The Sons of Martha - Kipling

This is probably my favorite poem, and always grounds me when I need it, for I am one of Martha's Sons.

The Sons of Martha
The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains, 'Be ye removed'. They say to the lesser floods, 'Be dry'.
Under their rods are the rocks reproved - they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit - then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matter hidden - under the earthline their altars are;
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to leave their work when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand.
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat:
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that:
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed - they know the angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet - they hear the Word - they see how truly the Promise Runs:
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and - the Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons.

Rudyard Kipling

Fiber in your diet

The shelf continues, I am now one cut away from finishing construction, and a whole heck of a lot more sanding to go. No pictures yet, although I discovered and innovative way to add fiber to your diet. Sand in an enclosed area without a mask or ventilation.... You can just feel the grinding on your mucus membranes MMmmm mmmm Piney. Canada's Wonderland this Saturday, just have to make it through a brutal day of work, I can just feel the bad karma.

PS if google minions are scanning my blog, I LOVE gmail!!!! Just a nice clean interface, and definitly inovative with the labels.

Long Silence

Sorry for the long silence oh viewers of my blog.
Its just I've been really busy on a personal project. It is not that exciting, but I am enjoying it. I am building a shelf ooooo ahhhh. Okay its a nice shelf, about 1.85mx1.0mx0.3m, solid pine, with a milled trim at the bottom and just some plane trim all the way around. I have it about 90% constructed, all that is left is to attach the trim and the last panel on the back (which needs to be trimmed to fit.) Then I need to stain it, which I hope to do Sunday. I will have pictures up this weekend I hope.

Now one might ask what the big deal is, its a shelf I can buy one at Ikea for $40. Well its not some crap Ikea laminated particle board crap. To purchase a good shelf like this unfinished would be over $200 and I am going to pull it off for just about half that. This is not what its about, while inexpensive quality furniture is good. My real motivation here is software engineering. WHAT? You say, well first off I am a software engineer, a real engineer, not a pretend one (that is a rant for another day.) In reality I am a bit flipper, I sit day in and day out orchestrating a vast amount of ether to produce software magic. At the end of the day/project/life I really have done a lot and have nothing to show, except maybe a CD, but I didn't make the CD, I just made the content, it just doesn't feel as good as good honest labour. So every once in a while I am overcome with a urge to create, and until I build something solid and real with my own to hands (and a little bit of blood, sweat and pride for good measure,) its a thirst that just can not be slaked. So that is the purpose of this project, and it is my most ambitious to date, and it is going really well. I hope in fact to build my own desk next year when I move into my house, but one project at a time. I will post some pictures this weekend.

That and I will try and blog more.

Cheers

GMAIL

Woot, I just got into the gmail trial.
I haven't had conventient good webmail in a while, and rogers really bites. So I will give this a go.

Turn your head and cough

What is the medical purpose of this process? Are Dr. Trying to determine how agile your testicles are? Is it a cruel joke? Or is there some darker purpose a foot, perhaps a plan to take over the world??????

That aside, had a physical today, got called fat, well no shit Sherlock. But here is a number to hit it home... For my age/gender/weight/height I have a 240% higher chance of a heart attack then a person of equal age/gender/height (but a healthy weight.) Sadly that weight is about 100 lbs away... So lets take it 1 lb at a time, and avoid premature death....
YEAH NOT DIEING (I am serious about that!)

My Sweetie

Since I am sure few people are listening, I can ramble on and not truly be embarrassed. Erin, my sweet heart, my fiance is such a sweetie.

This has been a public service announcement,

thank you, that is all

good night

Shadow of the Hegemon

Currently reading a little Orcon Scott Card, always a favorite, I will speak more on this when I am done, but at the moment I would like to say that this book is really really accessible. I mean you need to have read the others in the series which I have, but I haven't read them in a good 1-2 years, so I was completely out of touch with the characters, but I just picked this up and BOOM I am back into it. Good on you Card.

More to follow when I am done the book.

Cheers

Life of Pi (revisited)

Okay, okay, so I didn't get back to my comments on this as fast as I would have liked, and like most stories, the true impression is fleeting... So as it has been a few days and almost and entire book in between I have some loose impressions. On the whole great book, good warm up in the first period, I liked the whole three religion thing, especially how Pi used religion to shush the religiosos.

As for the second part, just a good yarn, filled with (what I feel,) was a good window into the human soul at its most honest. Like really in all the stories human vs human seems so puny and pity compared to human vs nature. Its so visceral, just makes life so alive.

Third part gave me the willies... I'm with Pi on that one, his version was better.

In any case, I'm no book critic I just know what I like and I liked it. I also like Ed Greenwood, mostly out of loyalty, because in my literary infancy he seemed like a god, not so really, more like playdough through a mold, but he still holds me to a story once in a while, but he is off my hard cover list.

Life of Pi

I just finished this, interesting book, I recomend it to all, I will say more on it tommorow. I'm tired!
night

Ground Rules

First off I just made the logo, what do you think? I realize it isn't a masterpiece; in fact I used another image as a stencil to create the silhouette. So very little of my own creative juices were employed, other then the initial spark that said "I am looking for X."

That aside I wanted to lay down some ground rules, sort of, more like what one can expect from me as the blogger, and as anyone who may or may not be reading this.
1. I will post when I post, this place could go dry for 3 months, and then meet with 3 posts an hour... It’s just my nature to be ride up and down on the waves of interest.
2. I will write what I damn well feel like, so if I am saying to much or too little on a subject or how I feel, you are more then welcome to ask for more, or less, but under no circumstances will I feel obligated to change or respond, but I will try.
3. I won't talk about work, or the people I work with, this is more a concern that the place I work is very sensitive about corporate image, and I wish to keep my job and a healthy relationship with my coworkers, so I am not going to bitch, gripe, or make comments about them, or my companies decisions, the most you might get out of me is something like "I had a good day at work." Or "Today sucked."
4. Self-expression, please feel free to respond to any thing I write with anything you feel like, but I am going to say it right here and now, I will censor things I deem inappropriate, or just out and out delete them. I admit to occasionally having spats of verbal diarrhoea that would make a sailor blush, and I am embarrassed by them, my personal feeling is that anything that can be said with curses can be said more eloquently and equally expressively with out being offensive... That being said, I am not a prude, and I am sure a few dirty words will slip in, just don't go to far.
5. A follow up on 4, "ism's" will NOT be tolerated, no racial slurs, no I hate this group, I have that group, kill them, burn that etc. You want to debate politics okay fine, you want to talk about what group you want to ethnically cleanse, take it some where else. I have no stomach for it.
6. If you are someone I know, and I say something about you, and you just really don't want that being said, tell me and I will take it down.
7. Personal information, I really don't feel that their is a lot of privacy left out their, but at the same time I'm not going to give away to many personally specifics, dammit if you want to steal my identify you will have to root through my garbage.
8. Enjoy, or don't its your call!
Cheers (note I am notorious for both stealing peoples sayings and implanting my own in other peoples speech patterns, no offence intended, if it sounds good to my ear I keep it.)

Going Live

Kiss the old site good bye, say hello new site.
Thanks Blogger for making this so easy.

Hope I don't piss anyone off, I'm new here, and will remain new here for the next 100 years at least.

"What Kind of Bomb?" "The Exploding Kind"

If games were real life, I could respawn, but according to my brother Alex, I can rocket jump... Or at least jump using some sort of mine, or small explosive device. Without going heavily into the physics of explosives, which I am sure the google searches and this blog post will paint me up and down the world as a crazy nutt job terrorist. The truth remains that year after year people have limbs removed by said devices, more often then being flung 2-4 meters into the air.

The problem I'm sure revolves around how the energy is dispersed, that in fact there is not enough energy in a small bomb to launch you, but there is enough energy to launch a piece of the bomb through you. In the event that there is enough energy to move you, that energy is expanding in a compression shock wave and isn't only going to move your feet, its going to move through your whole body, because the shock wave is probably traveling a lot faster then the human body can be safely accelerate to in time, turning human into liquid goo. I will try and add more to this as I find out, if I care to, but suffice it to say, people can't rocket jump.

David Usher

What a night, well I hope none of my brothers friends are reading this, because then I will be in trouble, but Erin (my fiance,) Candace (Erin's sister,) Alex (said aforementioned brother,) my mother, and I went to see David Usher at the Living Arts Centre.

GREAT SHOW!

The opening act Chris Koster, (www.chriskoster.ca) he is pretty new as a solo artist and I think has a lot of potential, he is a little nervous which diminished his stage presence, but the one song he did guitar for he just got into and just dominated the room. So keep it up Chris!

David (with Moist + Electric Violin Girl + Vocal accompaniment Girl) was great, the whole lot of them had a lot of fun with the show and that energy and enthusiasm just filled the room, during his second encore he forgot a whole lot of a song during the acapella part, but three super enthusiastic girls from the audience filled in the blanks, and everyone had a good chuckle as they tried to hit those high notes. In his embarrassment he didn't finish the song and moved on to St. Lawrence River, I didn't realize a whispered "Fcuk what's that line" was part of the song :) but what made it great was that he kept going the audience said that's okay we like it anyways, and the show went on. He did give us a disclaimer at the start that this was the first show in about 4 months, and so they were rusty and that there was nothing like a "spectacular train wreck." The show was as far from a wreck as could be, and the rusty spots just made it all the more personal.

Great night Great Show nuff said

Irony and telephony

So my fianceé and I, Erin, have purchased a house, actually loyal followers of the beta blog, or anyone who knows me, knows this. Mainly because I really only have one or two things of interest to talk about, and this one is a pretty big one, and since I don't actually have the house yet, I'm still very much excited about the house.

So we purchased the house from the good people at Mattamy Homes, a very reputable builder with which, Erin's parents, Janet and Bob, or often Mr. Westmen and Mrs. Westmen, or occasionally and awkwardly Hi, ... (indicating a trailing off silence.) As they are my future inlaws, and I do have a genial relationship with them, you think I could comfortably sink into the names they have offered, Bob and Janet, or as Janet said, His Highness and Janet, anyways I am tangential here and I don't mean too, suffice it to say they have owned to Mattamy's and remain happy with their current one. So Erin and I felt confident in our purchase, now I have no complaint persay, as I have never purchased a house before but the whole new house scene is scary and lonely. First you get the Sales Pitch, followed by the Mortgage Sprint, and Lawyer Dash and Dot (all soon to be Olympic sports.) Currently petitioning for status as an exhibition sport include the Design Centre Dance, and Loan Insurance pillage. After the first three, you have signed a million papers, handed over a ton of dough, signed over your souls and first born, and then boom its all done, like some cosmic birth, its BANG followed by a few millennia of cooling off. So in the time between it all has become like some surreal dream, and I am not sure I have bought a house, to reaffirm the impending financial burden, Erin and I discuss it at length, with anyone who will participate, and trust me there are line of people willing to add input on the colour you should pick for the underside of your mailbox (not that I get a mailbox, stupid Canada Post "Superbox" Super pain in the butt is more like it.)
I digress once more, so Erin and I are now at this point where we need to know what the whole thing is going to cost after upgrades so we can budget for the house, budget for the wedding, budget for the honeymoon, and budget for groceries other then craft dinner. To calculate all this, we need prices and for prices we need to go to the design centre, and for the design centre we need to be called by Mattamy, and we need time. Well with Erin now finished her first degree (way to go sweetie!!!) we have said time, and so we decided this weekend that we shall commit this weekend and to go to the design centre on our own time and just get an idea. When low and behold the first business day after said decision the design centre calls and says "Its time to come in for your appointment." Hence the irony, but the telephony, OY! getting a hold of some one and then booking an appointment, its telephone tag all over the place. So we are booked but it only took 800 billion calls. House here we come!!!!!

The first of the blogging

good afternoon, and welcome to my blog, don't know how you got here or if anyone is listening, but who cares, a blog doesn't judge :) Anyways, today it finally happened, the car died. It really died friday night, but you know how a terminal patient can linger, so has the car. This morning the garage called, and gave the diagnosis, its the engine... Its not that it couldn't be replaced, but minimum 600 for the engine and 800 labour + mystery extras + tax is sure to be 2500, and I am not willing to put that in, especially if I can get a new car for a little over 13000, and in any case I really can't affoard either right now. So ladies and gentlemen, please bow your heads in a moment of morning for the car.