I have forsaken video games.

It’s true. Sukie and I just had a fight and it occurred to me that she percieves me as a stupid, white, fat, lazy dumb video game junkie who doesn’t do anything around the house. She’s right. When in the grips of an addiction, there is a time when the addiction feels right – like feeding it is your purpose in life, and perhaps you do derive a fair ammount of pleasure from it.

But when your wife is crying and not happy because you’re not keeping up on your end of the household tasks, the addiction is hurting you.

There will be a day when I play video games again, but I don’t think it will be for a while. Sukie’s not happy, I’m not happy, and life’s just too short.

I love you, Sukie

Oh tis horrible that theorb77 hath been felled by that terrible beast, the MMORPG. Oh woe is me, that his income from his work at the Heart of Darkness would be pilfered away in to the vaccuous depths of corporate pockets, creating a cycle of hate and unhappiness.

Why, why, why? Can no one help him? Is there naught to be done?

theorb77, I am sending a team of covert GRUES to devour you in your sleep.

Here’s a screenshot of the result of my decryption functions. This was only possible because someone already brute-forced the first two sections and figured out the keyword used to encrypt the message.

I keep wondering why I’m so interested in this particular puzzle. It is very bizarre, and I think I just like a good puzzle.

p.s. – I should also mention that I finally beat a human player at WarCraft 3. Yay!

I started writing a decipher algorythm for a Vigenere cipher, the kind of cipher used on the Kryptos statue at the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. I’ve been reading a lot about cryptography, especially as it relates to this particular puzzle.

Altogether, it’s the first cryptography programming I’ve done, and it’s pretty interesting stuff. Massive string manipulation, I must say

So my son has the Chicken Pox. He’s handling it like a real trooper

theorb77 hung out with us last night and we watched Super Troopers. The movie just felt like it was lacking something. Overall, the premise of ’something bad is going to happen if we don’t do something soon’ inevitably leads to something bad happening, and the protagonists of the story coming through at the end to save the day! Wowzers! Without all the adult jokes, it could have been the plot of a Disney movie – it kind of had a cheesy, half-baked feel to it that is reminiscent of any of those Disney live action, made for kids because kids aren’t hyper-critical of cheesy performances.

So I’ve been trying to play WarCraft III lately. Trying is the keyword here. I have realized that I am over-analyzing the entire thing, but I can’t really just thing strategically. The whole thing is basically just preparing to stop the waves of attacks while at the same time plotting a wave of attack that won’t be countered.

I have tried to get ‘good’ at WC3 before, but I have always failled – but the fact that some people are actually good at WC3 propels me to beleive that it is not an impossible task.

Oh by the way, new layout! I updated it a few days ago.

Ok, I’ve listened to this song for the 93rd time, so it’s time to dump the lyrics on here:

(Zero-7 : In the waiting line)

Wait in line

Till your time

Ticking clock

Everyone stop

Everyone’s saying different things to me

Different things to me

Everyone’s saying different things to me

Different things to me

Do you believe

In what you see

There doesn’t seem to be anybody else who agrees with me

Do you believe

In what you see

Motionless wheel

Nothing is real

Wasting my time

In the waiting line

Do you believe in

What you see

Nine to five

Living lies

Everyday

Stealing time

Everyone’s taking everything they can

Everything they can

Everyone’s taking everything they can

Everything they can

Woooohh

Do you believe

In what you feel

It doesn’t seem to be anybody else who agrees with me

Do you believe

In what you see

Motionless wheel

Nothing is real

Wasting my time

In the waiting line

Do you believe

In what you see

Ah and I’ll shout and I’ll scream

But I’d rather not have seen

And i’ll hide away for another day

Do you believe

In what you see

Motionless wheel

Nothing is real

Wasting my time

In the waiting line

Do you believe

In what you see

Everyone’s saying different things to me

Different things to me

Different things to me

Different things to me

Different things to me

Everyone’s taking everything they can

Everything they can

Ah, good old lyric spew. If y’all need to chill out a bit (and we all do), maybe you should put on this little diddy.

It’s that time again, kids!

So, Jabba and I made it to the auto-show after all. I took some good pics, saw some cool cars, and even went to Arby’s!

Ok, Arby’s is not that amazing. I did ok in school last week, given that I really didn’t try at all. I’m just so sick of school. I guess I’m not that sick, but whatever, you know? It’s pretty low on my list of priorities.

Ok, so it has been a few days. I had a good run o’ blogging and now you’re worried that Wudan is back to his old, non-blogging habits.

While I reserve the right not to update, I must warn you, I had a 3 day weekend, and sitting around with Sukie always takes precedence.

We didn’t make it to the Auto Expo like we had planned. I was kind of psyched to take some pictures. I even took Jabba to get his hair cut. We even planned on going this morning, but didn’t make it

Oh well, don’t fret.

theorb77, Sukie, Daxero, Antigone, Krispy, Meryl, Yoshi, Jabba, and myself went bowling Thursday night. We found that there weren’t going to be lanes open til later, so ate at the Dragon Diner and then went bowling later.

The fad that these bowling places have is that they’ll play music and use black lights later on in the evenings. The first place I heard of doing this was at the not so FunDome, now just a big, stupid looking, run down building.

Anyway, bowling was not so great. But it had it’s moments.

Bowling, I guess, is a geeky enough sport to bring out the bloggers. At least Yoshi is good at it

Daxero got a strike. When theorb77 was up, the ball was about 2/3rds of the way down the lane when Daxero said, “He’s got one now.” Which, he did – theorb77, not a fantastic bowler, had just bowled a strike. Quite convinced that I could also get a strike, I bowled and got one as well. I thought it was pretty cool. Yoshi also got a strike, but he’s a better bowler than the rest of us, so it’s not like … a miracle that he knocked some pins down or anything.

The rest of the weekend was fairly boring. We ate out too much, were lazy too much, but got week 1 of our 8 week semester out of the way.

I’m completely unmotivated by school right now. I didn’t expect these classes to be cakewalks or anything, but I don’t really feel challenged. Maybe if I wanted challenge I’d have taken Statistics with Sukie, lol. Fat fricking chance. I’m done with that class and I’ll stay that way

When registration comes up for next semester I’ll have to make an appointment to have my credits checked for graduation. I still have plenty of semesters before summer so if I need something it can easily be taken care of

Sukie’s blog has a new look, it’s incomplete, like mine. I have a plan though, on how to make it super easy for me to change layouts. Of course, you’ll all have to use Firefox, like me. I was reluctant to use Firefox at first, but since switching I’ve noticed a dramatic reduction in the ammount of shit my computer has to put up with.

Way to go, Microsoft, you produced yet another peice of bloatware. Amazing.

Wow, I guess today is a twofer.

Those of you who know me know that I like local (Utah) history. I especially like old buildings and photos of old buildings when they were new. A few days ago I hit up the HABS/HAER collection that the Library of Congress maintains and saw that their website had got a serious revamping and it is now much faster.

Anyway, this got me to dig through Utah’s photo archives that are on-line and I found some really really really good ones? How good?

Let’s say I had a ’sixth sense’ moment of shock and surprise when I did a search for my own family name, at this site and found something very amazing.

I came to a visitor’s register that had our family name on it, and it was basically a notebook with names scrawled on it, apparently from 1961. I didn’t know what to make of it. What was this log for? What member of my family was on it that made it relevant? I scanned the pages, slowly, slowly, trying to make out the names (I did this for a living for about 8 months in 1998-1999, so I know a few things about reading the writing of people who don’t think anybody will ever read the writing.)

So, scanning the page, I had one of those spine-tingling moments, you know? Like deja vu. Well, what hit my brain first is that I had recognized the handwriting on one particular line. Second, is that I recognized the names of my uncle, father, and grandfather, written, very legibly, almost 50 years ago, scanned a few years ago and catalogued. My dad would have been 12 or so.

Wow

edit: Even odder, is that it appears to have been Dax’s birthday, only … he wasn’t born yet!

Ok, so today is a pretty big day. Jabba and I finished watching Episode 6 (well, ok, he still has like a minute to go, but he has seen the part where Vader helps Luke, and it make Jabba feel good about Vader, especially since all he does for the last two movies is choke people and go on about his obsession with Luke Skywalker.) In his relentlessness and his obsession, I can see how Anakin Skywalker is the Darth Vader of the second (original) trilogy – he is more powerful than even the emporer, and, in a sad way, betrays the emperor in the same manner that I imagine he betrays Obi Wan.

Well, we’ll see.

Jabba also got interviewed by someone with the school district to see if he is a gifted child. I know he is gifted even if they don’t agree, but I spoke with his teacher who spoke with the interviewer and his teacher feels that there is a strong chance he’ll be selected to run with the gifted crowd.

I dug at Jabba after school to see what they said about him and what kinds of questions they asked him, he said that the lady told him he was a genius and that he got all the questions right. If she didn’t say that, it wouldn’t be the first time that the boy has told me something just because I wanted to hear it. It also wouldn’t shock me if it was the truth

As a parent, I always want to think your kids are special, and I am sometimes worried that my perception of my child’s brilliance is skewed.

It just occured to me that I am always bragging about Sukie and Jabba I guess I just really love my family. In fact, now that I think about it, I have positive things to say about everyone in my family, even my extended families.

Wow, I guess everyone is awesome. By reading this, your awesome stat jumped 5 points! You celebrate with root beer floats.

Turn to page 43.