tech thoughts – gps tracking

I’m too damn deep in the tech world, ugh.

So I was thinking a few minutes ago about a new DIY tech project. I have a lot of time, effort, and money invested in my car back in NM, and was thinking that it would suck a whole TON to have it stolen. The thought of a homebrew GPS tracker crossed my mind…something that could run on sun or 12V battery power when the sun’s not out; have decent computing power to run a GPS monitoring program, WWAN, and possibly 802.11 to help triangulate position and get a datastream out to me; and (if there’s enough RAM left to toy with) something that can use a cheap webcam to take a picture with to help determine its location if GPS is unavailable, along with storage space for pics and a way to store them prior to transmission to me here on the homefront.

I’ve had the following thoughts so far for a base system:

• OpenWRT: a great Linux-based platform for embedded devices, has a HUGE library of compatible hardware
• various wireless routers compatible with OpenWRT that include hardware USB ports for peripheral devices (a MUST for this plan to work)
• hardwired USB 3G modem, USB stick storage, USB camera compatible with video4linux drivers
• some sort of motion/”I’ve been moved” sensor for future thoughts

All this will enable this device (temporarily calling it Cassandra because dammit, I felt like doing so) to be tracked and monitored if it is ever moved from where my car currently sits. Tell me your thoughts on this topic…I’d like to hear from you!

Lost Causes, part 1

Blink…blink.
Rain pounded the double-paned glass window.
He waited for her to arrive, for the door chimes she’d made him for Christmas to softly sing sibilance to his ears as she cracked the door.

Worry, held back by a lifetime of patience, started to seep through his cracks. He whispered, “Chanel, it’s been three hours…” and watched the red numbers change again. “She’d call if things went south. She’d call.”

Four blocks. Only four blocks.

Her pulse thudded so hard she could feel it behind her ear…right where he would kiss her.
The thought of his lips pursed there gave her a kick as she stared forward at the next foot of asphalt she’d have to drag her body through. Those bastards who’d beat her had left her to die. They thought they had her good, breaking her back like true thugs, cowards who lived at the point of a blade and walked its edge every day. They’d brought a bat and hit her when she wasn’t looking, after she’d taken three of them down and was working on the other two. She questioned if her back was down for the count or just dazed and confused, like the first time she’d snuck a pull on that wicked brew her older sister got from a friend at school. What I’d give for a whiskey sour with a twist right now, she thought, and resolved to keep it moving.

“Those damn punk-asses. I’m coming, Buck.” Such words from a woman raised by a devout Quaker mother and a father hard as flint. I’d gladly eat soap today, Mom and Dad, she noted as she pressed on to her home, pushup-style. “Just like walkin’…one step at a time. Go…go…go….”

 

His hairs pricked up as he heard the noise. It was as if something was slithering through the muck outside, a big dog creeping around or maybe an opossum lost in the dumping rain. Curiosity and a need to douse the worry-flame within made him go to the door and look down the street to where the sound originated.

“God…no.”
He saw the phantasm-shape crawling toward him a block away, unbidden memories of childhood fears he’d worked months to overcome lest being heckled by teen friends, till he saw it was her.

His love, broken, pulling herself through shards.
His other half, crushed, trying to get home to him in the middle of a monsoon.
His china doll, left to die, returning like a boomerang in slow motion to where she started.

Chanel.

…birthday

What do you want for your birthday, son?

I want a train and a truck, daddy
a train to go fast, just like you
and a truck to move the dirt, to build a mountain as tall as you are

What do you want for your birthday, son?

I want a video game like all the other kids have
and to go to the roller coaster and the water slide
let’s watch the big splashes and hear people screaming

What do you want for your birthday, son?

I want a bike that can take big jumps and a telescope
so me and my best friend can build ramps and ride
all the way to the stars

What do you want for your birthday, son?

I want a girlfriend, dad, to take on a date
someone told me they kiss really good if they like you
I think they’re lying, but I’m up for trying

What do you want for your birthday, son?

I want a fast car, dad
maybe I’ll catch a hot girl if I drive fast enough
drive fast enough to escape my fear of rejection

What do you want for your birthday, son?

I want a job, dad, so I don’t feel so worthless
so I don’t have to make up excuses for friends anymore
why I can’t take a lady out to dinner

What do you want for your birthday, son?

I want you and mom to get back together again, dad
for things to be like they were, happy faced
before you showed me the wrong way some things are done

What do you want for your birthday, son?

I want a girlfriend, dad, to kiss and hug and take on a date
maybe even tell her I love her (after sufficient time, of course)
we can give the world a child, so I can ask him,

What do you want for your birthday, son?

Thoughts of the up and down—

He lived in a place lit by the flicker of the flame within,
the fire fed by a woman’s smile, shuttered by the quiet pull
of the blinds he refused to loose.

She lived next door, looking out from time to time, shooting glances
at the man who lived within himself.

She smiled
He waved

It was as if a mirror had made their souls reflect away from one another,
as if a black hole of separation had dug a hole through space-time
to permanently sever hope of a connection between the two.

She smiled
He turned away, unable to smile back.

On the fortuitous day, that, like many others, started off gray,
he eliminated Einstein, stomped Schrodinger, hauled Hawking’s particles away

Filled the black hole to otherwhen,

Walked across the row

And loved her.

Freewrite – 10/28/2009

I’m in a place where light shines and vanishes—

somewhere in a corner of my mind where the perfect SHE exists.

This is not a place dominated by

loneliness

anger

love

It’s merely a place where two people will meet and throw caution to the winds.

As I walk toward her, she extends her arms to me and whispers my name.

Sand buoyed by her breath reaches my humidified skin and dries it of all the

sin

anger

frustration

I’ve lived with since I saw her last. I want to grab her and see if she’s real.

But no one could be as good as this one, so pure and broken, so full and empty,

hidden yet bursting from the shadows like a black-veiled flame.

The fruitless search

the heartless rejection

the painful truth of it all

as my apparition sinks back into the sand and scrub of the earth, leaving me

with one question:

Will I ever find what she means to me?

a test from win 7 – Windows Live Writer

I picked up a copy of win 7 pro the other day and just downloaded the Writer app for it. let’s see how accurate it is in posting to my blog.

Something for the motorheads

Early morning blood sweat and tears

Late night missed dates and broken promises

You just don’t understand me.

My heart beats in twos, fours, or fives

In, crush, BOOM, out, (and a twist for good measure)

Warming my core and prepping me for launch.

Atria and ventricles come in numbered pairs,

Two, four, six, eight, ten, and sometimes more

Push or spin, moving me just the same.

I grab the earth with paws made of trees’ blood,

Shod with shoes from the interior of Terra herself

Stopped by the hand of man and my own fibers.

Bigger equals better? Not always, my children

As a stronger set of lungs allows little brother to catch

and pass the bluster and roar of his elder, winking all the same.

You feed me the remains of your long-dead relatives

I give them back to the air they once breathed

You can say they are constantly watching over you.

Remember, though, that one day I will grow old and tired

My joints will creak and my ligaments will tear

Please, remember me and that I can live forever with love.

No need to have a baby to remember your youth

Or a set of fine silks to make you feel large in a small world

I am here. Care for me and I will live forever.

Now, though, there is a battle to be fought

One that has been waged on countless fields by many contenders

So I will say goodbye and hello again at the 1320…catch me if you can.

_Nick C

An early-morning freewrite because I can’t sleep.

This post is not my best in any way…I’m tired but I can’t seem to pass out because of the worries in my head. Bear with me and maybe something good will come out of all this.

The idea has run through my mind these past few months since I’ve graduated that I’ve devoted far less time to doing the “important” things in life than I have to thinking about them. What does that mean? Mostly that I stress and stress and gnash my teeth at stuff for days on end in prep for the actual event, and when it happens I’m not prepared in the slightest for whatever’s going on because I spent potential practice time freaking out. How does one get out of this? I haven’t the slightest, but I know thinking about it will stress me out more. “This is not the way life is supposed to be lived,” something in my head tells me, but I don’t know what else to do right now.

I need a job…I NEED a job. DJing has been paying the bills, but each month finds me cutting a little more from each check to pay part of this bill down and part of that bill off. It’s like I’ll never catch up…but if I don’t live like this, I have no option but to go and live with my parents again (THAT IS NOT AN OPTION BECAUSE I LIKE MY FREEDOM AND MY OWN SPACE TOO MUCH!) I can’t see myself living with them again, feeling like I regressed from college back into high school, into middle school, back to the world of menial chores, lack of free time, up at 6am to do all manner of stuff I hate, no people to hang out with, no girlfriends over, hammered-down, laid out repression ALL OVER AGAIN. I can’t hack that now…can’t live behind bars when I’ve seen the endless horizon up close and personal.

Right now, I have two things I’d like to do in my mind. They are the following:

1. Get my life in order, and
2. Find a job.

There are so many sub-headings under both of those categories that just thinking about them makes me wanna throw up and die; regardless, I know that they need to get done.

I JUST FEEL LIKE THERE’S NO WAY TO DO EITHER OR BOTH OF THESE THINGS WITHOUT A PAINFUL REALIGNMENT OF MY LIFE THAT MIGHT KILL ME!

I mean, I finished school in December and have basically been jacking around for the past two-and-a-half months avoiding the reality of my world under the guise of “taking a well-deserved break from years of school”…more like taking a break from life and the responsibilities it brings. My parents call and ask me all the time what I am doing with myself, and I tell them, “Relaxing.” “Chillin.” “Sleepin in.” Honestly, most of these past three-ish months have blown by like summer usually does, except with far less pay. I’ve spent them in my apt surfing youtube or Wikipedia, occasionally riding my bike (if the planets are in alignment, and if the weather isn’t too cold, windy, wet, or otherwise crappy out), being painfully lonely, and formulating grandiose ideas on what I wanna do “when I get a job and have money”.

Looking back a few months, getting laid off from ICASA really really REALLY kicked me in the teeth. I mean, I thought I had that mess on LOCK! I had projects to work on that had my name written all over them: something out at Playas, ongoing improvements to internal projects, and the like…and getting dropped in the middle of ALL of that really made me feel like a year-and-a-half worth of work for them was for naught, absolutely pointless. YES, the economy is in a bad way. YES, I put all my eggs in that basket and neglected to look elsewhere when I had a chance to do so, because I got lazy and thought the glue holding my hopes together was unbreakable. The checks quit coming and I supplemented my income by working on cars. I did the job(s) for Amanda, asked for a ton of DJ assignments, got my income tax refund, and then made a mistake by flying out to see a friend for Valentine’s Day and totally splurging and living WAY outside my means when I could’ve (and should’ve) been saving that cash for a rainy day like…well, now. (The mistake was not SEEING you, dear, it was being unrealistic with myself and what I had, and I have been kicking myself since I returned.)

Things will get better…but right now, they seem so bad.

Church in the AM so I’ll call it quits for the post. Much love to all.

 

_Nick

the dream

From what I remember of it—

I had the strangest dream last night/this morning…I was a freedom fighter trying to keep my family safe. Since my hands were dry and ashy, and since it was desert hot out, we must’ve been located somewhere in the Southwest. I was moving my family between administrative buildings of a school that looked something like the Kremlin while the city/countryside around me was being bombed by people who looked Mexican and spoke Spanish and Arabic. I was armed with an M-16, some pistol, and a knife, and had wild eyes every time another bomb from a Mexican UFO-looking thing hit the ground.

I just wanted to protect my family.

My mom was crying and my dad had little sanity left. My brother and sister were sick or otherwise unable to fight, so they stayed covered in sarapes and helped me watch corners and look for cover.

We came into this open field that might’ve been used as a soccer pitch at one time but had been perverted into an execution ground. The dead and dying lay on the edges of the field near the walls of the Kremlin-looking building where their executioners had done/were doing their grisly deeds, some still moving, others waiting for the final blow of a knife or bullet to silence their weak sobs. Some little piece of earth-love inside me wanted to roll around in the lush grass that had not been cut in so many years, but I could not succumb to its tiny voice; I had to keep my family safe.

In one corner of the field, a man was holding a woman by the hair and screaming at her, threatening her life with a knife if she did not acquiesce to his demands.

I had had enough. I sighted down the black barrel of my weapon and pulled the trigger twice.

He crumpled to the floor and she started screaming because she didn’t know what else to do.

M-16s don’t kick much, but they make a hell of a report. I knew that by taking out the one trespasser, I would bring bad attention to myself and my family…and sure enough, they came yelling from the surrounding buildings, armed with knives and slashing short swords. I had the advantage in ranged weaponry, but I was running low on ammo and was trying to keep my brother from going after them with his bare hands vs. a blade through the ribs.

They circled around us, giving us a 10-foot buffer…there were twenty of them vs. five of us.

We were vastly outnumbered, and their knives would beat the few bullets I’d unleash in the span of time it took them to rush us. I started to feel the strange detached feeling some soldiers note after they’ve been shot or otherwise wounded…and I prepared myself to die.

Then I woke up.

It’s a freewrite. Deal with it.

All right. So I have a ton on my mind and I feel that a nice, open, don’t-give-a-crap freewrite is in order. Here goes…and hang on.

All done, and I am now worth nothing. Or at least I make nothing worth anything. Strange that my first few weeks out of school find me unemployed and broke as a chandelier in an earthquake. “Find a job,” they say, and I look…nothing’s close by. It would be great to have a job here in town or even in ABQ so I can live rather cheaply and save money up for my student loans and other expenses…but it’s not looking so hot in that area now. Plus I am really really REALLY lazy and not going to school/doing real work has me the most relaxed I’ve been in a while (as long as I don’t think about job hunting, that is).

All this lazy time allows me to think about things…what I want for myself in the future, what I want to be doing as a career, who I wanna be with while I go for my goals. I’ll try to address them in any order I think fits.

I’m not sure technical writing is in the cards for me…I mean, I’m pretty good at it, and I am qualified by an accredited institution of the state of New Mexico to state that fact. I just…I can’t see myself doing something that keeps me inside (getting whiter and whiter ) all day long. I can’t do that with my life…I LOVE being outside and catching life in the act. Whether in photographs, via video, or simple observation, I love to both watch life happen and really be a PART of living in this vibrant world we have been given. So many things going on 24/7/365…I wanna be a part of it all!

Thinking about being a part of things makes me really contemplate the changes in my life I need to make in order to make these potential career choices come true. Let’s see if I can list the following out:

• I’d like to have a place to call home wherever life takes me.
• I want a woman to love and cherish and break down on…a best friend who I can trust with everything, one who will catch me when I’m slippin, who will push me to try things new and unknown.
• My hobbies (though many…I know I gotta get rid of some of them) are what help to keep me sane. Maybe one of them can land me a “real job” somewhere.
• I want—no, NEED—to get back in shape! Both sides of my family have histories of severe diseases that can be kept at bay by good amounts of exercise and a healthy diet. Sometimes I feel like my bike just sits there and stares at me, saying, “RIDE ME!!!” while I give myself other distracting things to do. If I really tried, I bet I could be in the best shape of my life by my birthday.

Finally, women. WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN…such lovable women. I want them all (to a degree). My good friend Emilia aptly labeled me fickle; she is usually right about how she brands people she knows.
For the longest time, I have been seeking a woman with qualities that mesh with me well. I’ve been looking for a woman who is smart, kind-hearted, sophisticated, and gorgeous in my eyes, one who will push me when I need pushing, and who will not take any crap I dish out. All the women I’ve spent time with while seeking this “ideal” have had pieces of the pie (some more than others), but only a few have come close to running away with my heart in their arms. Some don’t even know how much they mean to me…if they asked, I would tell them numbers that would rival the national debt in size J Why do they have to be so far away?

Ok, done. Freewrite closed. Call back later.

 

_Nick