Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kael Loki Tikal's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, June 3rd, 2007
5:16 pm	Eeeeeewwwwww Since I got back from Rites, there have been ants all over my car, in the doorframe, but at least not inside. Well, I finally figured out where they were coming from.... when I opened my trunk. Where I found a nest of carpenter ants. EWWWW. I put a bunch of ant poison in there, hopefully that'll do it >.< That's what happens when you leave a $5 car in the woods for two weeks, I guess >.> Grossness. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 27th, 2007
2:44 am	Every day is another life Current Mood: blank (Comment on this)
Monday, October 2nd, 2006
2:56 am	>.> Mrrrr :: huggs everyone:: thank your for caring, people who read the last post.. The whole situation just sucked, but it went better than expected. My uncle didn't start any shit, at least. I just hate how morbid catholic wakes an funerals are. Yes, let's stick you in a room with your recently deceased family member, and surround you with people you have never seen before, who had some connection to them... Really depressing, and really awkward. What's wrong with showing how you miss them by talking and laughing at all the good memories you have of them? I miss my grandfather. I wish he was still here with us. But he couldn't move on his on because of his athritis, his mind was fading, and he still missed my grandmother horribly... He's better off, now that he's with her again. As much as I miss him, I can still feel good about that, knowing that he's no longer sad and in pain. I have a couple reminders of him, like his old bugle from when he was in the army, that I'll probably keep forever. I'll never forget him. Even so, I'm still burned out from all this... Haven't even been able to gather my thoughts enough to write this much about all of it until now. I guess the older I get, the harder it hits me. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 14th, 2006
1:54 am	And then there was one... My grandfather (mother's father) passed away this last monday... I write this post from Astoria, NY, in his house (currently bootlegging someone's wireless.) I really wish we could all deal with this without the family drama that will certainly ensue tomorrow. It just makes no sense to me how the people in my family can hate each other over all this. Instead of remembering the loved one we lost in good light, remembering the good times we've had with them, why does my family have to cause problems, blame each other, and hate each other for something NO ONE COULD CONTROL? My uncle has been causing shit ever since we lost my grandmother, and he blames my mother for her death. He blames her for not being there. What, does he think that he had such a negative effect that without my mother to balance it out, there was no hope? heh. I just wish it never came down to the point of having lawyers between family members... It just makes me sick. :: sigh:: I'll see how it goes tomorrow, maybe my uncle will show some hint of a soul.. Current Mood: Damn crappy (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 22nd, 2006
6:38 pm	odds and ends Interesting day yesterday... Found out one of Ali's friends from the resturant she quit working at was murdered... by his roommate and a bunch of friends... Tried to get out of work early 'cause of it, and couldn't. The had me /hang out/ with the musician who came in to help do a wine tasting, Robbie LaBlanc.. Apparently he did some music with the band Toto (Hold the line, Rains in Africa, etc) and released some music on his own with his brother.. The guy played a bunch of songs, and he gave me some pointers on playing, and let me play his guitar. Yes, it was Interesting... Current Mood: calm Current Music: Toto - Hold the Line (heh) (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 13th, 2006
5:30 pm	I haven't posted at all lately, for the most part I forgot about LJ, or AIM for that matter. Just been too busy, working a lot, lots of adventures, etc. Life overall has just been wonderful, there's rarely a day that I'm not really happy anymore, and that used to be somewhat rare for me. I miss a lot of people though, and some of my friends felt that I was blowing them off, I've simply been working and wandering, doing what I needed to. But meh. I'm trying to get back to seeing everyone at least somewhat frequently, it's just a tad harder when I don't have most people's numbers >.< Recently got over being sick again, got strep twice in about a month and a half. And this weekend, I'm going up to NY with the family, it's been a while since I've seen a lot of my relatives. My car may explode sometime soon, so I need to get it fixed before that happens. well, back to work. woot. Current Mood: happy Current Music: Incubus - The Warmth (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006
6:20 pm	Tired. Was stuck at work till 10:30 last night, because one of the registers went down, and to fix it, I had to make a new cable and run it from his office to the front of the store, and relocate the spare register. Then up all night taking care of not sober people. Got in to work late. Long Day. Current Mood: blank Current Music: Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 7th, 2006
3:12 am	People need to stop dying. I was talking to one of my friends from work today, Matt. And I finally found out why he's been visibly stressed the last couple of days, hasn't been able to get much work done, etc. Turns out, one of his friends killed himself this week. I know exactly how he feels now, going through all this shit absolutely sucks. I'm personally quite impressed that he's even made it to work this entire week. It's simply so hard to deal with- knowing you'll never see that person again, never interact with them again, all that's left of them in this world is your memories of them, and the memories of others. it really breaks down to that, though- in the end, the only mark we leave in this world is what people remember of us. I hate to think of it that way, but in many respects... it's true. With every person in this world, there's someone who'd notice their absence. I know that thinking had a large efect on me, and this is just another example of it. Losing someone you know, even if you don't like the person, is painful. Even if I say I /hate/ someone, I don't want them to die. They have as much of a right to live as I, and anyone else. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely people I think the world would be a better place without, who I very much dislike. But if they died, it would still hurt some. Because seriously- just because I don't like someone, doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. And a good portion of my thinking is far too objective, even to the point of being beyond my own personal feelings. Even with a bitter rival, their death would mean a loss of something to strive for. But I digress. Dealing with the death of someone you know, even if you didn't care much for them, is so terribly hard. I'd say people just shouldn't die, but that wouldn't help the whole overpopulation thing... Idunno. Maybe I'll write more when I sober up. Current Music: The Who - Teenage Wasteland (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
1:01 am	blah Life is too complicated... I need to disappear for a while, at least a week or two, and figure out what's going on. Hopefully soon, January maybe... Current Music: Our Lady Peace - I Loved You All Along (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 18th, 2005
12:30 pm	wow..... Anyone who's drank with me knows how I can drink a lot for my size, and never get hungover. At least, I never got a hangover before the party I went to friday. It was a blast, and I ended up drinking a lot, but all was well till i woke up and realized.. I was still drunk. Which was still fine, untill I realized I was still in Maynard, and had work in 20 minutes. drank enough water to sober up, got home for my work clothes, then got to work only 15 minutes late, and was fine for two and a half hours... Then the hangover hit me. I went from feeling mentally fuzzy but perfectly fine, to feeling like a train hit me in about 20 seconds. Ended up puking behind the building, and then actually sticking around and working... Could barely move or think, but I stuck around till 7, when my work day normally ends at 8:30. I'm personally impressed I made it that long, but definitely glad I didn't have to ditch work. However.... I definitely dank too much for the detoxing I did. lol. Actually, I probaly just sobered myself up too fast, normally I just let it go as it wants to, instead of drinking tons of water... probably why I got the hangover right there >.< When I got out of work before the party that did this to me, I noticed the coolest thing in the world - Ice frozen in the most amazing featherlike patterns on my roof. I had never seen ice do anything quite that cool, so I just had to get many pictures. Unfortunately my website hosting service is terribly bootleg, so I can't post the pictures yet. They look cool tho. Also going to post a picture of my fan belt, what's left of it at least. Work party tonight, that's definitely going to be interesting... Hehe, drinking with my boss, yay. Good weekend thus far :-) Current Mood: inanimate Current Music: Apocalyptica - Hope (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 17th, 2005
3:22 pm	OK. definitely drank waaaay too much last night... Current Mood: hungover (Comment on this)
Friday, December 16th, 2005
12:21 am	First off, I'll say this.. NEVER wear silk boxers to work... they're far too comfortable for.. that kind of environment. hehe. [Start technobabble] Finally got around to installing Linux on another of my computers. Specifically, I had a 1ghz celeron lying around that I had fixed, it's now running Red Hat 7.2, flawlessly thus far. I mainly did it 'cause I'm going to need to know Linux pretty well for my current money-eating project, and it's a lot easier to have a good handle on it ahead of time, then trying to learn it as I need to know different parts. 'bout to do a graphics test, then see what I can get running through WINE (windows emulator that comes with most linux installs.) Hopefully I'll learn it well enough to have it be the main OS on my computers, I'm too sick of the Micro$soft bullshit that one constantly deals with when using windoze.. :: downloads WINE to use all that damn windows-native stuff:: As for the money-eating project, I'm building my next computer almost completely from scratch. No barebones kit, hell, it won't even use standard parts- it's all going to be built with embedded computer parts, non-consumer displays and a homebuilt input system, etc. It will be probably the most geeky thing I'll have done thus far, but the end goal is: > The core of the computer, processor, storage, etc. will be in a box 3.5" x 3.5" x 1.5" (roughly) > It'll be a 1ghz or better system, with 64 megs video ram, networking, wieless, etc. all in that one tiny box. That way, while it'll be very portable, it will be able to run most software out there, including graphics programs and games > The screen, keyboard, and main battery will not be part of the main system, it'll have a small battery for hotswapping, but that'll be about it > The main system will dock into input/output interfaces, which will include the main battery - the system will use USB for the keyboard interface, and NTSC for displays, so that it can hot swap between docking stations and the video will be universal to all, from a 1.8 inch display for the wearable dock to the 10.4" one in the laptop style dock > Most of the systems will power it off electric screwdriver batteries: they're good, cheap batteries that are easy to get, easy to get external chargers for, and will probably be around for a while > I'll finally have a computer that does exactly what I want, in the size that I want it. It may cost more than a regular laptop, but if I need it to be a palmtop, it can be, and a laptop, and a desktop, a wearable computer, etc. All while keeping all my information in one place. I had wanted to make a wearable computer for ages, since I started highschool just about, and never had the resources necessary to end up with something more than a half-assed bootleg attempt. Now that I have some money, I will be very much happy to finish these projects. Hell, I could build the vast majority of the projects I've had in mind for years- most at the most would cost about $100, which is about how much spending money I go through a week.all I need to do is not blow so much cash for two weeks at most per project, and it won't affect the money I'm saving up at all. And hey, doing things the right way is much better than the bootleg way, in theory. [End Technobabble] ok, enough rambling... sleep now. Current Mood: pleased Current Music: Nena - 99 Red Baloons (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 15th, 2005
5:09 am	Tonight, and the next couple of nights, I'm finally making a point of staying sober. There's nothing wrong with drinking every night (necessarily...) it's just that A) I smoke a /lot/ more when I drink, and B) I have 2 christmas parties to go to this weekend, and if I don't make a point of not drinking, I won't even be able to get a buzz drinking with people at the parties. With the way I've been drinking, I need to bring a flask of Black Seal 151 with me to get drunk when I'm drinking with people. Much as I enjoy drinking, and joke about being a bit of an alcoholic, I'm not. I don't need to drink every night, and I'm very happy to keep it that way. It's just a tad harder when I'm making good money being surrounded by alcohol, and get a very nice employee discount >.< The holiday season wii make it easier though, I'll be too busy buying stuff for gifts :-) Also, I'll need to save up money to pay for car stuff, I'll likely be more expensive to get everything running smoothly... The oil change alone will cost more than what I paid for the car, haha. Such is life, sometimes. Spent a lot of time doing the geek thing tnight tho, since I was coherent enough too :-) Did a little more with the computer for George, gathered and tested some of the parts for the coilgun, tried to hack my dvd card drivers some more, and I spliced in a USB plug onto the dongle for one of my Xbox controllers :-) I had been bumming that the Playstation controller I rewired to use through my printer port wouldn't work on my toughbook, because they didn't put one onboard, and I didn't get a docking station with it.. Which makes playing FFVII on it a little harder. Then tonight I remembered, the Xbox uses USB ports as controller ports. In about ten seconds I had the drivers, and within about five minutes had the controller woking as a USB joystick :-D now it's (relatively) cleanly attached, and works fine :-) Just looks funny with the USB plug spliced in >.< Ok, I'm tired and rambling, time to sleep now. Oh and Shoutcast is awesome. Current Mood: productive Current Music: Type O Negative - A Dish Best Served Coldly (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005
12:45 am	BAD CAR!!!! I went to get gas tonight... My car barely started, it was so low on gas. But I got to the gas station, filled up my tank to make my car happy, and..... As I was driving away, my car started making the most horrid noises I had EVER heard from a car. If you've ever played the original Grand Theft Auto, know that rattling, crunching noise that the cars make when you're one scratch away from making the car explode? My car was making that exact noise. I pulled over about 200 feet away from the Mobile on 2A, looked under the car, saw nothing that looked wrong, popped the hood, saw nothing looking out of place, so I drove another hundred feet, and the noise was still there. after a more thorough inspection, I found chunks of what turned out to be my fan belt caught in different places in the engine. Turns out it pretty much exploded, for no apparent reason other than it being too old. Only reason I can still drive the car is 'case it's winter, so it'll never overheat while there's chunks of ice hanging off the car. And my car no longer makes any of the crunchy sounds it used to make, so apparently the fan belt has been dying for the entire year I've had the car >.< . At least the car lasted past 125000 miles, I was so sure the car would explode by then, I'm at 125061 right now tho, so far so good :-) ok, enough ranting about my car, I'll get it fixed and forget about it. Of course. Though my car still needs a name... Feel free to make suggestions :-) Current Mood: amused (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 5th, 2005
4:39 pm	Ramble I've been having a lot of strange dreams lately.. Not bad necessarily, generally not even somewhat unpleasant. Just strange. And then I wake up, feeling bad. With almost a feeling like you get after you lose some of your innocence, slightly depressed, knowing you'll never see life the same way ever again. I don't mind it so much, but it confuses me. Also reminds me of how much more I enjoyed hanging out with people in the past, I really had forgotten how much I used to enjoy hanging out with people like Pete, where it's not so much fun anymore... I just chill with those people for something to do. Thankfully I've been able to see other people more recently, and it's been really nice, I hadn't hung out with Adam Bean since high school, etc. But there are a lot of people I miss. I really do miss times like right after my seinor year, hanging out with radom people over the summer. I miss my freshmen :-( Hah, yes, I know they're not freshmen at all, but still. I almost feel like I need to disappear for a couple years, go start over in some other state, and then come back. I do have the wherewithall and motivation now to do that and not end up a bum on the streets, but it'll mean I'll have no contact with Amy, Jesse, Kristina, all the people I care about and still have contact with. And no chance of seeing my friends from highschool untill I get back. It'll also mean I'll never finish anything at school, at least until I either come back, or get into a position I can go to a community college wherever I end up. Im hoping that this upcoming christmas season will give me a chance to see all the people I miss from highschool, but even after that, I may just wander off for a year or so. Who knows? Maybe I need this. When it starts getting warmer, I think I may go off for a month or so, and see how it goes. If it doesn't really change anything, I'd come back. Idunno. What do you think? Well, to pass the time lately, I've been playing the most bootleg of all online games there is... Kingdom of Loathing. For something composed of stick figures and doodled monsters, it's actually endlessly entertaining. You choose from classes like "Seal Clubber," "Pastamancer" and "Disco Bandit" and click your way through a webpage based online RPG. It would seem far from exciting, but has entertained me more than most of the games I've played thus far. Some of the items in the game are outright strange, others simply just wrong- Just look at my newly acquired armor : bloody clown pants This is a pair of bloody clown pants. Believe me -- you don't want to know how the blood got there. Type: pants Power: 50 Moxie Required: 10 Selling Price: 60 Meat. Other items and things in the game are in more tasteful humor, but I laugh at almost everything in this game. Also, the way the game is done, you can only fight things a certain amount each day, which keeps one from playing so much they get bored of the game, and means that it takes everyone a cartain amount of playing time to level. Though I'm pretty much sick of online games, this one is at least nice to have a character on, I get bored and want to play something inevitably anyways. It's just really nice to not be playing games like EverQuest or AO, etc. Any of those games that eat all your time and lead to you jobless, sitting in front of your computer for days on end... Not that that was ever me, um, yea... I've been trying a lot of interesting beer lately. Just about every night I come home from work with a new imported beer to try, because I heard a good review of it, a friend at work recommended it, or I even just liked the bottle. The last few days I've come home with things like Delerium Tremens, Weyerbacher Insanity, Arrogant Bastard Ale, and Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour. If you ever stop in at my work, you might notice something about these beers- they're all at least $5 a bottle, sometimes as much as $10. And while in some cases it's worth it from a getting drunk point of view (the Weyerbacher Insanity is a 24oz. bottle, with 11.5% alcohol content... drinking that beer is like driking more than a 6-pack in one.) In any even, I should probably cut down a little, I've spent a TON of money on liquor since I started working at Colonial Spirits. I'm making good money too, but I should probably cut down some.. Maybe next year :-p As long as I'm spending money I have already, it's not too bad :-p Current Mood: productive Current Music: Orbital - Doctor (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 20th, 2005
2:39 pm	Well, my birthday is over, I'm 22, yay. See the excitement. The party wasn't too bad, but it also wasn't too much of a party. And my Toshiba laptop completely died yesterday- I went to go use it to play music through the stereo for the party, and it was just completely dead, barely did anything, couldn't even make it into windows. Good timing I guess, considering I bought the Toughbook to temporarily replace the Toshiba laptop. But now I need either 35 CDR's or an extra 30-gig hard drive to back up everything that's on that laptop, before I try reinstalling windows. I may just give up and go with linux, it'll save me loads of trouble in the end I think. (I've gotten about 6 different types of crashes so far in trying to fix this install, it's pretty well fucked..) Maybe I'll take care of that later. Seems a lot of people forgot about my birthday (not that I warned too many people about it ahead of time.) It doesn't matter too much, because after one's 21'st, birthdays aren't really something to look foreward to much. Wish I could have seen Amy and Jesse today at least tho, I didn't even get out of work early enough to see them /on/ my birthday (tho I'm pretty sure they forgot about my birthday anyways) But I'll see them on thanksgiving at least, if all goes to plan. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
9:46 pm	The wonders of Work People have been pointing out a lot recently that my having a job has been great for me. I'm in much better shape, I actually sleep regulary now (haven't missed a night of sleep since I started working) and I'm mentally notably more stable. After all, not having any regular sleep schedule or consistent human interaction can make you a bit nutty after a while. I miss having lots of free time to work on random things, but now I also have the cash to actually afford my random projects. And I'm even hanging out with Amy and Jesse more (my whole reason for not seeing them for so long was I felt so bad about never being able to pay for so much as a soda when I was hanging out with them, and we inevitably go out to eat, or to a movie, etc almost every weekend.) I was even able to get Sundays as one of my days off, so work should never really get in the way of seeing them. Of course, I had them make Mondays my other day off, so I'd have time to see Kristina, but unfortunately that hasn't seemed to work out too well. Even so, all in all, I'm overall pretty happy now. Don't worry tho, I'm still a bit crazy, but only in a good way :-) Current Mood: complacent Current Music: Nickelback - Breath (Comment on this)
2:21 am	Google the world In my recent poking around various places on the internet, I came across an interesting article about the oh-so popular search engine, Google. ( Here ) that reveals some unsettling, though not surprising information about the company. Everyone I know who uses we searching at all uses Google frequently, most people I know also use the free for all Gmail email service as well. Hell, I hear phraises like "Oh, just Google it, you'll learn everything you'll need to know" at least once a week, almost without fail. It's therefore somewhat unsettling to learn some of the things the article brings to light. For instance, the goal of Google is pretty much to archive all the information available on and offline, so that people can easily search it. But most people don't think about the fact that their searches through Google fall into that category. After all, there are companies out there who'd like to know the kinds of things you search for. The people at Google themselves justify it as a method to give You search for something a lot, then they'll give you ads in your search pages about it. After all, those ads are what pays for Google. But still, it makes me feel like the search engine should have something in it along the lines of "Note: This search WILL be recorded to enhance your browsing experience." It certainly wouldn't stop me from using the browser, but it would definitely have an impact on what I searched for. It almost feels like an invasion of privacy. A good way to think of it would be to ask a helpful, knowledgable friend questions about all sorts of things. Wether or not you think about it, they'll remember things you ask about that stand out, and things you ask about often. And while you generally assume they won't tell people about what you ask, there's still the possibility they would. Will the next step in government background checks involve checks with google to see if you ever searched for anything related to something illegal? It's certainly possible, though not likely for the immediate future. Hopefully I'm not the only one at least a little worried about this. The somewhat comforting part is they are in theory doing everything with the intent of helping the spread of information. I personally like the idea of free access to information, without having to jump through hoops to find it. Don't get me wrong, I believe that art in any form, software, etc. (anything someone put hard work into to create) should get paid for, but information in my mind should still be generally free. There's a definite difference between charging for a novel that someone worked hard to write, and was good enough to publish, and to charge for basic information that people should be allowed to learn freely. I have a definite problem with /needing/ to buy a book on something to learn about it- If the only way to learn Algebra was to buy the book and read it, I would be greatly offended. Information like that /should/ be freely available. I'm generally still willing to buy a book on a topic, to have the information more easily accessable, but information like that should still be free. That's the whole purpose of public libraries, to allow easy access to information. But I digress.. And since it's almost 3AM, I must finish this later. But read the article, it's quite interesting. Yea. Sleep now. Current Mood: Dazed Current Music: Guns n Roses - Sympathy for the Devil (Comment on this)
Monday, November 14th, 2005
9:28 pm	New toy Well, my new toy came in the mail the other day. Panasonic Toughbook CF-M34. I got it 'cause my current laptop is quite nearly dead (dropping it, spilling beer and soda on it, etc. apparently wasn't too great for it's health.) So my thought was, "why not get a laptop that could actually survive all that?" Hence the Toughbook. It's actually built to meet military durability requirements, it's water, dust and drop resistant (I've used it in the rain, I've already dropped it a couple of times) and it's tiny. I even have a picture somewhere of one of these computers that was used during combat. A soldier carrying one got shot with an assault rifle, and the bullet hit the computer. It went through the lid of the laptop, and got stuck in the keyboard. The computer was ruined, but the guy carrying it was completely fine. It's always nice to know that my laptop is that durable. Oh, and I bought it through Dollar Computer Corp ( www.dollarcomputer.com ) It didn't come with a power supply, but it came with an external CD drive, and worked right out of the box. Yay. Took me till tonight to finally get around to letting Motor and Geno know I have a job, so that I have money now. They've wanted to go clubbing and bar hopping with me for a long time, and I only went with them on my birthday and pete's, because I felt too bad about going with them when I had no money. Now that I have money, so I'll probably start going with them pretty regularly. It'll be fun. Current Mood: good Current Music: Zakk Wylde - The Blessed Hellride (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 4th, 2005
11:29 pm	What dreams may come Ever had a dream that bothered, perhaps disturbed you so much you can't forget a single detail, but couldn't share any of it with anyone? Current Music: Counting Crows - Round Here (2 Comments |Comment on this)