Long-awaited (not) update

Ok, with 29 days down and 80 miles walked, I'm rather far behind. I'm supposed to be at 109 miles (or slightly more). Unfortunately, due to the general shoddy nature of everything PHC does, the running track was closed for several days, which meant I got behind. Unfortunately, this means I have about 3 solid weeks of walking to make up the lost time. Joy. Still, it's in the realm of the possible. Anyhow, just as soon as I'm done with this episode of Castle (which I think is one of the most awesome shows on TV at the moment) I'm going to be doing my 5 miles for today. Which will put me at 85 out of 113 or so.

Quick update

In the interest of keeping track of this better, a short update.

18 days down.

70 miles done.

On track would be 67 and a bit miles, so I'm slightly ahead of schedule.

Always look on the bright side of life *whistles*

So another delayed blog post here. I'm chalking up "be better about updating regularly" onto my list of "ways to self-improve." Still, I've managed to get 55 miles done so far in my 14 days of walking, and I'm going to get another 5 done tonight.

I wound up trying to run a good part of my 5 miles last night, rather than just walk. I wound up going about a mile worth of jogging, though about halfway through I took a break because my shins were threatening to break in half. So, I went and sat in our little prayer chapel at PHC (because it has a comfy chair, and is secluded). Noticing a journal on the table I thought "ooo, a prayer journal!" which turned out to be the correct impulse. Looking in it, the first (and, until I wrote in it, only) entry was "Please protect me from idolatry while in the PHC prayer chapel." Which raised the question in my mind,

Why the fuck can't we be content with ANYTHING here at PHC?!?

Admittedly, wondering "why the fuck" about anything while in the prayer chapel is a sure sign that I'm going to hell in a handbasket, but that's been obvious for a while, and is beside the point.

We have a nice little secluded chapel, with prayer benches, which is really quiet and nice for thought/meditiation/prayer/whatever. It has various pictures of Biblical scenes along the walls, which I'll admit inspired me to think "Interesting that they chose to have images like that in a prayer chapel on a really protestant campus. It's sorta iconography" or something that effect. And maybe it's just me projecting that makes me see that prayer request as trying to snark at the Administration's efforts to build a prayer chapel rather than a genuine struggly with the tendency to worship the image of Christ, rather than Christ himself. But still, we are an entire campus full of pessimists. We can never see the positive sides of things. Admittedly, of late the Administration hasn't given us a whole lot of reason to be positive, but that doesn't give us the right to focus only on the bad in all situations. I'm cynical (oh MAN I'm cynical) but at least I can recognize that it's often bad to be cynical, and try to look on the bright side sometimes (even if only to act as the devil's advocate, another problem with my personality).

So, let me pose a challenge to you. Try to find something positive about whatever you're in. There is *always* a bright side to everything, even if it's essentially just the glisten off of a ball of crap. If nothing else, it'll make you feel happier.

Oh, and if you're looking at this entire post and just thinking "He said fuck! I can't believe he did that!" then I shall giggle at you for entirely missing the point of huge numbers of things, and being so easy to offend. I shall make a specific point of doing so in the future. :-)

Escape

Ok, so this blog post has been rather badly delayed. I've kept mostly on track (have taken 2 days off so far, which means I've done 40 miles in 10 days and am just over a mile ahead of schedule) and this one is pretty much chronicallying Monday's work, even though it's posted on Tuesday. Good news is that my tennis shoes are here, so once I've finished breaking them in I should be even better off. I've also gotten up to 0.5 miles of running at the end of my 5 mile course, which is a pretty decent improvement. I'm so far staying right on the edge of thinking "Oh God, please kill me now" at the end of my running bit, which is probably just about right. It's not too easy (and thus doesn't feel great when I'm done) but it's not too hard, either (and thus I am still able to do it).

So, I'm going to take a bit off of my own thoughts about me and ESPECIALLY off from thoughts of PHC, and write a bit about a character I'm going to be playing shortly. It probably has lot to do with my own mind and what I'm like, but it's not intended to actually describe me. In any case, feel free to psychoanalyze away if you're curious that way, but I'm pretty much doing this in order to help get my thoughts about him organized, and as a bit of escapism, because as sucky as the Imperium of Man may be, it still doesn’t suck as much as PHC.

Felix Polybolum is a member of the Tech Priests of the Imperium of Man. Probably the best way to think of him is a sort of a pastor who ministers to machines rather than people. This may seem a little bit weird, but like most of his order (the Cult Mechanicus) he believes that there is a “machine spirit” inside every piece of technology, from communications decides, to guns, to tanks, even spaceships.

Felix, like most of his order takes this to an extreme. He truly believes that machines are more “human” than actual people. The closer one can get to the perfection of a machine, the closer one gets to what is true and good. The universe does have a savior of sorts, the Emperor of Mankind, who wound up mostly dying and getting incorporated into a huge life support chair that sustained the last little bits of him through thousands of years. Felix actually believes that the God-Emperor descended from the truth of the machine and invested himself into a weakened, fleshy sort of body for the sole purpose of directing the rest of mankind to its proper end of communing with the Machine, and eventually gave (most of) his life to stop Chaos, the antithesis of machine-like order. However, rather than seeing this as a sort of death, or awful condition for him, it meant that he could ascend back to his machine state, with just enough weak/squishy/organic bits left to help guide humanity (through things like the Astronomicon, basically a giant hyperspace becon) until the rest of humanity reaches the same level of perfection as the Emperor’s mostly mechanized body.

Felix grew up on a minor forge world, essentially a planet dedicated to nothing but industrial production. His world was ruled over by a particularly psychotically militant branch of the Cult Mechanicus. As such, he always aspired to be a member of the Ordo Mechanicus’ armed forces, but while he was decent with ranged weapons he never figured out how to properly swing a sword. AS such, he wound up being relegated to the position of copyist, helping to reproduce data and catalogue artifacts.

As little more than a clerk, he was extremely dissatisfied, especially with his training and fanatical desire to be a militant member of the Mechanicus Church. Eventually, his redirected enthusiasm brought him to the attention of a sector noble, who negotiated his reassignment as a person in his employ. He was even less happy than before under his new master. Huge numbers of lay-people were using technology, and even trying to repair it when it went wrong rather than calling an approved tech priest.

One day, the latent log-grade tech-heresy caused him to snap. When he saw a low-level clerk slap his console and start swearing at it as it malfunctioned, he immediately dropped his cataloguing activity, walked over, screamed, and kicked the clerk out of his chair. Shouting at him, calling him a heretic, and telling him that he deserved such a smacking for smacking the machine, Felix turned to the computer to see what was going on. There, he saw a brief glimpse of a trading manifest for several items that were of questionable legality at the worse before the machine unfroze from its condition and finished deleting the evidence.

Realizing that he’d found something important, and something that he might finally give him the chance to fight some heretics, even if not in quite a normal sense. Turning back to the prostrate and extremely pale form beside him on the floor, told him that the machine spirit has pardoned him for his abuse, but that he should avoid any such sins in the future, lest he be reported to one not so forgiving as himself.

Leaving the clerk afraid, and slightly puzzled, Felix returned to his duties with a new vigor and gradually started gathering data in his cataloguing efforts that pointed to a grand conspiracy of contacts that his noble employer was building up, with the eventual goal of obtaining what was referred to as a “halo device.” While unsure of exactly what this device was, he was sure that such a thing would be of extreme interest to the Mechanicus. As he continued on, he began to start sneaking around more and more (as much as a Tech-Priest can sneak, which mostly involved holidng a data-pad and looking like he was supposed to be where he was) and hacking into the systems. His final triumph was once when he discovered a link into the noble’s private database and, seeing the huge degree of encryption despaired slightly and let his head fall to the keypad. His potential coil activating briefly and shorting out the system and inputting random data, the encryption fell before him. Feeling sure this was a blessing directly from the Omnissiah, he quickly found all the most incriminating documents and downloaded them to his datapad.

Immediately heading out from his workplace, he ran at his fastest speed to the nearest Mechanicus temple, where he turned over all his data. The nobleman was promptly arrested, and the Inquisition became involved. The local inquisitor had been investigating a smuggling ring in the system that he had suspected of nefarious intent, but had been unable to get far due to the sheer amount of bureaucracy, encryption, and secrecy that he had to get through. Felix’s data provided the break the Inquisitor had been looking for. The Inquisitor was a bit skeptical that the Omnissiah was directly responsible, but whether Felix was good or just lucky, he was still going to be useful and so recruited him as one more member of his vast network of minions. Felix was thrilled that he finally had the chance to really fight the enemies of the Empire and the Omnissiah, and that he could finally fulfill his goals he’d had ever since he could remember.

Immediately heading out from his workplace, he ran at his fastest speed to the nearest Mechanicus temple, where he turned over all his data. The nobleman was promptly arrested, and the Inquisition became involved. The local inquisitor had been investigating a smuggling ring in the system that he had suspected of nefarious intent, but had been unable to get far due to the sheer amount of bureaucracy, encryption, and secrecy that he had to get through. Felix’s data provided the break the Inquisitor had been looking for. The Inquisitor was a bit skeptical that the Omnissiah was directly responsible, but whether Felix was good or just lucky, he was still going to be useful and so recruited him as one more member of his vast network of minions. Felix was thrilled that he finally had the chance to really fight the enemies of the Empire and the Omnissiah, and that he could finally fulfill his goals he’d had ever since he could remember.