So my troubles were all Gentoo-specific. I guess I’m just used to the way Debian does things, and then crazy Gentoo does stuff and throws me off balance, often making me think it’s something *I* screwed up. Bleh. I feel better about computers now… bad moods suck.

Yesterday I did a lot with the veggie garden. It turned out to be a bigger job than I thought, and not just because I don’t have the proper tools for it. As I think I have mentioned in the past, the soil is VERY rocky, so I needed to dig up the soil, break it apart with a hand-held claw tool, and remove the bigger, troublesome rocks. So I spent a lot of time with that, and quickly realized that doing the whole garden (which is 16x21ft) would take DAYS. Do I really want a veggie garden this big? I don’t think I could maintain it this large! So I have decided to chop the garden a lot, it’ll be about 1/5 the size, about 16×4. To the right is the diagram of that. Above the dotted line is what I’ll be keeping, the rest we’ll have to plant grass on. It’ll take some work, since there are raspberry plants growing on the wrong end, and we’ll need to plant some grass, and move the plastic guards surrounding the garden. Oy, it’s going to take a while. A photo of the garden can be seen here, just keep in mind that it’s a bit decieving… it really is 16 ft by 21 ft %)

Last night Michael went out to get some gasoline for the lawn mower and after a long “I’ll mow it” “I’ll mow it” “No, I’LL MOW IT.” “Nope I’ll do it…” conversation, he finally conceded that I could do “part” of it while he’s at work. My argument was that he’s working all day and I am here at home so I can do yard work, his argument of course was that he’s the guy and he should take care of exhausting chores like mowing the lawn. Neither of us actually like mowing, and no, I won’t mow your lawn.

I got up this morning, and it was wet outside. Not just dew wet, but actual post-rain wet. Raurg. So I have waited around this morning to see if it would clear up, and it has, it’s quite warm out now. I’m going to go outside now and get started on mowing, with our brand new lawn mower, yay! And then later I’ll probably spend a bit of time working in my garden again.

*grabs handle of lawn mower and wanders off to back yard*

Computer suck and I hate them and they are always fucking broken!

Ok, so I’m in a bad mood, it’s just one of those days when I really don’t want to be on the computer. Luckily it’s a beautiful outside so I am going to go play in the garden for a while.

I finished up Caligula’s vacation page, you can check it out here. Michael’s mother wrote a journal for each day from Caligula’s perspective. It’s so cute. I also included some pictures we took when we went to pick him up on Sunday.

Now I will save you from my horrible mood and go outside. But first, a couple pictures!

I found a pretty little bleeding heart plant in my garden %)

Caligula!

Ok, no long religion entry today.

I spent a bunch of time yesterday pulling together a website about our vacation, journal entries from the whole trip, photos, I’m quite happy with it, you can check it out: http://www.princessleia.com/vacation/wv/. Of course Day Six was the coolest, and I was quite pleased with how many great (featured) pictures came from Day Four.

Today I am going to go outside and do some yard work. Since we left, our unmowed grass has begun to take over! And my gardens need a bit of love. The weather should stay in the low 60s today, and hopefully the rain will hold off until evening, so it should be a good gardening day. *puts on gardening gloves and heads off*

I should probably put this in a more permanent place (like on my website, as it’s a work in progress), but for the sake of comments and discussion, I’ll first publish it here.

Disclaimer:
The following is a basic rundown of my religious beliefs. I don’t seek to convert or offend anyone. Of course I can take criticism for my beliefs, and I invite discussion. Keep in mind that although I am always open to new ideas and opinions, I am uncomfortable with being preached to. So if I offend anyone, I apologize in advance, that was not my intention.

And just so we are not confused, when I refer to “pagan” I am using the following definition:

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
pagan
adj : not acknowledging the God of Christianity and Judaism and Islam

Background:
Before I ever thought about relgion in a serious manner I went to Church. My parents were married and had me baptised in an Episcopalian church. They brought me to church where I learned about Noah and colored pictures of the Garden of Eden. I was too young to have any real idea about what I was doing, and when I had my First Communion in the Episcopalian church (they make a big deal out of it) I really didn’t completely understand. Less than a year after my First Communion my parents got out of the habit of going to church. I was about 8 years old.

The next few years I wasn’t involved in any sort of church. I didn’t really think about it much, too much else to worry about, I had health issues, and hell, everyone knows how much life sucks when you’re in your early teens.

The Path:
When I was in high school my mother decided that she “needed some spirituality” in her life, and accepted a friend’s invitation to a Baptist church. She was invited to have some counseling sessions with the pastor’s wife, and quickly became hooked on the attention and community that the church offered. That’s when she started dragging my sisters and me to the church. I was NOT pleased with this. At first I strongly resisted, but I eventually decided that I needed to find some path to spirituality, so I honestly attempted to give it a try.

I was only 14, and I had trouble with reading the Bible, so I found a copy that was written in “modern english” and did all readings from that. I followed what the church was trying to teach. I quickly noticed that not all people in the church were doing this. My mother certainly was struggling to read the Bible at all. Most people in the church listened to the preacher, didn’t argue, didn’t ask questions, just followed. I am not a sheep! My questions were never suffiently answered, “because it says in the Bible” is not an acceptable response.

I saw a lot of hypocrisy in the church. Sure you’re allowed to be human, but I feel that when you devote yourself to a religion, and preach it to others, you should practice what you preach. I was verbally attacked when I wore a Star Wars shirt to a church picnic, because “The Force” is evil or something. A woman at the church called my mother because she found out that I chatted online, and to her that meant that I was engaged in cyber sex. The final straw was when a missionary came to visit. They made it quite clear that they needed to spread the word to people who had never heard of Jesus and the Bible, because their lack of belief would send them to hell. So, Christians believe in a God who damns people even if they have never had the opportunity to hear about Christianity? Ahem, no. I can’t believe in that.

I could go on for a while on the issues I had with that Baptist church, and problems that I found in various similar organized Christian churches. Christianity is not for me.

My mother still dragged me to church, but I had moved on. As I looked at other big organized relgions I found history about them. This search of history led me back to prehistory. I learned that religions were typically set up as a tool in organizing a society. Priests were often also rulers, people were kept “in line” because their believed in the wrath of their God(s). So
Religion was a tool. Who knows if any REALITY came of this? People just made it up based on stories they heard. The Old Testament has a story of a flood, which is repeated in other relgious mythology. The same basic lessons are being taught in most of the major world relgions, and they seem to be mostly directed by a sense of community well-being.

I started studying Buddhism, and it really appealed to me. After I moved out of my parent’s house at 18 I got more involved with learning meditation and such. Then I hit a stone wall. I realized that I am far too materialistic and social to be a Buddhist. There would be no way for me to fully commit myself to this form of spirituality, and that is very important to me.

I dabbled in some “pagan” arts. All sorts of things caught my interest, tarot, wicca. And then I rediscovered Rune Stones. My father (and grandfather apparently) were interested in Runes. While I was in high school I had made my own set of runes. I saw the Rune stones for what they were, not some magical all-knowing oracle, but a method in which to focus my mind on my current place in life. A tool to relax me and organize my thoughts so I could evaluate them rationally and in perspective. This really helped me relax and be settled!

With the knowledge that rune stones could set me on my path of peace, I began to take more of an interest in northern european paganism, which included Norse and Celtic religions. These interested me but also brought me down the path of looking at history again. Why did these people celebrate the solstice? Generally it was so they would have a good harvest, so their God(s) and the earth would smile upon them and not kill them with floods. So they would be protected. Now we all know there are natural reasons for weather patterns, geological reasons for earthquakes. So I began to distance myself even from this sort of paganism.

I was reading, of all things, Salmon of Doubt, the book that collected snippits of Douglas Adams’ work after he passed away. This book was brilliant unto itself, but it contained an interview with an atheist publication (you can read it online here), in which Adams (a self-proclaimed “radical atheist”) makes some very interesting points that I hadn’t thought about before. This was what started me on the path to seriously wondering if I should shift from my agnostic views, to an actual atheist view.

I thought back to Nova series on Evolution that a friend of mine had sent. I realized that I honestly and truly believe that there is a natural order for things. We no longer need a God to explain why things happen. Maybe we don’t currently understand how exactly the Big Bang came about, but I have faith that our species will make it to a point eventually where we can fathom answers to this sort of thing. Remember, less than 500 years ago Galileo was imprisoned for suggesting that the Earth was not the center of the universe, now it’s accepted as the obvious truth (unless you are crazy). Who knows what we will know in another 500 years? There are plenty of theories out there already that we simply lack the technology and understanding to explore.

Then, right before my vacation, there was a religious debate with a Christian in IRC. I don’t enter these anymore, because there is no point and they only end with someone getting pissed off and leaving. Well one person said “Believing there is no God is just as silly as believing that there is a God.” I left for vacation with this on my mind, what is it about us that gives us this “assumption of God”? Is it because so many people believe in some sort of God? Is because it’s such a big part of our history? So I began evaulating all my ideas and feelings as to this. Looking back at historical and natural evidence. Is there any place for a God in
my ideas?

I only had one problem. Why am I on this religious quest at all? What is it about me as a human that makes me desire some sort of spirituality? What is the nature of this need for spirituality? Could it be a God making this feeling? This seems to be what Christians proclaim, that empty space needs to be filled with Jesus. But in my opinion, if there was such a God, he’d be more clear about his existance, rather than letting us kill each other over it and “gamble” based on our location and culture whether we get into heaven or not. No one religion stands out for me as being one obviously ordained by God, Christianity might be huge, but it came into it’s own while globalization by europeans was beginning.

I thought about all this and came back to my Rune Stone practice. It’s a way to cope with life, not by talking to some higher being and asking it for forgiveness and protection, but going into myself and finding some sort of inner peace. I do concede that finding a sort of inner peace, and developing the disapline for it is very difficult, and there are times when I feel completely hopeless because I am the one who I spiritually depend on. And without an organized center of belief outside of myself I have no “spirtual community” which I know is one of the reasons people join churches. People want to be part of something bigger than themself, they want to belong somewhere and churches tend to be quite accepting of anyone.

Now there are plenty of unresolved ideas in my head. For quite a long time I believed in reincarnation, old souls, past lives. Maybe because it’s exciting to think that you have lived past lives. I also tend to be quite superstitious about some things, which doesn’t make sense in the “all natural” world that I’ve created in my head. It’s quite possible that these loose ends will help me develop my spirtual feelings more, or I might completely let go of them.

For now, I am an atheist.

I’m back.

I knew I’d be swamped with stuff to do when I got back, I have all this stuff going on that I completely dropped for a week in West Virginina. Well it was worth it, the vacation was amazing. We took over 200 pictures, so I need to spend quite a bit of time going through them and putting them in some sort of managable organization so that people can see them. Here are a couple that I particularly liked.

Michael and I at the observation deck at the top of Seneca Rocks, WV.

Me at the Green Bank Telescope in WV.

1. I am an atheist
2. As much as I’d like to deny it, there ARE vultures in the east, and they are huge nasty things.
3. This stressful depression-full winter really took a toll on me, I could definately stand to lose 5-10 pounds, but even with the extra couple of pounds, the hiking was no trouble, so I’m still quite healthy.
4. Radio astronomy is way cool.
5. I love that digital camera!

…Oh I forget the rest.

Well, I am going to go organize those pictures and hopefully have some sections about our trip up soon.

Caligula has been dropped off at Michael’s mother’s. Just about everything is packed. Have directions in hand. Leaving in just a few minutes. Yay vacation in West Virginia! I’ll be back on the 30th. Take care everyone.

*runs off*

We got our digital camera today, woohoo! Next day shipping rocks. I unpacked it and ran off to take a few test shots: which are here. I’m quite happy with it so far, it’s so much better than our old camera %) And you can take little movies! I got a little movie of Caligula playing with his fluffy yellow ball, it’s great. Of course the real test will come this week while we’re on vacation.

So I spent most of the day packing and doing cleaning around the house (don’t want to come back from vacation to a mess!). We made arrangements so Caligula can stay with Michael’s mother while we’re gone, hopefully he won’t cause too much trouble for her %) We still need to stop at the store for some things but on a whole I think I’m pretty ready to go.

Now I need to figure out some sort of dinner from the little food that we have left. Really need to go grocery shopping when we get home. *wanders off*

We ordered the Canon PowerShot A70 last night, it should be here by tomorrow. Yay!

I haven’t really talked about this trip we’re taking.

Michael wanted to take a vacation because he’s been so busy lately. OS migrations at work, moving into the new house, he’s been working full time all the way through this. Last week he posted a link to a lodge in West Virginia and if I wanted to go. Of course! Then he said he wanted to go very soon, so we started getting our things together to quickly plan a trip. This brings us to my need for the quick search and delivery of a digital camera. Today Michael made final plans at three different Bed & Breakfasts that we’ll be staying at during our trip. We’ll be driving down through Maryland, staying at a B&B there and doing some hiking at a state park. Then we’ll spend the rest of the week (5 nights) in West Virginia at a couple more B&B’s, visiting a few more parks, caverns, waterfalls… wonderful hiking places. I’m very excited. We’ll be leaving this Saturday and driving home next Saturday.

For the entire trip I’ll leave all computers and internet at home. I’ll bring the books I checked out of the library, that should be enough. Yay for relaxation away from the hum of my harddrive!

I got some new books from Prentice Hall today for the Philly Chix group. One of them is called Linux: Programming by Example. I thumbed through it, I think it’ll be useful, but the thing that makes it notable is the cover. It has a purple lightsaber on it: see? It made me giggle.

Is there a synonym (read, real word) for bookaholic? I think I might be one. Books in .txt format are fine if I have no other option, but I do so love books. I love what’s inside them, I love how they feel in your hand, I love flipping through the pages of a new book and smelling that new book smell. Mmmm books.

I must go back to finalizing our plans and routes to take. *wanders off*

I like to take pride in my searching abilities, but when it comes to doing research for products and actually shopping online, I suck. I don’t know what the trouble is, but Michael can hop online and within 20 minutes find what I can’t find for 3 hours of searching and wading through reviews. Part of my trouble is that I get stuck on one track and start blocking out other options. It’s really a horrible habit. Maybe some of it has to do with not taking enough breaks while searching. After a while I just get so numbed to reviews, and it’s gets frustrating because you have half a dozen reviews that say “this camera rocks!” and then you come across two that say “I hate it.”

Just for fun and comparison I decided to look up some reviews of this old HP one that we have, and some people actually said they liked it! It was comforting to discover that it is a particularly bad camera, and lots of people had trouble with the flash stopping working, and it being a battery hog.

Anyway, after all the recommendations (thanks to everyone) I was able to get on the right track with exactly what I wanted. DCRP Reviews are amazing! They provide picture gallerys of shots from cameras, a lot of different sorts of tests. There were also all sorts of normal user reviews that I could scan through for each camera. Remember back in the olden days when product research wasn’t so easy? Me neither.

I was quite interested in an Olympus recommended by Sam, but then Michael mentioned his preference for compact flash cards (apparently we do have a couple small ones around).

I went to that camera review site with a list of a few recommended cameras that used CF cards.

The Canon s410 (which is the newer version of s400, recommended by a bunch of people) is nice. Unfortunately it’s expensive ($379.94 at amazon, I did price checking elsewhere, but amazon proved to be a pretty good basic indicator), and I really wasn’t sure we wanted to push the $400 mark if we didn’t have to.

I looked at a relatively higher end Nikon Coolpix 4300 that brinkecw suggested. Well this is a pretty nice camera, 4 megapixels, but the price tag was $343.88 at amazon. I also discovered that it doesnt take AA batteries, it takes either a rechargable battery pack, or a 2CR5 Photo 6 Volt Lithium Battery. I want to stick with AA batteries in case I am stuck at a lan party with a dead camera and need some quick replacement. Sorry Nikon!

Michael dropped by spoofee.com and saw that they had a Canon PowerShot A70 for $218.39! 3.2 megapixels, which is fine, getting more for under $300 is difficult. I checked out the DCRP Reviews and was quite pleased with the one for this camera. I went through and read user reviews, and the only issue people really seem to have with it is that it’s not very durable (broke when they dropped it). That’s reasonable, I think I can handle that.

Of course now that I had seen the A70 I HAD to check out the A80 *drool* this is a pretty slick camera! Quite simliar to the A70, but it was 4 megapixels, more durable, less redeye trouble, and had a couple trivial features that I didn’t really care much about. Price tag at amazon: $339.94. We agonized over it, and in the end decided that it really wasn’t worth the extra money.

I spent a bit of the afternoon going through reviews of flash card cameras without much more luck. Apparently the Canons really are the best out there in the $200-400 price range, even compared to Kodak, and most of the Nikons are pretty sad in co
mparison.

So we’ll talk about it tonight, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be going with the Canon A70. And since the price of the camera + next day shipping is STILL cheaper than trying to find the camera at a store, we should have it here by friday %)

Enough about digital cameras. If I look at another hi res digital test picture today I’m going to be ill.

Yesterday I did as planned, some yard work in the morning, showered, ate lunch, and then walked up to the library. I love libraries so much. Libraries make me want to lock myself away forever and just read. I want to check out 2318903 books and fill my head with everything that’s in them. Well since that’s not possible I picked up a Second Foundation, a sociology book, and The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary which I have been wanting to read since it came out but kept forgetting about it. Since I needed a break from Foundation (reading them too quickly) I decided to start on Professor and the Madman last night, and so far I’m quite pleased with it.

Last night we left the windows open again, it got cold. I’m not sure how cold it got last night, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the 40s. As a result, our little temperature sensative kitten snuggled under the covers the *entire* night. It was so adorable. When Michael got up this morning to get ready for work Caligula kept crawling out of the bed, following him for a bit, and then coming back to snuggle under the covers with me. When I got up out of bed he followed me (and my comforter, it WAS cold!) upstairs and snuggled in with me again. Even though it’s warmed up he’s been like this most of the day. I was even able to trim his claws! I love having a cat.

That’s it for now. *wanders off*

I was outside this weekend doing yardwork, and I was so pleased with how everything was looking that I put our nice new e2 batteries (they say they work well in high drain devices) in our HP Photosmart 215 camera and headed outside. I tried to take a couple pictures, then gave the camera to Michael, who snapped one then said “Hmm.. it’s still at 100, I don’t think it’s working right.” Then he got a Compact Flash error. Crappy. I don’t know exactly what happened, or why, but it seems that our flash card might be dead.

Now as you all know, our digital camera sucks. It’s old, and it was inexpensive, and it’s HP. First of all, to be expected with cheap cameras, the pictures are fuzzy and turn out horrible if the subject is moving at all. It eats batteries like crazy (I guess this is fairly typical of all digital cameras though…). But even worse, the flash no longer works, and the power input for a cord is so flakey that we can’t even use it. We’ve dealt with these issues because when you’re on a budget a digital camera is quite a purchase if it’s not absolutely necessary.

The death of this flash card was the end of it though. I’m NOT buying a flash card for this horrible thing. We’re planning a trip to West Virginia next week and I don’t want to be without a camera! So later this afternoon I’m going to spend some time scanning digital camera review sites to find something. I’ve been out of the market for so long.

So any suggestions would be quite welcome, I just have a few conditions:

1. removable media (whether it be flash cards or whatever)
2. good picture quailty
3. works with linux (our HP one didn’t and it was a cause of much cursing)
4. under $400 (I’d probably like to stay in the $200-300 range, but if there is a camera that it’s so amazing as to break that barrier up to $400 I’m willing to consider it)

I won’t be shopping online, just because of time restraints.

Now I’m going to head outside and work on getting the big rocks out of the soil that I’m putting back in the hole where the rhododendron used to be. This way it’ll be easier to dig up when we finally decide on the perfect tree %) I want to get this bit of yard work out of the way so I can shower and walk down to the library this afternoon to return Foundation and Empire which I just finished (btw, I totally saw that ending coming!). *wanders off*