Ablic Right

No this is not an obscure philosophical ideal. It is not the latest fantasy novel, and it not a foreign word. Perhaps it will make more sense in context:

Ablic right ame intion dowment the liber and eved int who had advocate begar owning convent off the.

Makes perfect sense now, doesn't it? No? Well, what if you heard it spoken aloud by a talented actor? i.e. myself.

Adventures in Wi-Fi

It is relatively easy to set up a Wi-Fi network. It is also relatively cheap. As such many businesses offer free Wi-Fi for their customers. It is such a cheap and easy thing that there is really no excuse for charging for it.

The Tucson International Airport has free Wi-Fi. Several hotels between Chicago and Madison have free Wi-Fi. However Chicago Midway Airport decided to go against what everyone else is doing and charge for access to the internet. Because of them I spent two hours wandering about looking at people getting their luggage back. My bags are heavy. If I ever get arthritis, I am blaming you, Chicago.

Edit: 100th blog post. WOOT!

Girlfriend

Retreat

I have just returned from Lake Havasu, from the last retreat that I will take with my youth group. Fun times were had by all, but I didn't get to read any of my poems. Oh well, I'll survive. I have a slam in a week, so I shall just have to wait until then. I will post details about that event when I get some more details on it. I will try to post another recording of a poem sometime soon. There should be another Ninja Comic tommorow as I plan to go to the library, so I can use their scanners. I also have plans for another series of posts, but I think I will wait until Blogger adds scheduled posting. That will make these series, much easier. In other news I intend to buy a domain name soon for this blog. I may build a website later, but for now I will just host this blog at www.faldwin.com or maybe www.faldwinthebard.com. What do you all think?

Realistic

Two thing happened recently that inspired this post. The first is the meltdown of the family computer. Because we have little money and my brother has access to a computer teacher willing to help us, we decided we would simply buy all the parts we needed and save a whole lot of money. Which we did. But in the process I learned a great deal about computer hardware. Trying to decipher all the massive lists of specs to figure out if all the parts you just chose will work with each other is a complicated task. But I found it to be quite enjoyable. (Yes I am a computer nerd, it says so in my profile to the left)

The other is a post I did recently entitled "Dream" in it I maxed out all the stats on a Mac Pro, and found that I could finally accomplish my dream of world domination if only I could scrape up 23,000 dollars. Today, as the post title indicates I am doing a slightly more realistic build. This time of a PC. These were the rules I set down for myself.

1. I must spend as little money as possible
a. Exception: Because I am trying to be realistic I decided that I would spend up to five extra dollars per product in the name of increased performance
2. The sum of all the parts must be able to result in a fully functional computer.
3. All parts must be available on Newegg.com
4. No monitor, mouse, or keyboard is neccessary. (I already have those)

So after much head scratching, clicking, and replacement of products, this is what I ended up buying.

A black and silver case with included power supply ($38)
An 80 GB hard drive ($36)
An AMD motherboard with an onboard graphics chip ($40)
A CD-ROM drive ($12)
A 512 MB RAM stick ($10)
A 2.2 Ghz AMD processor ($45)

Even when you add in the price of shipping the total comes to a paltry sum of 210 dollars. You might wonder why everyone doesn't do this. Just figuring out what to buy took all of my nerd powers. Then you have to put it all together, without breaking any of the expensive parts. It doesn't require years and years of training, but you need to know what you're doing.

Then comes the operating system. There is no way that this thing would run Vista, and it would have a hard time with XP. Plus both of those operating systems cost money. I built this system with If I ever happen to come across a spare 200 bucks I might do this, if only for the sake of testing the limits of my nerdiness.

If anyone that know about building PCs is reading this, I would be much obliged if you would check my work. As far as I know it will all work together, but you never know.

As I write this post I realize that this computer needs a name. I've always like the idea of naming computers, but never had the chance. I have decided that this computer will be called Siddhartha. This is both because of its spartan nature, and because it is the book I am reading right now.

I realized also that the computer I am typing this on needs a name. It is an older iMac, that I got as a gift. I have decided to name it Freen. I have three reasons for this. The first is that it was free, so that is in the name. The second is that Freen, rhymes with sheen, which reminds me of the eternal Mac sexiness. The third reason is that Freen rhymes with green, which is the color of the speakers and side panels.

Wow, this has been a long post. If you've made it this far I'm impressed. But fortunately for you, this post is over. I'm off to read Siddhartha.

Girlfriend

I realized that all of the poems I have posted so far have had a common theme. So I decided to post this one, which follows that theme. Next week I will post something different, but for now here is another poem. If you scroll down you can listen to all of my poems in one playlist. Or you can click on the link on the left.

Edit: The poem that was originally here is an older version that is not as good. The newer version can be found here

Requested

As requested, here is the Harry Potter Erotic Fan Fiction poem. Just a quick disclaimer, and then the poem.
This poem contains explicit content and language of a sexual nature. You may be disturbed by it, you may even be horrified. There is also a high probability of hilarity and extreme entertainment. You have been warned.

Hmm...

The point is not the points. The point is the poetry.

These are the words of the Chicago construction worker, Marc Smith (SO WHAT?!), the man who invented slam poetry. I do slams once or twice a month, when they have them. Tonight's slam was an interesting one. It was the Valentines Day Slam with three parts Love Me, Do Me, Leave Me. In other words love poems, sex poems and break up poems.

For the first part I did a poem about an internet girlfriend (a fictional one, I promise). My sex poem was about Harry Potter Erotic Fan Fiction. Then I did a break up poem making fun of break up poems.

The internet girlfriend one, always goes over well. But I rocked the second round, in which I got three 10s and some other scores I don't remember. Then the third round I got another ten, but the other scores were average.

There was a winner named for each round and one for the cumulative score. I won the second round with my poem. The prize was somewhat awkward (flavored lube), but it was great.

At this point you are probably wondering about the title of this post. Well I should be estatic, but I'm not. I was happy when I did the poem, and right after. I was happy when I saw my scores. But when I found out I won, my first thought was "what am I supposed to do with flavored lube?"

I realized I have reached a sort of poetic nirvana. The only thing that matters to me is the poetry, not the points. Of course that will all go down the tube when someone gives me a 2, and it hurts.

Irony

Today, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Last year for Lent I gave up the internet. Ironically, this year for Lent I am committing to more internet.

I have had this blog for a while, but I only post rarely. I've started up others blogs where I make a few posts, then forget about it. But I like the idea of having a blog. The blog culture appeals to me, and overall I think blogs are pretty neat.

So this year for Lent, I am keeping up this blog. My goal is to post at least every other day. So then by Easter I will have finally learned whether a blog really is for me. I know I will do this, because I'm doing it for Lent, but if by Easter keeping the blog is starting to seem like a chore, then I will be satisfied in saying that blogging is not for me. However if I find that I love it, I will get in the habit and I will have an active blog. So all will be well.