Jehoshaphat

I have no motivation what so ever…seriously. Anyone got any ideas how I can get myself motivated?

Update: Mountain Dew in large amounts give you headaches…four 20oz bottles in 2 hours. Energy level spiked, but no sustained motivation.

I have nothing interesting to say…

Yes, today is Veterans Day. A wonderful holiday that I had off at the University but now in the real world I don’t get it off anymore. So I have to watch the wonderful downtown parade from my office window. Sigh…I never actually went to the parade when I had off, but I did watch a lot of war movies and played video games that dealt with war, of course in honor of our Veteran’s. All joking aside, Veteran’s day is an important, a day to remember the sacrifices of our Veteran’s, not only did some sacrifices their lives, all Veteran’s give part of their time on earth to defend this country’s ideals, freedom for all, liberty for all, and the guarantee of that no one can take those away from you.

Last night I sat down to play some EVE. I bought a new ship, the Imicus, and equipped it with a couple new mining lasers, a new hull expander, a new shield recharge, and a new rail gun. All in all, I think I’m ready for some serious mining. After I have made enough money in mining, I’m going to start building up my research abilities and trade abilities. That way I can push my goods and services around the galaxy for large amounts of cash.

But before I could get in to it, my wife tricked me into going to bed early. I actually was really tired but I didn’t want to go to bed so early. All in all, the sleep I got last night will help me stay up really late this weekend. Wee?

The title says it all, we finally took down the Oracle. But we just didnt take her down, we fucked her over…She had no chance, and after she was dead, I made sure to T-bag her a couple times. How did those Orc balls taste you skunt whore! Remember, think positive.

You gotta think positive in life, otherwise you’re going to end up killing yourself. But after finding the negative in things for 25 years, its hard to think positive, it really is.

Like this…bird flu in Florida, at least he didnt suffer.

Some day I’ll remember the phrase “The devil you don’t know is worse than the devil you do know”. I swore up and down that the University center I worked at was complete ass, the people were horrible to work with, the work wasn’t worth my time, basically I was wasting 8 hours (actually 7) of my life everyday. So I went and found a new job. This devil is worse.

My managers cant or don’t know how to manage. They are all over the place with directives and time-tables and everything. But nothing they do adds any value. Now I understand that’s not something new, but they have created an atmosphere where personal achievement is greater than team-work. So we have 5 developers, 3 are trying to form a team, 2 are working on their own, in the group of 3, the 2 senior people are trying to fight for PM status with one of the lone wolfs and I’m trying to figure out where I fit in. The worst part of it all is there this horrible infighting going on everywhere. Since the firing of the admin chick, everyone thinks their next, and so they better get in position not to be fired.

This is starting to grind me down. I leave work feeling horrible, I leave work miserable. I leave work with a hatred of humanity which is reinforced on the drive him. But I have a plan…first step one. Step one is removing myself from the infighting. I don’t need to be part of all that, and I certainly don’t need to be fueling any of that. Second, focus on work…pretty clear what that is, but when drama is occurring around you, it becomes hard to focus, and I have lost some of that focus. Third, I need to develop a schedule of work for myself, so that I don’t have to sit around waiting on managers who don’t want to manage.

It’s going to be a tough road for awhile, but I should be able to make it thru. The plan to put 5 years in here is still on track, but there is still a possibility that Valerie and I will move back to Tampa/St. Pete and settle in there. But the key here is, that I’m not going let these dark days fuck with my relationships…Valerie and I are on the same page on this, but I need to get back in touch with my friends and my family. Hell, I talked to my mom for the first time in 3 weeks last night. All that is going to change though, I’m taking a positive attitude for here on out. Less hard times more bliss…

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-11-04T151602Z_01_KNE228332_RTRUKOC_0_UK-FRANCE-RIOTS.xml

Don’t ever preach to us ever again against civil rights, minority rights, or human rights. You’ve treated your immigrants so humanly they have decided to light your city on fire and burn cars for 8 nights in a row. Hey don’t look now France, but I think the Germans are coming, better surrender now!

(This anger may or may not be because of my current game of Civ4 and the French. Who changed religions and decide to go to war, forcing me to fight just about every Christian country. Fuck you Napoleon!)

This week has been tough, really tough. Last night Valerie and I went to her school for basically a “State of the School” address. While it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, it went longer than both of us expect. Only good thing was I got Valerie to go to Bono’s, the greatest BBQ place in the world. I love it, she hates it. So I won. Work is also just purely killing me…

If you haven’t checked out the Don and Mike Show, http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/, you should head over there and check out the audio highlights for 11-03-2005. Holy crap, it was very, very, very funny. Mayor Barry…ah man that stuff cracks me up. It right now is the only thing that makes my afternoons livable.

So, when did it become ok for people in place of power to be completely incompetent? When did that occur? I was reading a MSNBC article last night about Mike Brown, the former FEMA Chief. It’s a great read, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9912186/. More than anything it points out the complete lack of leadership and basic understand for the job he was assigned. Now, most people could give a rat’s ass about FEMA and who runs it, but us down here in hurricane alley, FEMA is our direct link to the government. If FEMA doesn’t help, and the Red Cross can’t help, we be screwed for a while. Just ask South Florida…ask those people if they have power, food, water, ice, money, gas, jobs…ask them if they have even seen a FEMA official down there? When did it become ok for people to fail at their job?

I’m trying out a couple new themes for good ol’ blog…this one seems to fit right now, but I’m going to rotate thru a couple before I settle on one design.

So you want a history lesson…well lucky you. I’ve been trying for awhile to finish a book called “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda” written by the UN Peacekeeper commander Lt. Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire and his experiences with the genocide in Rwanda. It’s really, really a tough read. This guy takes a lot of things VERY personal, and describes the horrors he witnessed in shocking details. But like I said it’s a hard read. It really stirs my emotions sometimes and leaves me wondering how this guy can sleep at night, because he can remember things in such shocking detail. But last night I had to put the book down when he told the story of American and European diplomats basically telling him that he would receive nothing from their government, no aid, no money, no troops, they wouldn’t speak out against it, they wouldn’t move a finger to help, and a 100 days later, there were 800,000 dead Rwandans. Truly shocking…

The other book I’m reading is very well written, it’s basically how history was changed by the Black Death, the worldwide pandemic of bubonic plague that killed an estimate 35 million people in Europe, a third of its population at the time. But the author does an amazing job of taking you back to the roots of the plague and how it changed the course of history. The Mongolian empire was one of the largest empires of all time, after Genghis Khan united the Mongolian tribes in early 1200’s, the Mongol Hordes went on to conquer a huge empire. China, parts of India, the Persian Empire, Turkey, all of Siberia, most of modern day Russia, and the gates of Eastern Europe were controlled by the Mongols. But the structure of this large empire would be its downfall.

The silk road, a series of trade networks that run from Eastern Europe and Italian ports, thru the Middle East all the way to China and the Far East, was the major administration tool the Mongols used to control their empire. Kublai Khan used this network to setup his government and control the far flung corners of his empire. After his death in late 1290, his empire started to fall apart, but the Silk Road stayed intact. The trade route would become “the highway of death” for the Middle Ages.

But here’s where the book’s theory kicks up the historical dust. The author points out how the people of the time thought this plague was a sign of the end of the world. That’s what we all learn in grade school, rats carried the plague around, killed alot of people, and people were scared. Not true though. Anyone remember the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, anyone remember their names?!? Death, War, Famine and Pestilence…All this was occurring in Europe at the time. France and England were fighting the 100 years war, a mini-ice age destroyed crops and changed climates, people were dying at an alarming right, and now a plague had started to destroy the land. The plague changed history.

The Black Plague actually started in steppes of Mongolia and Northern China. The Mongolian style of combat, based on warriors from individual tribes was destroyed, no longer would the Mongolian Horde threat anyone; whole tribes were wiped out by the disease. The Mongolian Empire completely faded under the pressure of the growing plague. The plague was transmitted west by the Silk Road, carried directly to European markets by traders who brought back the disease with their goods. As millions started dying, history was changed.

The Hundred Years War was launched by England against France for control of the French Crown. England started to make strong gains, beating the Scots in 1347 ending their threat of invasion and allowing England to ship large amounts of troops against France. But as they arrived just as the Black Death did. Both armies would completely useless, neither nation could launch any offensive and by the time both nations had recovered, the French had united and started to fight the English back. The plague did more than just devastate the medieval population; it caused a substantial change in economy and society in all areas of the world.

The loss of peasants and large amounts of the population completely changed the way the world would work from then on. The sudden scarcity of cheap labor provided an incentive for landlords to compete for peasants with wages and freedoms, freedoms and the thoughts they spawned would be the basic rights argued for by Reformation thinkers. But this only occurred in the West, in Eastern Europe peasants were tied even closer to the land through serfdom. This serfdom would hold Eastern Europe back from the effects of the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Enlightenment. The Black Death may be seen as partly responsible for Eastern Europe’s considerable lag in scientific and philosophical advances as well as in the move to liberalize government by restricting the power of the monarch and aristocracy. In the west, peasants were no longer viewed as manual labor, instead they were just labor, and there wasn’t enough of them to do the job, you couldn’t simply throw more people at a problem. The world was changing.

I think it’s even more important to understand how the world changed after the occurred. With thoughts to today’s world and the Avian Flu, what would happen if a pandemic occurred today? How would we respond? What would change if half the labor force was unavailable?