BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

Current Mood:  thoughtful

As most of you know the Supreme court is wrapping up it’s session right now, and handing down a lot of verdicts.

I was going through my daily dose of headlines using my personalized google page (http://www.google.com/ig log in with your gmail address), and found this NY Times Article. And the judges responses that most caught my eye were those of Antonin Scalia. The guy has interesting opinions. I haven’t dug deep into his platform, or his decisions, but the exerpts from a few cases that I have read about seem to be pretty much in-line with what I think.

The randomly I was thinking about Alan Greenspan and I was wondering what he thought about a few things and I started to do a bit of digging and found this speech he gave, and was very intrigued. I generally like Greenspan, everything I read about him I agree with, or think was well-timed or smart. I suspose I’ll go a little deeper and find out why in the 50’s and 60’s he was into the Ayn Ryand objectivism thing.

In general I don’t know what I think about politics at the moment. I don’t like the schizophrenia the courts exibhited on this Ten commandments thing.

I don’t give two shits about what they decided, it just seems to me to use the idea of something being generally accpeted by the community as a yard stick for what is right and what isn’t is not a good idea. Especially since cross burning was generally accepted at one time in certain communities.

I think that the courts are just into challenging the status quo right now. I was thinking if a muslim did something in school in the south that some teacher thought was objectionable, they would ask them to stop, because Islam is not the status quo. But if there were a court case over [insert random thing involving Islam] I’m pretty sure the courts would rule in the favor of freedom of [general category related to the random thing], because that would challenge the accepted status quo.

Christianity is no different. It is being challenged legally on a lot of fronts right now. I think that is a good thing. Religion won’t ever stand up to the litmus tests society makes for it, but I think it is a good kind of refining fire when groups endure those challenges. I’m just disappointed that it seems that free speech doesn’t apply to religion in a school, or courthouse, or anywhere else that is government run. I don’t think free speech was ever about avoiding offending people, so that makes me a little sad, when the high courts rule in that direction against religious organizations.

Well, that is enough politics for now. I think in a few weeks I’m going to actually write a researched peice on “What is Religion” from a viewpoint of disagreeing with the courts decision about the display of the ten commandments in schools. I’m not sure if I actually disagree with it, I just have been thinking of an interesting angle I would like to see further thought out.

Of course that will have to wait until I finish this website…which is actually getting close.

Current Mood:  lazy

So instead of small group we had a mini-fun night.

Only five regulars came, so we went to Lu’ces pizza (I can’t do th accent over the vowel, and I’m too lazy to look it up). It was a good time. We talked a little about what I wanted to talk about for discussion, which was worshiping with your whole life means giving up your sense of entitlement.

The other ironic thing that happened today is I got my GeForce 6600GT video card. It installed fine, and is working beautifully.

I was scared for a minute when it was freezing up on divx playback (part of the reason I got this card was for the divx hardware acceleration). But an upgrade of the Via Hyperion drivers fixed that.

The ironic thing about me getting my video card, is that Nvidia released their next generation of video cards today….effectively making my brand new video card obsolete.’

Maybe that is why I got such a good deal on my card.

Well, the performance of the Geforce 7800 looks pretty evolutionary more than revolutionary. And it doesn’t improve upon the main things I’m going to use the card for. The architecture looks really solid and mature in terms of DirectX 9.0 parts. I cant wait to see what hardware looks like when Windows Graphics Foundation comes out (a.k.a. the name that will replace DirectX 10.0)

I’m feeling lazy, the webpage table will have to wait until lunch tomorrow.

Well, I caved and decided that at least my sidebar on the webpage I’m working on is going to be absolutely sized for this iteration of it’s layout and style.

That is OK, it is working out super well, cuz I made a single image to do all the parts of the backdrop I wanted. Then I just chunked that image up into three smaller images, and it works great.

So now instead of a small 35px x 10 px image tiled along the side of something, I have a 35px x 210 px image tiled with no background color set. Then, instead of floating a corner image into position, and tiling an image horizontally along the bottom, I have a single bottom image to cap this sidebar that includes the corner part.

Pretty sweet actually, and things line up much better since I used a single image as the source image for the smaller images. Now, I must just re-work the header image to match the boarders, and get it to look right in IE.

Also, I got sunburnt on my upper arms. I’ve decided to let my upper arms / shoulders just go to the skin cancer. I’m really doomed, since I can’t go outside without a shirt, or without a long sleeved shirt for that matter, for any length of time w/o burning something. So I’ve given up and decided that sleeveless shirts must be worn, to get the upper arms and shoulders used to burning (or maybe even tanned), so that when I go swimming w/o a shirt and burn the hell out of my back and stomach / chest area, I can at least sleep on my side w/o being in severe pain. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that bad to burn my shoulders and arms…I don’t know why, but that part reacts much better to lotion than my back and chest do.

Current Mood:  contemplative

Sometimes I think that I used to be more creative than I am now.

I’m having a hard time solidifying my ideas into something that I can put on this webpage I’m working on.

It is like they are these vauge fragments of something that is blurred, and every once in a while I catch a glimpse of one. Lately I’ve been wondering if there is something blocking me from finding those real images, as well as anything that God has that is good for me.

Praying the past few days I’ve really started to think they are interconnected. Somehow it feels like there is something I locked away some long time ago that stunted some areas of my life that I used to excel.

I have to ask, did I train my creativity away during EE classes? Did I lock away my feelings and emotions when my Grandfather, great-grandmother, and maternal grandmother died within a few years of eachother? I have no freaking clue here…but I know I feel handicapped in a lot of areas that I’m sure I have potential in. I feel like I should be something greater….like I have a deep potential well of something, but I can’t accuate it.

Sometimes when I’m frustrated I close my eyes and see this image of me hitting a wall, or hitting the floor. Kinda like I’m beating my head against something immobile or indestructable. Then the other day I was praying (with someone, or they were praying for me I mean…I think maybe Glynn) and started seeing a glass ceiling. The glass seemed to be tinted, or just kinda faded everything, because I could see an awesome light above, but it didn’t radiate past the glass. Then two hands thrust upwards, open palmed, and broke two holes in the glass, then the light poured over the hands and radiated into the room w/ one of those cool glowy effects where the dust looks like floating stars in a beam of light.

Well, I don’t need much interpretation for this picture, but I would like to know why I feel like I got my hands in the air most the time and can’t find the glass. I feel like lots of people are walking on top of the glass and I’m compartmentalized, categorized, labeled, and trapped under it in a small room….w/ lots of unbreakable walls.

Also, I wonder if you have more rotten shit happen to you in life, if God gives you more good stuff to make up for it. That seems very contradictory to the Bible in parts, and even contradictory to the values of Kingdom theology that I hold…but that sneaking suspicion won’t go away because that seems to be what I see around me a lot.

I’m not in some terrible mood, I’m just finding myself very frustrated. I felt this way really bad one night and I emailed Jeff. He said I needed to focus on what Gods dream is for me, and to find the hard thing that God is asking me to do that I don’t want to do, and do it. But I feel like I’m asking for a dream and searching/asking for that hard thing and coming up empty. This made his advice frustrating although it was solid advice that I had already heard.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one who feels like I’m sitting on the edge of something great, but I can’t get to the great part….like I’m blocked, and I can’t see what is blocking me. Very cynical possibly, but annoyingly in my thoughts and feelings the last few weeks.

I probably should have shared that vision / picture last week when I had it. It has strongly been on my mind since then.

Current Mood:  aggravated

I don’t think it is possible to design a cool looking site, like any of the good submissions on the CSS Zen Garden without using some absolute positioning, and pixel offsets.

ALL I WANT IS A DAMED EXPANDABLE WEBSITE. So people can make it big, and the content grows, or it can get small, and shrink (to a point…but bless the min-width property for fixing that problem).

This is fun until I run into a stupid technical roadblock that stunts my creativity.

Of note…I like the simplicity of this CSS Zen Garden submission.