All my friends, from the closest to the acquaintance, have left me to live out their lives. The one’s I have left I rarely see because of my work schedule. At home, at play, outside of work and at work I’m nothing but bored and lonely. It seems there is nothing for me here.

I don’t have a car, I don’t have a place of my own, it’s safe to say I haven’t accomplished anything at all, really. Aside from flushing my life away; heading down a horrible path of destruction for a time, then getting off it. But what of it? Am I really in a “better place” or am I just back where I started?

I don’t know anybody here. I have no real reason to stay here. Sure, my parents live here, and my brother, but is having family in the area make my staying absolutely necessary? If I were to move to, say, Taiwan would that really separate the bond I have with my family? If I completely uprooted myself and moved on, what would I be leaving behind? Nothing! That’s what!

My job is secure, but I hate it. Having a secure job in this terrible economy, with my lack of experience and education is a blessing! But the hours I put in for the meager pay I receive? Going to work should give me a sense of self worth, but it doesn’t. I go to work and wonder what the hell I’m doing there. I put every ounce of my energy into fighting for some form of respect, but I never get it. How long does this need to go on?

Seven years after high school I’m no better off than I was on graduation day. Instead of gaining life experience, I’ve merely increased in age. Nothing has changed. But why? I’m giving one hundred percent of my being to figuring out what my place in this world is, and after 25 years I’m still clueless? What is it that I’m missing?!

Even the things I truly enjoyed, for a long time have become boring. People I’ve gotten to know, from the schools I’ve attended, to the online “communities” I’ve been a part of, to the church I go to, people have come and gone, come and gone. It’s a never ending cycle. Am I psychotic? Am I ugly? Am I a burden of some sort? What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with everyone else? I ask around and all I hear is nonsense.

Do I speak in some sort of alien language? Why doesn’t anyone understand me? Why can’t I complete a thought without being interrupted? Why can’t people just listen to what I have to say? Why can’t people just share their opinion rather than telling me what to think? What to do? Why do people of every age treat me like a child?

Damn, this eerily resembles a a suicide note. I’m not suicidal, I’m just worn down. I’ve been pushed over the brink of insanity. Everywhere I go I’m alone. Everywhere I go I feel out of place. Like, where the heck is everybody? It’s as if I slept through some sort of Armageddon, woke up to a dead world and didn’t notice any change.

Everything I do bores me to tears. Nothing is fun anymore. Being alone can totally ruin even the greatest of moments. What’s a great time without someone to share it with? What’s a heartfelt conversation with yourself? What’s a blog nobody will read? An uploaded video nobody will watch? You know, I kind of feel like Bruce Willis must have felt when he realized the boy was the only one who could see him at the end of The Sixth Sense! Is there someone out there who can see me?

Don’t talk to me about God. I know God, quite well, and I am absolutely grateful for all the wonderful things He has done in my life. He has saved my sorry behind so many times in so many different ways I’d have to be totally psychotic to believe He wasn’t there; that He couldn’t see me; that he didn’t care about me. This note isn’t questioning my religion, my beliefs, or my knowledge of God’s existence. It’s about me and my relationship with other people. Or lack thereof.

It just seems that everywhere I go, other people don’t give a crap about me. They might pretend to for a moment, to preserve their own self image perhaps, to be glad to see or talk to me. But outside of that moment, it seems, to them I don’t exist. I’m nothing more than a casual acquaintance, a classmate, a coworker, a Facebook friend, an AIM buddy, a name on a contact list.

I’m really pouring my heart into this here document, and when I post it online, I’ll bet you everything I have it won’t receive more than a glance from those who have access to it. Maybe a few empathetic comments, or fortune cookie bible verses, but that’s not what I’m after.

Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe people listen to me, maybe people love me, and maybe I’m the one who can’t listen. Maybe I’m the one who hates everybody. Maybe I’m the asshole, and people have every right to ignore me like I’m not even there.

I don’t know. Whatever it is, it needs to change, and fast. I’m so sick of wondering what the hell is causing me such terrible pain. All I want is a good group of friends I can enjoy life with and a girlfriend with some sanity and some brains.

In short, for the last 10 years I’ve been lonely and bored, and the loneliness and the boredom have led me to make some pretty poor decisions. I’ve taken responsibility and corrective action for these mistakes over the past few months, but even after all the time, money, dedication and patience I’ve put into getting my life back on track, I’m still sitting here at square one. Bored and lonely.

Where does it end?

Ouch.

     The time has officially come. The changes I have wanted so badly to make all these years have begun to take place, and let me tell you I am both excited, and terrified.

     Four years ago I met up and hooked up with a woman at a bar. A year later she moved into my apartment. A few months after that her kids moved in as well. We all lived together for just over three years. As time went on my life took a serious turn for the worst. I did everything I could to hang on, mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, but every step in the right direction came alongside two steps in the wrong direction. As time progressed, those two steps became three, then four, then five and so on, and after a while the steps in the right direction ceased altogether. I was withering into an aimless, if not meaningless existence.

     I’ve never been supportive of the idea of “new year’s resolutions.” Why wait for specific time to come before attempting to make necessary changes? This year is no different, but as fate would have it the days in which I finally leapt from the pit my life was in just so happened to be the days leading up to January 1st, 2011.

     I was in a bad relationship. No, not bad. Just… wrong. The woman I was with was very good to me, and I was very good to her. We both had good intentions for each other, and we got along just fine. But every day I fought with the question, “Is this the woman God chose for me?” I wanted desperately to passionately exclaim “Yes! She is obviously the one!” But I couldn’t. I was terribly unhappy being with her. Her very presence was a burden on my soul. I could barely stand the sound of her voice, no less her presence, no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how hard I tried. I wrestled with myself for the entire duration of the relationship, trying desperately to justify the tremendous pain I felt every day. I conjured up written works of art that spoke of how this woman fit into God’s plan for my life, and despite the nagging voice inside me calling bullshit with every keystroke, I pressed on doing my best to appear like I believed it one hundred percent. I never believed it. Not even once, not even for a moment. I wanted to, very badly, and I wanted everyone else to believe it, too, even knowing it was a lie. Well, after nearly four years I just couldn’t believe it anymore. It was face the truth or die. I reluctantly chose the former. Thank God.

     This choice I made, this decision to make the 180 degree turn towards God, involves many intricate steps, the first of which was getting out of a “wrong” relationship. I’ve successfully taken that first step, and I’ve begun the long and arduous journey that is the remaining steps. I am eternally grateful for all the prayer support I have received, the advice and support of my friends and family, and I am especially thankful for God, His love, His grace, His guidance and His forgiveness.

To God be the glory.

~Josh

I just came across this, and let me tell you, I cannot stop laughing. Priceless!

Chuck Norris can edit PDF files

Chuck Norris rips CDs with his hands

Chuck Norris can download Metallica mp3s using Napster

Chuck Norris has a yahoo account with hotmail

Chuck Norris has an Intel CPU on an AMD motherboard

Chuck Norris has to chain his mouse to his desktop

Chuck Norris can program a Mac with excel macros

Chuck Norris’ website has no hits – Nobody hits Chuck Norris’ website

Chuck Norris invented C++ after roundhouse kicking C twice

Chuck Norris is the Domain controller

Chuck Norris has the IP 0.0.0.0

Chuck Norris is mailer-daemon

Chuck Norris is Dr Watson

Chuck Norris monitor has no glare; no-one glares at Chuck Norris

format c: is a request to have Chuck Norris roundhouse kick your PC

Chuck Norris runs Windows 7 on his Mac

Chuck Norris never gets the page cannot be displayed error

Machine code is another name for Chuck Norris language

Chuck Norris CPU doesn’t have a fan

Chuck Norris can write DVDs on floppy drive

Chuck Norris invented the internet

Chuck Norris can paste pics in Notepad

Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked his 14400k modem & that’s how we got ADSL

Chuck Norris’s Dot matrix printer prints photos – in colour

Chuck Norris uses Notepad for a database

Chuck Norris’ PC speaker gives him 7.1 DTS surround sound

I recently purchased three new hard drives for my computer. One was a Crucial C300 RealSSD at 128GB, the other two were Western Digital Caviar Black’s at 640GB each (Western Digital no longer makes their Black drive in 640GB, so get ‘em while they’re cheap!). Before the drives came, I ran some benchmarks on the drive/system I was running at the time. The drive was a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue with 16MB of Cache, and it was pretty old. Below is a Crystal DiskMark of the hard drive, and a Windows Experience Index (WEI) readout of the system with this drive.

WEI with WD Caviar Blue and EVGA GeForce 9800GT:

Crystal Disk Mark readout of WD Caviar Blue:

That’s actually fairly decent as far as the standards for HDD’s go. Now let’s look at a WEI and CrystalDiskMark of the same system with a SATA III SSD, two Caviar Black’s in RAID 0, and a Radeon HD 5670.

I was really surprised to see just how fast those WD Caviar Black’s were in RAID 0. The Sequential Read and Write speeds are neck in neck, and the write speed of the HDD’s for both Sequential and 512k random writes are actually faster than the SSD! The two video cards are pretty close in performance, the nVidia card at 6.9 and the ATI card at 7.0, but the rating difference between the old HDD and the new SSD/HDD setup is crazy. 5.9 to 7.5 (out of 7.9). It’s nice to finally be rid of that old clunker, and my External WD MyBook. Don’t buy one of those, they’re slower than molasses. I suppose that’s ok if you’re just using it for a backup, but seriously, don’t try using one as you would an internal hard drive. Bad news.

Yes, I myself am a nerd. Well, “geek” would be the proper term to use, given the information in the Venn diagram in my last post. Anyway, last Tuesday I ordered two Western Digital 640GB hard drives (HDD) and a Crucial 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD). SSD technology hasn’t been around very long, and I’ve read the blogs, comments, and feedback from some very disappointed SSD owners, as well as those of extremely happy owners, and it’s hard to say whether this was a good decision or not.

The most obvious reason people aren’t hoarding and praising SSD’s is the price per gigabyte. I paid $2.11 per gigabyte for the SSD I ordered, and $0.10 per gigabyte for the HDD’s. That may not look like much, but if you do the math a 128GB SSD will run you about $270 whereas a 128GB HDD will cost a mere $12.80 (at the listed price per gig).

Why do people pay a 200+ percent markup per GB? Speed. A typical hard drive reads at 67Mbps (by itself) and writes at about 35Mbps. What that means is that when you press the power button on your PC, your hard drive will bring up the operating system and all your startup programs (Windows Sidebar, AIM, antivirus software, etc) in, say, one minute. The SSD I ordered (used for the sake of nearly exacting numbers) reads at 355Mbps, and writes at 140Mbps. If you haven’t figured it out already, this means that when I press the power button on my PC, the SSD will bring up the operating system and all of my startup programs in one second. When I open a program, it’ll be open and ready to use instantly. Basically, SSD’s make “loading…” a thing of the past.

The big deal? This is a brand new technology, and as such it has it’s bugs. If it didn’t, I would’ve saved up the money and dropped $1000+ on one the day they came out! (Well, no. I probably wouldn’t have. Regardless of how awesome they may be, I wouldn’t spend that much on a single peripheral.) You see, there’s a few different ways you can run a hard drive. RAID mode, AHCI mode, and SATA and/or IDE mode. I’m not going to bother explaining all of them, but I will say that RAID mode is for multiple hard drives, AHCI mode is…..something…..and SATA/IDE mode is probably what you’re computer is running in. My point is, SSD’s don’t reach their full potential in one mode, run slowly in another mode, and run at full speed with risks in another. And then there’s TRIM support, which is a function of an SSD that preserves the longevity and speed of the drive by “cleaning it up” when it’s not in use, that apparently only runs when you’re logged off (and I don’t know too many people who log off their home computer). Anyway, I could go on forever about the hiccups and issues people are having with SSD’s, but that would take a lot of research and time (and copyright infringement), and it wouldn’t matter anyway, because only a select couple/few people will have even made it this far into this post. I digress.

Do you have, or know anyone who has, and SSD, and if so what’s to know before firing it up?

I’m a geek. I do have my moments of social ineptitude, however…

http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/555-20-liquid-cooled-oil-cooled-popular-mechanics.html

What a great idea! I’m laughing hysterically!

That’s right, I said it. I now have two printers. Both are wireless, one is laser (B&W) and one is an All-in-one inkjet (color). The laser printer (Samsung ML-2525W) has a 250 sheet paper tray. Load in half a reem, and live worry free for 6 months. The all-in-one (Epson WorkForce 325) doesn’t have a paper tray (sadly, as that’s a major selling point for me) was an unbelievable $69.99 on sale at Newegg.com!!! It’s got a top-load copier, flatbed scanner, color inkjet printer, and a fax machine. I have used every feature so far (including sending and receiving a fax to/from my insurance company), and it works flawlessly. I just scanned in a bunch of old pictures, and this one of Rachel and I turned out really nice. Check it out! And buy yourself an Epson WorkForce 325. Jolly good.

It’s the upcoming ASUS Sabertooth P67! 0.o

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