically a nameplate, with your dojo name, kanji version of your name, and romanized version of your name. My name doesn’t hold any particular significance to me (as my people never had last names to begin with), so I wondered what I could use and be happy with. After researching my own name, I feel it’s a good name, but I wanted something a bit more “me”. I probably won’t be getting a nameplate yet (this is my very first set of bogu), but I will consider it in the future. I just looked up some kanji, and below is what I thought might work.

Pride: kouman. man is to look down upon a person, make light of, underestimate.

Order (in the decree sense): meirei. mei means order, command.

Who knows if that works at all? Well, whatever. Didn’t sleep tonight. I slept last night after not having gotten sleep the previous night. I’m not sure if I prefer to have this kind of sleeping pattern. With the extra time, I get the ability to spend a lot of time on different things for pretty much as long as I want. Of course, when I crash, I sleep for a longer amount of time. Perhaps if I can find a balance, it’ll be a rewarding set-up.

This is the opposite of filler, or is it?

So yeah, because I wrote two super long posts in succession, I thought I’d make a short post. It’s literally about nothing. No wait, forget that. If I talked about “nothing” (a.k.a. Nothing), then I’d be here for an eternity. Forget it, I’m done.