Nonetheless. . . Operation Unification reached a major milestone in the last few days. . . as we finish up on the minor details and lay down the plans on how things will progress towards conclusion in the coming months, I still get queasy about the whole process. Not that I'm going to reveal any details about this until its done, mind you. Let's just say this is something that will last the rest of my life.

Bismark received a major overhaul last week. It has been two years since I've served with her, and the 30,000 miles came and went. The shipyards wanted $750 for the work to be completed, to which I said no thanks and sought out a family friend who happens to own a drydock and charged me only ~$300. Yanyan was appalled by the amount the shipyard wanted to charge me, but I basically knew what was coming when I chose the Bismark.

I haven't worked on Epimelites as much as I wanted over the past several days, and although technically I missed the self-imposed deadline for production release, I'm not too disturbed since it is up and running, and I do plan to finish it pending completion of other minor and miscellaneous errands that I have on my plate right now.

After I got back, I figured now would be as good as a time as any for photoshoot. Fortunately the weather and the lighting was perfect for an outdoor shoot, and Yanyan managed to take several good pictures (which will be posted later tonight).

Quincy Pro has just received an unexpected upgrade. Apparently the original system specs were below the minimum requirements for Fedora Core 3. So as I pondered where I could procure more EDO RAM, lo and behold the old dumb terminals downstairs used EDO RAM. . . in 32MB pairs! So instead of 80MB of EDO RAM, Quincy Pro now sports 160MB. . . it would've been 192MB, but one pair of 32MBs were flawed, which I'm tempted to rectify when I go back to the office on Monday. But at the moment, I'm counting my blessings.

The weather was perfect for one last ride before the end of the year, but since I've been so busy lately I haven't had time to properly maintain Shadow Phoenix. And obviously she decided it was nigh time for retribution. So instead of being out and about enjoying the perfect weather, I was out and about securing tools and supplies to repair Shadow Phoenix. Unfortunately half the equipment I got didn't turn out as I expected, so they're right back to the store tomorrow. But in addition to fixing her up, I'm upgrading her normal headlight bulbs to xenon look-alikes, as well as replacing the much abused clear visor on my helmet with a wicked silver looking one. Pending these final additions, we'll try riding again tomorrow.

Spent last weekend ring shopping with YanYan. We found one that we liked, but couldn't make up our minds in time before the store closed. We'll be trying again this weekend though. . . and see how things go.

Most of this week was spent playing Sims Bustin Out on the XBox with YanYan. Things should speed up once she gets her promotion though. . . and even though I've managed to find the cheat codes for the game, I can't seem to remove the stupid censor blocks. Dangit. . .

Worked on both Quincy Pro and Quincy XI last night. . . I figured it was nigh time to move Quincy Pro from RedHat 7.3 to Fedora Core 3, and so far it looks good. As for Quincy XI. . . it was simply overdue for maintenance. Some minor hardware and software upgrades to fulfill the requirements of Operation Consolidation. Nothing big.

On October 9, (dad) backed up his Infiniti SUV and tragically ran over and killed two-and-a-half-year-old (child).

"You just can't imagine the absence that is in our hearts right now with the loss of our daughter," mother...said. "She rocked our world ... she was everything to us."

The family is suing Nissan, the parent company of Infiniti. They claim new back-up video cameras or sensors which detect objects behind a vehicle were available, and should have been installed in their SUV.

"This manufacturer was already putting it on some of its other vehicles, and it should have put it on this one," attorney Windle Turley said.

In a phone interview with News 8, Nissan/Infiniti spokesman Kyle Bazemore said the child's death was "very sad, very tragic," but added that even when an SUV comes equipped with a back-up video camera, it's not fool-proof.

"It's a convenience; it's not a substitute for proper reversing procedures," Bazemore said. "Drivers should always turn around and look."

"Yes, it's our responsibility, but so many tragic things have happened with children because of that," (mom) said.

----- End Quote

We have now surpassed the Age of Reason. . . we are well on our way to the Age of Its-Not-My-Responsibility. . .

My condolonces to the family, but GET A FUCKING CLUE!!! As I've told YanYan time and again, just "moving" a car and actually "driving" a car are two completely different things, involving completely different sets of skills and senses. She disagreed initially, but now that she's had more driving experience, she's understanding (and agreeing with) my point of view.

And especially to the lawyer who spurred the case (heard on Russ Martin show as I was driving home tonight, the lawyer was the one who approached the family about the lawsuit, not the other way around). . . GET A FUCKING JOB!!! The American government is sorely in need of reform (hell. . . burn the whole thing down and start from scratch if that's what it takes) if this kind of nonsense is allowed to continue. No wonder our taxes and insurance premiums are increasing. . . its paying for other people's responsibilities. . .

My final thoughts on this (I reserve the right to add more pending the outcome of this suit). . .

Learn to drive. If you don't know how to drive, DON'T DRIVE! That includes attempting to multi-task while driving. Too many idiots on the road trying to put on make up or eat that tasty doughnut and can't drive at the same time. The shoulder of the road is there for a reason. Use it. There's a brain on your shoulder for a reason. Use it.

Learn how to handle your car. If you can't control your car, DON'T DRIVE! If it's a new car, be very conservative until you're familiar with its response times. The car will only perform as good as the driver. Ultimately, its the driver's responsibility. Its not about the car adapting to the driver, its about the driver adapting to the car.

Last but not least. . . LEARN HOW TO PRACTICE THE LAW! If you can't make any money other than pursuing frivilous cases, ITS TIME FOR A CAREER CHANGE!!!

These are the times where I'm convinced that the world is not worth saving when Armageddon comes. . .

Twiddled with the code a bit more today, and I daresay its reached 99% completion. The final 1% is the Edit function not working as expected because of a fundamental design flaw. . . which means I'm going back to the drawing board to fix. Its close enough where I'm declaring Epimelites past initial developement phase, and into Alpha phase. And if anyone's wondering, I'm releasing this under the GPL. Which means when I feel that its ready for public consumption, I'll freely release it (which will probably be during the Beta/pre-production phase). I'll probably release my PHP/GDI based text/image watermarker (my first PHP app attempt) at the same time, just so Epimelites won't feel lonely.

Regardless. . . Epimelites didn't make the self-imposed deadline by two days. . . but I'm going to redesign parts of it to make it better. I hope. . .

The sick computer I've been working on is getting a little bit better, now that I've removed a troublesome piece of software and reloaded a clean copy of it. However, the hardware portion (meaning the flaky motherboard) still concerns me. . . and seeing that Fry's has a $200 PC on sale today, might just be enough to prompt me to recommend them getting a new system. Less troublesome. . .

YanYan's wrapping up her preparations for her interview tomorrow up in Dallas. While it is welcome news that she's getting interviewed, it does leave us in a bind if she did get the job and have to relocate up there. We've talked over briefly about what our options were, and I guess we'll have do decide what to do when the time comes. While I'd rather she stay here with me, I'm not one to cut short someone's career on my whims and wants. . .