Chaos Server

Research has shown that people who volunteer often live longer. - Allen Klein When Mrs.Chaos and I got married in May, we told our guests that in lieu of a tradition present, we would be very happy for them to contribute to Holt International.  Holt is a wonderful organization that makes a difference in the lives of children around the world.  The Holt team reached out to people in Sacramento to help sign up sponsors for children at Winterjam this weekend and Ashley and I jumped on board. As part of the volunteer opportunity we got to watch the festivities at the Powerbalance Pavilion (sigh Arco Arena).  I'm pretty confident it's my first time at a christian rock festival.  It was a fun opportunity.  The first band was pretty crazy--shaved head rockers screaming at the top of their lungs with various fire effects blasting in the background.  I felt like I was at a death metal concert.  Rock on?  The final band of the night was Newsboys and i...

My moustache was insured for 13 million. - John Newcombe I'm participating in no-shave November.  You will see an update about it with photos and-or-videos at the end of the month, when it is done.  Since I only go into the office every other week - the first week of November I was just looking a little stubbly.  When I came in this week I had a nice beard going.  Lots coworkers comments on my participation in "movember." Then I have a moral imperative to correct them because movember and no-shave november are separate events with their own history, philosophy and rules.  I know this, because it is my job to know this.  Movember originated from Australia in 1999 as an event where men grow mustaches to raise awareness for various men's health issues.  The idea being that a mustache is out of fashion, so if you grow one people will comment on it and that will give you an opportunity to talk about prostate cancer and other topics.  Movember ha...

Every dogma has its day.  - Anthony Burgess  In the standard office morning chitchat someone asked about the quality of my long commute to the office. Depending on traffic and accidents and weather the drive can take between two hours and four hours. I found myself responding, "the gods were good to me. It only took a little over two hours." I was surprised with the response, coming out of instinct and not out of thought or an attempt to make reference.  I've been reading Game of Thrones and when I'm really spending a lot of time in a good book, I get into a zone of quoting the book. You may have noticed that winter is coming; I've been pointing it out to people a lot.  Hear me roar. Not every book I read has the effect on me, because not every book I read has the same strength of voice.  The first time I caught myself brainwashed by the linguistics of a book was high school when I started to doublethink about how plus good a book ass.  These d...

It's no wonder that SMS texting alone is a 100 Billion dollar a year industry! - Sam I'm currently engaged in a war on text, or a passive resistance against texts. When I upgraded to the new iPhone AT&T demanded that I give up my reasonable 200 messages a month plan and get an unlimited plan. Based on the number of txts I use, it was more cost effective to cancel.  At the $0.20 per text message I am paying roughly $1,500 a kilobyte for data if sent over text message. Lovely, huh? How can I live my life without text messages?  I am working hard to advocate people to use alternate methods.  As an Apple fanboy, I first encourage everyone to buy an iPhone with iOS5 on it.  Apple's latest system checks if the other person is using an iPhone and if they are it sends the message through "iMessages" using the data connection.  If my phone tells me the other person doesn't have iMessages I think through my other options. I have a Google Voice account - and I c...

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. - Andrew Wyeth Did daylight saving time just happen?  I think it's dark by the time I'm done with work and that is sad.  It makes it more difficult to do yard work after money earning work, because it's dark.  Today when I know that Mrs. Chaos has class late, it was pitch black and I expected her home soon only to realize that it was around 6pm.  It's sad really. Though I like the winter with a chance to turn on the fireplace and get some hot cocoa and have comfy-cozy time.  We have really cool fall trees in the yard as well as their colors are changing from summer green to fall red.

In my days as a bachelor I enjoyed celebrating halloween through the traditional method of locking the door, turning off all the lights, and being extremely quiet hoping that everyone would assume I wasn't home and just pass by my house.  NO MORE!  Now that I am an old married man living in a respectable neighborhood full of families, I am overwhelmed by the desire to put out jack-o-laterns, turn on the porch lights and hand out bunches of candy to the adorable neighborhood kids while movies are playing on the TV and dominoes are on the table.  For the record, I won both games of dominos that we played.  Though Mrs. Chaos still usually beats me at cribbage. I even brushed off my Harry Potter costume to wear.  It is my second time wearing this particular costume, but I've been told that I get to wear at least five more times and probably six!  The last time I will split in time number seven (part 1) and then the year after it will be the number seven (part ...