Will of the People

I am really psyched (haha) for later today -- running my first subjectthrough a fMRI. We prepped him for the experiment yesterday -- a variationon Tower of Hanoi, and I realized while playing with the software earlierthat it's fun to the point of being addictive. I think there's a certaincommonality, games like Tetris, Puzzle Bobble, and our Hanoi implementation,that underlies why I find them all so hard to put down once I start. I wonderif it's at all tied to my like of more complex strategy games, like CivCTPand Alpha Centauri. I don't like all games, but I think there is a commonality.Further, I wonder how this kind of thing ties into tests of intelligence --from what little I remember of IQ testing and a number of other standardizedtests I've taken at some point, they seem to share elements with thesetypes of games. Is a gamer of this sort going to end up ahead in IQ tests?Is that fair? Well, it might be -- perhaps more intelligent people are drawnto these kinds of games. On the other hand, perhaps that type of intelligenceis narrower than the kind we're looking for. It falls down to how generalizableskill is from one of this kinds of game to another, and what we want to callintelligence. It is plausable that problem-solving of this sort is a big partof intelligence, but it seems to me that.. well, a bigger unit that either isisomorphic to or a subset of general intelligence, is the ability to analyzea domain, map operator-space (may be discrete or effectively continuous),and navigate state-space, possibly using high levels of strategy andmetastrategy monitoring, within the constraints of the resources of the brainfor each iterative or recursive step. These types of games tend not to haveeffectively continuous operator-spaces on the lowest levels (Puzzle Bobblebeing somewhat more continuous). They do, however, seem to effectively testa fairly large subset of small-domain intelligence. The "small" must bestressed, however, as both more complex games (SMAC, CivCTP, as mentionedearlier) and complex mental tasks in real life done by people may be ordersof magnitude more operator-laden or state-space large than that.

Yesterday, I also visited the BIRC, a centre jointly runby Pitt and CMU for people working on neural imaging. I attended to go to twotalks, one by Dr Behrmann, a former professor of mine who I greatly respect.The facilities looked nice, and the talks were pretty interesting -- the firstwas about retrieval of correlation between neural activation and stimuli, usinga number of filtering techniques on the raw data. It was slightly surprisingto me what stages in the filtering were the most effective, and as I learn touse the scanner and manipulate the data myself, I'm sure I'll be able to puther work into a better context. The second, Dr Behrmann's talk, was abouther research into Prosopagnosia, in particular, genetic prosopagnosics versustrauma-induced prosopagnosics. I was unaware that the first group existed, andwhile some of her slides were reused from class, the overall content was a lotdeeper. I'm glad I went. We'll be using their facilities for the scanning today,and I'm going to need to learn how to get to the place on my own within thenext few weeks.

On the way there yesterday, we passed through some odd areas of Oakland,some places that my mind naturally caricatures... Very narrow, windystreets that go upwards, and that give a feel of being their own place,no other entrances than the ones I see, with tall apartments.. sort of likea twisted London of my nightmares. It left a strange impression that stuckwith me for awhile.

A few days ago, Mimi (my grandmother from Texas) called to talk about someevents going on at CMU that she saw on TV. I haven't heard from her forages -- I really want to visit her sometime.. she's living in Austin now,not far from my Uncle Mark, Aunt Holly, and my nephews Ryan and Connor.It'd be fun to see them all again.. I hope I can visit with my Dad.. It'dbe weird to visit alone, and in all honesty, it'd be easier for me notto need to worry about paying for a trip.

I'm going to be playing Badminton with K (and maybe N and someone else) onfriday, if things go as planned. Hurrah! I think part of the joy of Badmintonis that it's a ludicrous enough sport that it's hard to take it seriously, andso people just tend to have fun without becoming competitive. At the picnicDmitry had on the 4th, we all had a ball playing on the insanely uneven ground,with the Shuttlecock occasionally coming apart and the searches for the headpart.

I decided that I didn't want to wait on ordering the Neuros, and ordered ita few minutes ago. I was going to get it anyhow, and I do have savings, soit really doesn't make sense to deny myself time with it for the sake oftrying to keep a budget. Unfortunately, I lost my headphones a few days ago,so I might need to pick up a new pair. Oh well.

I've been even more reflective than usual, and have come to realize a fewthings about myself, or at least suspect, that may be rather shocking.
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Sorry about making it private. If you know me well enough, I might share itwith you on request.

The complexity of a certain area of my life is now really intense. Wow.

Also, it's strange -- I never mean to manipulate people except in waysthat are visible to them, and when I'm tempted to do so, I typically tryto let them know, and possibly refuse to comment on things that I think Ican't avoid said manipulations on. However, sometimes I realize after thefact that other things I comment on might be seen as manipulative, and Iwonder if this is chance, or if I actually am manipulating them withoutbeing as aware of myself as I should be. It is, na klar, usually impossibleto tell the difference from the outside, and perhaps from the inside in manycases too. In such cases where the doubts come later, is it better to mentionsaid things to the possibly manipulated person, especially if the topic isalready delicate, or is it better to avoid commenting on such topics, or isit better to keep the doubts internal and guard oneself? There are so manyways to work out the conflicting values and the possible realities from thesekinds of situations.

Finally, I tossed up the book I wrote in my childhood. With the understandingthat I was much younger when I wrote it, I present to you: The Old House.I hereby legally relinquish the copyright and place it into the public domain.Of course, understand that my permission here, from my perspective, ismeaningless anyhow, because I don't believe in intellectual property. I herebygrant you, reader of my blog, the philosophical, personal right that youactually already have to copy any data you have access to, modify it asyou see fit (provided that in doing so, you don't misattribute it), and shareit with others. This is your right, and something you should demand fromyour society, and exercise otherwise when it is worth the risks from theinformation hoarders and their servants.

Ahh, it's time to go have lunch and move money around.

See the darkness? Can you make it out? Perhaps an analogy.. handtwists, and then things resolve into .. kittens, tiny splotchesof black, pink tongues moving from the small body, drinking humansadness... a thing of beauty...

At Zets tonight, I had a rather amazing thing happen. I was talkingwith N for most of the gathering, perhaps 2 or 3 hours, chewing onthe ability to reduce all behavior to responses to selective pressures..and, while it wasn't exactly an argument, I feel nontheless that I lostthe battle :) This hasn't happened for years -- for a layperson, I think Iknow an awful lot about natural selection, a fair amount about genetics, anda good amount about the various other things that go into the field. Still,as her focus/degree intent is in evolutionary psychology, it's not a completesurprise. It was an amazing conversation. She's an amazing person. In response,I gave her some of my debate strategies that I don't tend to pass out to peopleall over..

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My feet are still not happy with me. Ouch.

One thing to be careful about when talking to people who like playingwith languages -- in Russian, there's a conversation terminator, Baka,which is a homonym to the Japanese Baka, which is a gentle form of theenglish 'Stupid', as in, "Baka, doshite anata-wa koko-ni deskuka?"(Idiot! What are you doing here?) .. it's almost a playful insult..Anyhow, getting them confused is bad.

This coming Thursday, the philosophy group I'm in will be discussingDemocracy, the tension between representating the masses and leadingthem, and scaling issues as democracy moves from the small to the large.The interesting essense captured in the announcement is that the processof government involves compromise, but it's not the masses that compromise,it's their representatives. A metric is proposed, that the process shouldaim for what the masses would compromise on, were they involved in thedebate. I personally have doubts as to if this is possible -- It seems tome that there's likely an unclosable gap, and even a disinterest in compromise,among the masses. Further, should we expect the masses to accept the decisionsof decisions they haven't taken part of, even if their will (as opposed totheir best interests, which may be very different) was represented in some way?On another branch, should the opinions of the masses even have seriousweight in the running of a nation? Is Democracy a lollipop to keep the massesfrom revolting? Perhaps Democracy is the opiate of the masses? If you don't haverepresentativeness, if it's really possible to have that in the full sense,who rules? I dunno.. it's complex.. and .. it's going to be a lot of funtossing the ideas around.

Now that things have changed, it's possible to reopen a friendship that wasonce (but likely won't be again) something more. It's good to have friends.Yesterday as I was running, I was thinking that it'd be good to have someoneto help me live a more active lifestyle, so I won't be seduced by lazinessso much. I don't seem to be getting sore anymore -- I am again bound by mylungs rather than my legs.

I realize that I haven't copied nearly enough of my old music collection tomy laptop -- I should boot those old suckers back up and copy the rest..It's funny how, perhaps stronger than a craving for a particular kind offood (or cold water), one can suddenly get a craving for a particular song..Right now, I crave TMBG's "Doctor Worm", and while I can easily find a livecopy online, and probably could find the version I want online if I put sometime into it, it's all on one of my desktops where I ripped it from the CD,so that'd be a waste..

Now, onto more trivial things (?)..

As if it wern't already hard enough to pick your database, nowIngres will be open source...Well, maybe it's not that confusing -- unless Ingres has some features I don'tknow about, or is a damned good product, it likely won't be able to competewith the existing databases.. seems everyone already has their niche already..Oracle for the really big databases with conservative DBAs, DB/2 for people whoare a bit less conservative, and want a (somewhat) easier to administer databasethat might not scale as high, and don't want to pay Oracle's overpriced fees,Postgres for the clued open-source folk, or for people who want a fairlysimple, standards-compliant, database, and MySQL, for people who like opensourceand haven't yet recieved a visit from the clue fairy.

A thousand goths are breathing a sigh of relief.I find this story really funny, and sad. Yes, the government is spending moneytrying to fight goth culture. Money far better spent to fight religion, if it'sreally going to start getting involved with such things :)

Here is a real schmuck. He cheated on exams at University, andthey decided not to give him his degree a day before they were going to, andhe's suing them. Apparently, he thinks that they never made it clear thatcheating is something people can get expelled for and that they let himstay at University for so long were both improper. Neither seem to be a goodreason, and I hope that he loses all his friends over this stupid lawsuit.

Here's a bit of beautifully written satire.On a somewhat more serious note, here is a speech Al Gore gave recently.It's not bad.. however, as with many politicians, I wonder if he actually wroteit. I think I'd respect politicians a lot more if they routinely write their ownspeeches, partly because then we get to really know the politician, and partlybecause then we at least are sure we have a literate, coherent person at thehelm. I guess that's a way I'm snobbish -- I do respect people who can puttogether a paragraph or a paper in a coherent, clean way more than people whocan't. People, perhaps, who choose their medical provider by how many pleasantlies they're told.

Of course, everyone loves pleasant lies when they confirm prejudices they have..Here is some guy who claim that all the viruses in the world are Microsoft'sfault. Nope. While Microsoft does do some very stupid things, like having apowerful HTML interpreter at the disposal of their mail software, and they'recertainly responsible for those problems, most virii are either the result ofuser error or are otherwise more of an 'oops' thing than a case of misdesign.It certainly would be nice of us Unix folk to pat ourselves on the back andsay that it's Microsoft's fault that users have to deal with that kind of thing,but it would be wrong, and sickening to our community, to swallow such a thing.

Somehow, I don't think people will be lining up to try something with this name..

By the strangest turn of fate imaginable, I find myself in posession of a ..erm... destructor, for those programming geeks out there, for something relatingto something I really dislike. This could be fun. It's all a matter of timing.

A sense of urgency, the unhappy need to simplify, not do things the naturalway... and then something moves, a complication disappears, and there's time,just enough time, to do things right.. each turn fully developed.. not a lotof tolerance for imprecision though..

I think of the cadence of your speech, no words.. the distinctive vocalpatterns.. I can almost hear it.. talking with no content.. it's nota concrete memory or construction.. but it's clearly sensory. Memories ofimpressions are kind of funny things... the memory of an anticipation, orof a desire, or of things like this.. hard to summon.

Last night, I took Jason back to Cleveland.. it was another strange breakfrom reality.. drinking from the past.. So many conversations.. conversationsI might've had years ago if things had ended up differently. And now things areback to normal.. urban design, marrage and commitment, various good books toread, consumerism... it was nice to have someone to talk to again. Oneconversation concerned doubts as to sustainability of marrage -- the worry thatpeople will drift apart in time, and what was once a strong connection will,over the years, become a weak one. I don't see things that way -- I think thata lot of the time, when people are in proximity, friends or life partners, theirprogression in life is shaped by each other, and that keeps people from changingtoo much in divergent directions. Further, a good partnership or a strongfriendship provides a mirror by which each person can better progress, and so,far from marrage stunting personal growth, doing without it, long-term, may belike shaving without a mirror. Despite all I've seen, and what I've experienced,I think traditional notions of love, fidelity, and even marrage(sic), or somesocial equivalent, is quite a good thing for happiness and personal growth, andit's something I'd like to have someday. I hope someday to find a third (orfourth, or ...) person who I can get enthused about sharing my life with, withthose expectations/hopes. We also talked about the hills of Pittsburgh, how theydiffer from San Francisco's hills (to me, Pittsburgh's hills seem a lot lessstructured -- SF's hills seem like a contractor was hired to make hills),differences in the public transit, the tendency, as business gets bigger,for it to be less of a fun place to work, what it means to feel like part ofa community, and ways restaurants are arranged. We walked around a lot ofSquirrel Hill, tried to go rock climbing (but arrived too late for the class),and visited IKEA. It was awesome -- I wish I had had more time, but schoolworkand stuff adds up when not attended to. It's odd though -- I feel like I've beenwalking through old pictures -- 5 years ago, was it?

A swirl of thoughts.. "I died in Nam" "Moonlighting as a rock".. seeing therocks wander on the road, on campus.. so many out of place rocks... She'sswimming up to me.. "You wouldn't get back with her, would you?" "Maybe"Treating all claims that people must do XX because their religion says soas instead that they simply choose to do XX. Cut through the excuses thatlet people get away with things because of this. We must learn not to care, toroutinely discard the privileges people claim because of faith, real or not.Faith is not privileged, it is not a hall pass. You say you must do XX becauseyour faith tells you to. No, you do it because you find XX, or some causalchain relating to that, to be good, and we treat you without theinstitutionalized redirection to the unassailable, which we still assail, by theway. "Interesting Liberal Persons" -- a better name, or description, at least,of a group we seek.

Good Value Analysis is nonparameterized. To be honest, which is hard for manyphilosophies, includes the ability to follow other value weightings, orparameterizations, into the different arrangements they suggest, withoutpretending that they all result in one's own arrangement, or, worse yet, thatthere is only one parameterization. Unusual honesty/openness is the hallmarkof good philosophy, more than novelty or boldness. I note with joy that manyof the criticisms of the left I made earlier, as a libertarian, remain thingsI can stand behind, with the provision that I temporarily re-parameterize myvalues in the Libertarian way.

I've often felt that this would be a good idea..I also wouldn't mind doing stuff like this..

China, as I might've commented on before, isn't too keen on payingroyalties on foreign standards, and so is doing its own development ofreplacement technology. This is a good thing for China, and for the world.IP is a very bad thing, and if China's moves result in a freer world, goChina! It's amusing, in a sense, that a country where most civil liberties arerelatively restricted, that other such liberties, freedom from claims of peoplewho decide they own abstract concepts and shove people around because of it,are better preserved. Plutocrats exist everywhere.. but in their conflict,freedom can be found..

A Fundie Exodus? Sounds wonderful. They can finally seethat their rosy picture of the past has a complete disconnect with reality, andwatch, more visibly, their children leave their sheltered lives.. or maybethey'll just get out of the rest of our faces.

It's funny how, when it happens to the right people, even the least interestingof events is big news. BushJr fell off of a bike.

I'm thinking about converting my BLOG to use something like Wikipedia'smarkup language. Hell, maybe I'll do a complete rewrite, and attempt to makea hybrid Wiki/blog piece of software.. might be interesting.

Jason pointed me at the Palm interface to slashdot.It's a lot thinner than the main interface -- tempting to use it for thatreason.Here's another interesting thing: a device to record allconversations and a lot of images from one's life. How would that change theworld? I think quite a lot -- there are a lot of people.. most people, perhapsnearly all, who are unaware of the fine details of their lives, and misrememberconversations, events, things seen and done, and think their memories are,nontheless, complete. To have authoritative record, and to be able to checkon it in these circumstances to resolve differing accounts or to reviewinterpretive processes, I don't know if that would force people to mature, orif it would destroy them.. truth as a drug may be lethal in sufficientconcentration.

A laugh, you spin around in delight... and overwhelm me.. I doubt yoursanity even as I admire the beauty of your personality.

The hands move over the dead body, so still... a gentle touch, flesh againstflesh.. or is it flesh? A gathering of life, touch of food on the body,gentle splash of body.. Not demanding an exception to the rules of life,not expecting, just no thought, and a quiet gift. Can it breathe again?Can the abused body become a living being? Grandson of Herb, I reach outto you again, borrow from Gaia your share.

A few nights ago, I had dinner with a friend who's leaving town,heading to California. It seems that everyone's going to the west coast..I wish her well -- she's been a good friend.

I've been reading a bit about Halal, the Islamic notion of a 'proper/ethicalway of life', including ways of eating, dressing, acting, etc. In connectionwith the changes at work, and my work experience in former workplaces, Ithink it's important to think of a pervasive system of good living that canbe applied to the workplace, an analogue of 'halal management', perhaps. Toprovide some context, Kosher and Halal dietary restrictions are partly abouthumane ways of killing for food. In each, animals are still killed for food.As such, ways of managing businesses might be found that are the leastdehumanizing but still workable.. as a brief aside, I notice here that the term'humane' and 'dehumanizing' both tie the notion of good living with being human,and while I like good living, I think the linguistic tie is bad. We don't livein 1984-land.. Anyhow, while business school presumably teaches people the mostefficient way to run a business, managing people and resources most effectively,I find myself wondering whether they put effort into making the workplace asfulfilling as it might be for people. Like Capitalism in a pure form is adisaster for the environment, efficient management in a pure form is a disasterfor the people who are so managed. What do people cherish in day-to-day worklife, and how can businesses be arranged to best provide that without becomingmonstrously inefficient? We might start this search many ways -- examining whatmakes the people with the money happy, or what discontents the masses.. It'spossible that people really want different things, but there may be some strongcommon threads of things that make people happy/unhappy. Of course, there arealso the people who see work as just something to pay the bills. Ideally thingswould be arranged so that people resemble wild horses more than broken ones.I don't have any answers on this yet ... I know what makes me unhappy, at least,some of said things, and have ideas on how they might be fixed.. but I'd liketo be able to speak more comprehensively before I say more..

The coloured sand blew gently over the hills, a foot pushes forward, throughthe sand.. (but when we think of a foot, do we actually think of a bare foot,or do we think of shoes and some pant leg?) .. Apocalypse is over, and thosewho have seen the end are back again, battered gods with a new world to shape.Some of them clustered in places that were familiar.. York or Leeds, buildingfires, trying to feel the bones of the dead beneath their feet. Others movedfurther out, settling in the countryside.. is this a way to spend eternity?An endless trampling of past gardens?...In this new realm, the game is different, and I saw you.. had a chance toexplain myself.. you looked back at me, sympathy was in your eyes, but youdidn't say anything, didn't tell me how it could be better. I waited for whatI thought you would say, but the conversation drifted to the trivial, and,disappointed, I wandered off alone.

An insight -- tweak my mail client so the timestring thing remembersthe last number it handed out and increments by exactly 1. This will, na klar,mean that the timestring doesn't tightly resemble the recieved time as muchas it does now, but it's still close enough on the scales I'm interested in thatit's not a big deal, and, more importantly, it makes it easier for wildcards tomatch related messages... It also should make mail retrieval faster... I decided to just implement it really quickly, and it indeed does make maila lot faster (previously I was sleeping 2 seconds between each message reciept).I did it with closures instead of with a global variable.. not bad.

Miguel is still wondering why nobody is coming to his Mono party.Arnold is unhappy that his face is on a bobble-head.I've always found it very irritating that the government has decided that actorsand the like 'own' their likeness, and images of them or too close to them, orreally anything that might be connected to them is something they can control.It's even to the point, as noted in the article, that sounding too much likesomeone can be problematic. Sure, roll your eyes, and say that without suchprotections, we wouldn't have people in the field. Better I think that we losesome niceties and have a lot of freedoms in this regard than commit ourselvesto being a wealthy but enslaved people. A bunch of Microsoft/SCO-funded folk,the Torquemada institute, as I'll call them, have been trying to dig up dirton Linus, and got caught. On their site, as I visited it again to BLOG it, Icame across an advert for the following funny project. Speaking of voting,this person is perhaps in trouble. She's done us a publicservice, pointing out that Diebold is among the most dangerous type ofcorporation -- a corrupt company with close government ties and a direct lineto mess up one of the most vital instruments of our nation.

Israel's been having fun, destroying homes,killing protesters, and expanding support of settlements. Nicht genugLebensraum, ich denke.. Es wurd gut, die Israeli-Hawks denken, ob die ganzeHoligestadt hat nur ein reines Volk. Of course, BushJr, being the decisiveleader, has decided to "urge restraint". In other news, as I predicted, aslap on the wrist was given to one of the people guilty of the abusesat Abu Ghraib.He was booted from the military and is to spend a year in jail, which isapparently the maximum penalty. Such a small price to pay for the kind ofdamage he did to those prisoners... Some Muslims call for his death, and whileI'm iffy on the death penalty, I think life imprisonment would definitely beappropriate. Instead, the guy will just bear a year in jail, will go back hometo his drinking buddies, and probably be congratulated for "giving thetowel-heads what they deserve". The real problem, for the administration, isthat they were dumb enough to take pictures and film of their atrocities, notthat the atrocities happened. It's massively inappropriate for the U.S., which,along with Europe, and moreso than Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Syria (mydecreasing rings of how civilized places seem to be), puts forth a lot of effortin being tolerant, liberal, and culturally advanced, to care so little forhuman dignity in its prisoners. Anything like that happening over here wouldcause large scale riots.. Perhaps it's mostly an appearance thing -- regressivenationalism is big in America too..Fortunately, the Europeans are working on ways to keep Americans frompeeking into their communications. On Perlmonks, there's anotherfun idea on how to frustrate the law when it comes to demand your data.I am impressed that Colin Powell has the guts to admit he was wrongin his push for war in Iraq. I would be amused to see the 2nd Iraq war noted inhistory books as the "Oops!" war.

Sorry for this groaner title I'm creating..American Anti-Obesity Programme Fails to Fit Through the DoorWhile we're being silly, imagine people enduring eight years of a sexlessmarrage (blah blah normal spelling sucks blah blah). Sex is an important partof relationships.. well, most relationships. In this case, the couple probablycould've used a cluestick.Some clever Germans have made a mockup of classic MacOS in Flash.For the conspiracy buffs, here are 50 fishy things about the beheading ofNick Berg. I *really* want to see this film -- the Edukators.

If you're using CVS or Subversion, it's probably a good time to upgrade.I've been meaning to try Subversion a bit more -- I'm going to upgrade mylaptop to Fedora2 when I get the time to back it up -- after that I'll probablystart using Subversion regularly. You might want to donate to Mozilla.org..

Russian class is turning out pretty well -- the language has a really neatsound, the professor is really cool, and .. I think I've missed learninglanguage things.

I'm still waiting.. *tap tap* for the next release of GAIM that'll put meback on Yahoo. It's a tool I rely on.. and it's served me well over the years..

Leon wrote a tribute to Howard Dean, whose announcement that he'sno longer actively campaigning also reached my mailbox this morning. I agree withmuch of what he says, and I do hope that Dean, as mentioned in his letter,does continue to operate in the political sphere, and builds something interestingwith what he did, hopefully more successfully than Perot did. This election, althoughnot over, has really taught me more about how much I've changed politically in thelast few years. I now know with certainty that I am NOT a Libertarian any more --I now think it would be disasterous if one were, through some freak accident, tobecome president. I don't think that social programs and financial responsabilityare completely incompatible, if one is careful, although there's certainly atension there. Selling off large parts of the government to individuals andcorporations would, I think, get rid of a useful tension between two sets ofmasters. Anyhow, regarding Dean, it is remarkable how well he did.. or was itillusory? Dean's power base was, I think, intellectuals, and while he made somereaching out beyond that to unions, he always was championed by a loud minorityin our society. Perhaps that's why he got so much voice but didn't do so well,comparitively, in the primaries. Was there more to it than that? I wonder..Dean would make a really great Vice President. I hope the people still inthe running are considering that.

Dubin mentions again a student group at Ohio State that existsto provide free pizza to its members. Food and socializing are the core of anystudent group. The person who's running it, who's known in that socialcircle as MathAdam, is a cool guy.. I miss a lot of the people from theColumbus social circles..

Orkut really seems to have become the preferred socialcircle site, sweeping Friendster out of the running, and likely makingTribe.net obsolete (Tribe.net is roughly comparable when it comes to features).It seems that everything that Google does is successful.A geeky friend of mine thinks that Microsoft may, again using its monopoly power,be able to 'pop' Google, using its normal method of squashing competitors -- bybuilding things into Windows that give it an unmatchable homefield advantage.In this case, the database features present in future versions of Windows, plusthe ability to have the operating system compute preferences for the searchengine without giving the user a choice, or at least using their likely preferenceto use built-ins, will let Microsoft do smarter searching than Google is likely tobe able to easily do. In theory, the Google Toolbar combined with appropriate hooksinto Windows could do the same thing. Google right now is the strongest searchengine, but Microsoft has a lot of leverage with its control of Windows. So, whyis Google cool? First, to be fair, here are some people who think Google is not cool.Google is cool because it does and publishes research.It's a wonderful home for academics (and I know some people who have yo-yoedbetween CMU and Google), and like many good geeks, they've provided lotsof fun toys for the world. Googlehas the sweet smell of academia, and thumbs its nose at people who try to breakthe PageRank system to make their sites more highly-placed.They also mirror/cache a lot of sites, helping to make the web more stable.In short, Google gives me warm fuzzies. I'm rooting for them.

That reminds me of some further elaboration of an essay I wrote once calledthe colour of a jog (too lazy to find the URL.. even though it's on my site).Nations... I have similar strange shape/concept associations to nations.. I wonder what their origin is, if there is even a decent explanation possible.In particular, I think of Turkey as being kind of blocky, with some coffee mixedin.. maybe like coffee-cake, and as one moves southeast into the lands of Islam,the nutty soil of Europe gives way to a gritty, more pure, sublimely alien impression.Arabia.. not a clockwork, but a mocha-flavoured kind of Zen.. Buddhism's conceptof waiting to understand, and making the smallest steps possible, covering greatgrounds with them... understanding magnifies those steps greatly.. power throughsubtlety.. let's take that as an elaboration of the notion of subtlety -- the degreeof which one's action has that amplified-by-understanding effect, the most nimble offingers versus the brute strength of deep effort. Arabia has some of this, butPersia nee Iran.. it still has memories of another sort.. and it remembers it'sdeep culture too well to achieve meditation. It's not exactly the sand castle, it'sorigami that remembers its paper nature all too well.

What would it take, for you to celebrate the chaos within you as well as thelaw? To be uneasy partners and to be two sides of the same coin.. not thesame thing. If they can dance together richly, that's how you can see.

I've been reading up on Mel Gibson's movie, and have been thinking of seeing it.Debb surprised me by indicating that she wanted to see it, at aboutthe same time I was thinking of asking her if she was interested.I'm not too inclined to give money to Gibson, but on the other hand,I own a lot of religious literature, partly out of curiosity/desire tounderstand, and partly to know how to argue against it.. well, that'sreally one and the same. Learning is a good thing.. (more on that below),Some other people from PUSH are also interested..It's interesting that the entire film is subtitled, the content being in amix of Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin. Anyhow, while reading about the film,I also read about Gibson's religious beliefs.. apparently, he's part ofa Catholic splinter group -- the Traditional Catholics. Apparently,they split from the Roman Catholics after the Second Vatican Council, theconclusions of which they see as being hijacked by liberalizing forces.They have a kind of spooky creed:

We are what you once were.We believe what you once believed.We worship as you once worshipped.If you were right then, we are right now.If we are wrong now, you were wrong then.

While reading up on them, I also read about a few other splinter groupsfrom Catholicism..True Catholics, with their own PopeThe Old Catholic Church

I got something interesting in my mailbox today -- apparently, there's thepossibility I might get a tax break for having attended classes. I'm notcertain if the fact that I did it for free is significant or not, and I'mstarting to research the two relevant tax breaks:The Lifetime Learning Credit and the Hope Scholarship Credit. There is apossible lifetime cap on these though, so there's a chance that I'd bebetter off saving their use until later...

Oh, BushJr's administration has been accused accused of distorting science.Big surprise.

Anyhow, I am in a really wonderful mood, and feel like I couldn't behappier. No worries, madly in love, happy at work, happy in school.Hooray!

This makes me furious. Egypt sent foreign ministerto Israel to meet with Sharon and other Israeli government officials to workon peace, and while visiting a mosque, he was attacked by a Palestinian mob,needing to be saved by Israeli policemen. Apparently they saw him as a traitorfor even talking to the Israelis, and injured him to the extent that he had tocut his trip short. This is absolutely ridiculous -- it's the worst thingthat Palestinians can possibly do for their cause. Of course, the mob doesn'tspeak for all palestinians, and the PA was quick to condemn theact, but this does illustrate a real problem in the conflict -- there arePalestinians who won't accept, and will do their best to sabotage, every attemptat peace. Here's a little hint to that mob... he's not in Israel to celebrateChannukah! He's there on your behalf, and you just totally fucked everythingup. I hope you don't mind the continued suffering both peoples in the regionare under, because you just made a big contribution. Grr.I think I'm pretty neutral on the idea of the wall, to my surprise.I do wish it were drawn a bit more liberally, but the basic idea of it, ifthe Palestinians cannot come to enough unity to enact a satisfactory peace,might be an ok means to peace (although I would prefer other, perhaps similarlyunappealing to western liberal traditions, in different ways, means toachieve a one-state solution).

SCO posted a list of files that they definitely see as infringing, unrelatedto the SMP/NUMA code they were bugging IBM/Dynix about. They mostlyboil down to two files, and their architecture-dependant forms for all thesystems Linux runs on. The files are kind of embarassing, being mostlydefinition of constants -- they're not even code. Linus has a responseto their claims up... Linus has a responseto their claims up...

I learned an invocation some time ago that claims to cure the odd initializationthat sometimes happens with my soundcard on my laptop. I don't know for certainthat it fixed it (my laptop is usually up for weeks at a time), but I haven'tseen it since. In /etc/modules.conf, add:options i810_audio clocking=48000For google's sake, this is for Linux on an Inspiron 8500.

I had an interesting discussion with Dubin on some aspects of Eudaimonia thatI've been chewing on, and ways it might interact with how capitalism might bestructured. A brief conclusion is that I think there's a relationship betweenefficiency and how happy/empowered workers are, and that that relationshiptakes a different form in large corporate structures and small businesses.Note that I've secularized and twisted the Aristotle's definition aroundto mix in some ideas of Marx and Nietzsche. We then proceeded to discussinternational politics and the use of force. Issues to think about: When, ifever, is military intervention in other countries' internal affairs justified?If revolution is not something to get involved in, what happens when revolutionbecomes an international issues (e.g. Kurdistan)?

Although I'm a registered Democrat, I'm definitely not this type.Just as there were "Regan Republicans", I'm a "Dean Democrat" -- my loyaltyisn't to the party in general, but rather the man and the circumstance.

Looks like, in Norway, Jon was declared innocent in his second trial.Cool!

Some Art and Law for ya.A very funny article on British-Japanese cross-perspectives a friendsent me.

And Pat is in love again. I feel happy.

My first ex-gf Martha has the latest version of her websiteup. Among other things, there's a portrait of me, Charles,and a self-portrait she did that I have.Be careful while browsing -- the site is (presently) on geoshitties,so it has a fixed hourly transfer limit. The site's still partly underconstruction, with some broken internal links, but it's really cool whatshe can do with a brush, and it shows. This is really neat..

I'm hoping she'll be up for it being hosted on my server, and of course, thatgoes for any of you who know me -- if you have a website, especially if it'son one of those lousy public sites that has adverts or caps downloads, I'dbe happy to host it. I can provide email for you too, and if you're a unixytype, shell access too. I can handle DNS for your domain if you have one,and if you don't, you can get them cheap at GANDI.$12/year, and if you later want to move your email/web stuff elsewhere, theycan either redirect the mail/web to other places, or point them there. Justdrop me an email..

While looking up their number yesterday to ask if my bike is done,I came across this page on bike brakes on BikeTek's site.Apparently, the 'squeeze brakes' that I have are now obsolete, with twovarieties of disc brakes above them. The top variety usees hydraulics.Hmm. Unfortunately, to fix my bikes, they're needing to order some parts, soit's going to be about 1 more week of hoofing it.

It seems as if the Geneva Convention is a liability for the U.S., andso they ignore it at a whim. I'm not much for rule of law, from theindividual's side, but I generally think that it must be adhered to from thegovernmental side. I think it's a problem that the U.S. doesn't seem to seethings that way, happily declaring people it captures to be 'enemy combatants'or other such things that clearly mean 'prisoner of war' that they'll claimarn't. Withdraw from the Geneva Convention or amend it, but don't twist it.Particularly worrying is that they'll eventually torture him so he'll startmaking stuff up to please them, and they'll claim that there were indeed'weapons of mass destruction' (whatever that means), handing the fool at thehelm a political save. After all, some stupid court, according to that article,decided that the following arn't torture: sleep/food deprivation, forcedstanding, and sensory deprivation. Think seriously about this -- if you werebeing starved, forced to stand, and had a mask over your face by americanmilitary/cia types, for days at a time, there's a good chance you'd eventuallybe telling them anything they wanted. More than that, it's just uncivilizedto treat anyone that way.

If you haven't heard about it yet, White Box Linuxis a build of the sources that RedHat has made available for Redhat EnterpriseLinux (whose binaries they'll only sell). It seems that recently, there've beena number of companies who are making their money off of the crumbs Redhatleaves, whether in symbiosis or parasitism only time may tell.

My dad occasionally is in Pittsburgh for business, and apparently, someonefrom the local office suggested a new indian resturant, called Bikki.I'm going to try to get some people together from work to do lunch theresometime. .. oh, foo, I guess I mean dinner -- I just noticed that it claimsto just be open 17:3-22:3.

Despair.com has some new designs up, and they alsohave some candy hearts called bittersweets with depressing messages.To snag some text from that site,

Truly, "BitterSweets(tm)" are the perfect gift for you OR for someone you love,especially if that special someone is one who doesn't want to hurt yourfeelings but just doesn't feel that way about you but still wants to be friendsso they can torment you with stories about their crushes on someone who doesn'tappreciate them like you do, can't love them like you can, and actually takespleasure in corralling a herd of fawning "just friends" behind themselves asthey indulge in one self-destructive relationship after another, with no hopeof ever finding true love, despite an army of souls eager tolavish it upon them.(You know what we're talking about.)Indeed.

An officemate pointed me at some rare earth magnets she has.She has a few of the smallest kind in the office, and despite their small size,the things are absurdly strong. Running one of them over a monitor producedvisible distortion (degaussing fixed it, na klar), and placed against eachother, they were a little tricky to seperate (their small size was admittedlya factor). The largest ones they have are 1 inch by an eigth inch, andapparently can hold 30 pounds between two of them. If you order at least3 packs of five, the packs are $7.15 apiece, so I ordered exactly that..Unfortunately, they're not permitted on anything but ground freight, soshipping and handling was a bit expensive, but if they're really that strong,I'll have enough that I could build myself a hammock that would support me.I probably should order some more to be safe if I actually want to do that --one thing to remember is that average force isn't the same thing asinstantaneous force, so like someone jumping up and down on an elevator,I wouldn't want something that I'd need to be gently lowered into. However,if they remain as toys, like the giant ball bearing I keep in my office,that wouldn't be a concern..

I've read a bit more of the online art of unix programming I mentioned lastentry (or maybe a few ago -- I don't remember), and was interested particularlyby this part here on editors. As noted,one's editor is a deeply personal choice, where people typically spend, overtheir life, many hours customizing it with dotfiles and the like. Personally,I can use ed (although it's painful), I can do basic text editing with emacs,and I prefer using an advanced offshoot of vi called vim.At some time in the past I was an emacs user, and before that, when I wason DOS/OS2, I've used both MS-DOS's EDIT (which was pretty cool) andPC-DOS's E (which was cooler yet). As a result, my .vimrc (vim config file)has keybindings I wrote emulating some emacs (mainly navigation stuff) andE commands (mainly the F-key file operation stuff).

Last night, at the Zets gathering, we were talking about spammers,and how best to put them out of business. Various types of vigilanteism(including violence, which I'm not comfortable with), legal changes, socialactivism, and things that are in all sorts of grey areas were discussed, allin the light that they have some very clever and well-funded people on theother side who have opposite ends.

Gah, the Nameprotect people are at it again,running their rude spiders over my site, slowing my site down while they collectdata for their nefarious ends. I wish I knew all the IPs they have. I couldprobably find out, through above or below-ground means, but I'm too lazy. :)Goodbye, nameprotect.. (thunk, another IP blocked).

This is funny.

And, ladies and gentlemen, this is something I thought I'd never see..but it'll no doubt change my life forever.. *sniff*Click HERE.

I guess, considering that last link, it's good we have something new to play withwhile we mope. 2.6 was released yesterday! Booyah!

The title?I'm not sure which -- was going to use trial of leaves for last night's entry, butI was falling asleep while writing it.

Overhead at the Coffee Tree last night:Person1: I think Arnold's really a DemocratPerson2: No, I think he's actually a celebrity

Last night's trip to Coffee Tree was pretty fun, and decently productive --did some stuff for work, and I'm starting to work on ways to use tables tomake my BLOG more attractive. I want it to have a sidebar as well as a menuacross the top, but doing that nicely and making it work well with Linksand at least readable with Lynx is challenging.Eventually some friends came along, and someone happened to have someanime -- SD Gundam, on a CD-R, so we watched 5 (very funny) episodes.After that, I put on one of the episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force I have, and thenit turned out they had a funny Simpsons episode on them. It was fun, watchingmovies sitting at a table at coffee tree.. I hope I can go hiking with them thiscoming weekend -- it all depends on when my car gets done.

More thoughts on the paper I mentioned last night -- it attempts to reseatthe process of scientific discovery, and all the terms in that framework, onthe ground of computational theory. It has some things that I'm not sure I'mclear on -- the way some things work out (such as how incomputability preventsthe actual confirmation, and the groundedness of his notion of convergence)make the framework a bit less novel than I initially thought, but itremains rather novel, and I get the feeling I don't quite understand all thedetails yet. When I get the time to reread it, and other papers he's writtenin the same experimental philosophy, things will hopefully clear up.

Last night, I also had an interesting discussion on the philosophy behindmathematics. It was, in a sense, a cousin to another discussion yesterdaywith my Philosophy professor after class, on the different schools of thoughtregarding whether anything is truly a priori in the strong sense.

I'm going to try to schedule an appointment with my Doctor soon -- every timeI eat, I come close to falling asleep about 45 minutes later, and it's gettingreally old.

Some blurbs...It's a fad! Everyone loves to declare their enemies to be terrorists.In this case, just call them ubercapitalists, people who would sell their friendsand family for the right price, who look at natural parks and see lumber and ore,people who think the market does everything worth doing, and anything else isn'tworth doing.

Apparently seatbelts are in order for the chairs at some research institutions.Seriously though, the article is really interesting in two ways.. first, that heartand circulatory damage can be undone so rapidly, and secondly that there's now adrug form of HDL that can be used to introduce these effects.

I'm always a bit skeptical of Al Jazeera on this topic -- they're reporting thatPalestinian olive groves are being destroyed by settlers. It's a bloody shame.It seems a lot of the tension in the area would be relieved if the settlers werejust reigned in, one way or another. When legitimate sources of income and ways oflife are destroyed, what can one expect of what's left? I suspect many of thesettlers are the racial purity types though..

On that topic, I find this commentary on the Katikvah (Israeli nat'l anthem) interesting.I find myself disagreeing with pretty much all aspects of the Rabbi's analysis.He calls it unsingable, while I have a very nice MP3 of people singing it, and havesung along to it (along with most other songs I like on my computer). He says thatthe language isn't part of the Israeli 'new hebrew', and while that might be true,I don't see that as a problem. He comments that it's in the Ashkenazi form, and soundsnot Sephardi enough. Again, so what? Finally, he says it's not even Jewish music.It's been part of the history for at least a hundred years.. what more could theywant? Would it even be a problem if it were a truly foreign song? It seems likethe Rabbi has a serious case of NIH.

It's interesting, how the Saudis are in a prime position to deal with thehardline terrorists -- they're almost certainly going to be at Mecca for Ramadan,and if they can be picked out from the masses, as in this particular article, they'rewithin easy grabbing range.

The system I mentioned before, allowing Windows NDIS drivers to be wrapped for use onLinux, actually works rather well. Kudos to Linuxant. It's a bit quirky -- I needto run some stuff before I can bring up the network, and its selection of accesspoints seems to be fragile -- I can't connect to my AP at home (although I haven'ttroubleshot that at all yet). Reception is a lot better than the PCMCIA card I havethough..

I'm not sure who these folks are trying to impress.If anything, I find that more irritating than vanilla Xians. You can't eat yourcake and have it too :)

I think it's about time I have some scheduled maintenance for my apartment,my mozilla bookmarks, and my mental state of being. I need to clean...Within the next few days, I imagine.

This was a most eventful weekend... a trip home, and a trip home.I went to Columbus, and .. well, things did not go according to plan.Right before I went, my GPS came in. It's really cool, and GeoCachingwith it will be a lot of fun. It actually has some pretty decent mapspreloaded (it knew about Brecksville, the little townmy parents have settled in, not far from Cleveland). However, although it'sgood with highways, it lacks most local streets. They sell a CD with street-level maps for$149, but I'm unlikely to get that.. :) I might borrow it from someone, orsee if I can get the publically available data to work. Unfortunately, the thingeats batteries very quickly. I'm glad I'm back -- using it with rechargablesshould fix the problem. Anyhow, back to the narrative.. I hopped back in mycar (having made a special trip back to work to get the GPS), and hopped on thehighway going west. The trip was uneventful -- some new music I got made itless dull than usual, and my anticipation of SFF gave me impetus to get therein a hurry. I soon reached Columbus, very much enjoying watching my GPS mapthe entire way there, and made a mad dash for the building where SFF had beenmeeting for an hour. SFF was enjoyable -- a lot of new faces, a few old ones...Martha was there, and told a ghost story.. I finally confirmed my suspicion,on this trip, that there's nothing unusual left between us -- it wasn't reallyweird at all for me.

After the meeting, we went out to eat, and then some ofus went to hang out at someone's house, and then, much later, out for more food.It was on the way to the hanging out that the first major snafu of the weekendstruck -- my car became very ill, spitting out foul smoke and making bad noises.We pulled it to the side of the road near a member of the party's house, andgot a ride to continue the night's events. I also hung out with Gaelynn, areally cute/smart girl from SFF I've occasionally been chatting with via IM,and exchanged some music with her. The next day, I returned to my car,had it towed to Fnord, and then got a rideback to campus, thanks to Aug (thanks, Aug! Wish we had had more time to hang out)..I visited some professors and ex-co-workers, and then some plans for theevening were changed, so I ended up walking around Columbus for about 5hours. - This was once InsomniaI eventually called Dubin, and hung out at his place for a bit, andnapped. I woke up just in time to go to outland, and ended up biking there..It was a good visit, and on the way back, I had an interesting experience.The next morning, we did breckfast, and Martha showed up -- there was agathering for the funeral of Larry Reyka, an important person in the humanistmovement that a lot of people in the local movement who knew him went to.I went and visited with Lorie, having good Indian food and chatting for awhileat a coffeeshop. After that, I went to visit with my sisters. Up until thispoint, I was planning to Greyhound home, but my mom suggested that if I couldmake it back to Brecksville, I could borrow one of the spare cars. When I madeit there, I hung out briefly with Katie, and then Andrea drove me up. It was afun ride -- we had a good chance to talk (something which I really don't get todo very often with my sisters), and I shared some music on my laptop with her.Being home was pretty good.. I always seem to sleep very well there, andcaught up on a lot of the sleep that I didn't get in Columbus, for one reasonor another. I also got to taste some of my mom's latest cooking experiments,and hang out with Lindsay. We played Gamecube for a bit (she brought Pikminand Simpsons Road Rage, both of which were a lot of fun). A few hours ago,the time came when I couldn't put off leaving any further (if I wanted to gethome at a reasonable hour), so I hopped in the spare car, put on some musicthat I got from a friend on this trip, and went home.

So, in sum,I didn't go to Athens for the Halloween parade. Amanda wasn't there anyhow --she was on a trip that was unexpectedly delayed. My car is currently ill, andin Columbus being repaired. I'm borrowing a spare car from my family, andsometime, perhaps next weekend, I'll likely be returning to Columbus to getmy car back (unless I can convince my sisters to drive here, and drive itback.. which might be fun -- they could see my new place and we could visitIKEA and stuff). There're two somethings I'm not telling you about the trip,with various details removed. Sorry. I'm going to detail the stuff below,in a private section, as this journal is partly for me, and partly for ..heh.. my public. I like that phrase.

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So, half-asleep Pat types, let's look quickly at our remaining thoughts..First, I noticed at the toll station I passed getting back into Pennsylvania,the teller called me "Sir". I've chewed on what the word means in modernAmerican English, at least in common usage, and I've come to the conclusionthat it's meant to suggest a seperation between the people speaking. Theseperation isn't necessarily in class, but rather is a clear indicator thatno friendly or personal contact is intended, and that things are strictly'business'. I find this idea strangely fascinating.

The Episcopals have finished with the arguing over the appointment ofGene Robinson as Bishop, and have finally done it. I've talked about thisbefore, so I'm just noting the conclusion, for now, on the matter.

Here's an interview with some celtic pagans in theHighlands of Scotland. If you're into Gaelic, apparently the BBC isthe place for you .. :)I stumbled on the previous two links looking for an interesting telling ofthe episcopal story for you to read..

It looks like the big fires in California are beginning to quiet down, althoughsome people are suggesting that human stupidity might play apart in how big the effect was. It wouldn't surprise me.. My dad mentioned thatin his most recent business trip to Brazil, on the airplane they flew overhuge forest fires in the sparsely-settled western areas of the country, andsomeone explained that as it's largely unsettled land, much of it unexplored,nature takes its course as it sees fit, with the fires unmanaged. There'ssomething interesting about that -- I've heard that the efforts to fight forestfires generally tend to just set the stage for big ones, and that the periodicrandom fires tend to be less destructive when they're not interfered with.Of course, it's hard for civilized people to accept that, either psychologicallyor economically -- we feel a need to control our environment, and also tend toneed to keep external influences to a minimum so we can sue things that stepinto the middle of our finely-laid plans.

My cat is sure happy to see me. *snuggle*Oh, finally, if you're a computer geek, you might want to know that thereare new versions of GAIM, a totally kickass IM client thattalks ICQ/AIM/Yahoo/etc, and Apache. Time to upgrade.

For me, every cup of tea is a gamble, will it be a pleasing taste? Away to wake up? An invitation for the sands to wash over me? For the lastfew days, I've been reaching out, over the internet, to Columbus, my landof the setting sun... It's 2003 here... is it 1999 where you are?The land may grow every year, but if you beat on the ground with yourhands, seeking a banana, perhaps you'll fall through, and see what was there.You know, if you look up while you're down there, you won't see my concernedface looking through the hole. Time hesitatingly decided not to keep mewaiting, and so I was allowed to leave my frozen solitude. I have an appointmentwith a tired Titan at the edge of the world to keep. It's all about professionalcourtesy that I'm a Wizard here. I wish I could take you with me, but that'sthe difference between courtesy and authority.

The horse waited at the edge of the lake, watching tiny arcs of electricitysizzling through the thick fog, feeling the wandering fingers bridge the airand occasionally provide a light touch. A wandering phrase... "You know it'snow or never, to say hello to forever".. and it slowly walks forward, intothe water, the electricity embracing it, as it began to twitch.

I've been doing well in school, I think -- I got back my psych midterm,and was pleased to see my grade on it. I guess I can still produce good stuffwhen I'm barely clinging to awakeness (talking about the take-home part). Ihope the other stuff works out similarly.

I bumped into an old friend online today, who reminded me of Watershed, areally good band in Columbus I went to a concert of, and got one of theirCDs. I suggested Firewater to him, he suggested a few other bands I mightlike. I'm going to get this friday off at work, swapping it for another time,so I'll have time to visit more people in Columbus without them all collidingwith each other. I just hope I can find diplomatic ways to keep the people Iwant to visit individually from being bugged that I want to spend time visitingalone with others, in groups or individuals. There are simply some conversationsand visitings that work best alone. Speaking of which, there are some people Idon't have phone numbers for. In case you read this, John, Aug, Dubin, Lorie,Gaelynn, and, of course, my sisters, I have your phone numbers, and hope tobump into you. JoeH and Amanda, I'll hopefully see you in Athens. Dawon, Tim,Adam, Tom, and anyone else I've forgotten, I'll try to track you down, butfor many of you I lack contact information.

Some interesting commentary on trying to understand things one dislikes.I've experienced the same thing in many different forms, going against thepublic desire to simplify things that are to be opposed as inexplicable andinsane.

A friend pointed me at this. It immediately reminded me ofthe stuff that is jwz -- flamboyant whining.It also reminds me of the programmer's phrase...For every engineering problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.There are (at least) three problems with just tacking another wheel on thefront of a segway, immediately obvious to a geeky type who's actually had thejoy of riding one..

1) It will fall over, when going up or down hills2) Even if it doesn't, you'll fall off3) It can't turn

The segway, although it's not obvious to people who haven't been on one, canhandle hills. It has just 2 wheels, and so is a lot like feet. Any sufficientlysmooth surface, it can scale, just using the appropriate part of the wheel,and its sophisticated control over the motors. When you add a third wheel,using it for support, the system isn't balancing anymore, it's suspended overthe three wheels, and because of its small footprint and suddenly staticcenter of balance, it can't do hills. Remember how easy it is to tumble atricycle? Even if it could do hills, through some engineering miracle, thepart you stand on would tilt with the hill, instead of, as it currently does,keeping flat. You'd likely fall off. Finally, and this is the biggest issue,turning on a tricycle segway would be a pain in the butt. The picture providedstupidly doesn't allow the front wheel to turn at all in the needed way,meaning that only the slight turn possible in its housing will be possible,meaning the turning radius will be huge. So, let's imagine that it's allowed toturn. Well, it still has a turning radius, and suddenly we need a way tocontrol that turn, and need to wait for it to straighten out before we can goforward when we want to. Sure, a motorized tricycle might be cool, but it'snot much like a segway, which, apart from unusual circumstances, is asmaneuverable as a person walking.

"I wish I could say she brought out my bestBut I couldn't stop screwing upWhen she was around.. took me for granted"" -- Watershed - Anniversary (they do have this song as a free download there, BTW)

Another delightful game of Whack-A-Mole, where a company's internalmemos, this time on voting systems, and their failings and deceit relatingto them are made very visible, and someone in the company leaks them to theworld... and they scramble to control them. Here's a link to a discussion board wherewe're doing our best to prevent them from removing everything. For now,here is a link to a place where the memos are. Grab a copy, update your blog,and pass it on. Nothing and noone can be permitted to remove information fromthe public sphere, no matter how damaging or private. Lest you think this isa rare thing, in one of my prior workplaces, which I won't name but I'llinvite you to guess, similar 'blame the customer' lack of ethics games wereplayed, and serious bugs were present that I was not given time to fix, solater on the customer would get to pay for the privilege after they discoverthe bugs. This really sucks. I can't say all companies have dirty secrets --the style of some customer relations make it unlikely or impossible -- it'smore common, I imagine, when there are very formal contracts and a lot ofcommunication between companies, rather than company-masses relations. So,consider that a solace -- that companies are more out to screw each other andthe government then you. But crusaders for openness of information, like me,don't accept that, and combined with that they're trying to cover things up,like the scientologists with their sacred texts that we've freed and arecopying all over the place, we're out to get them. They may, more or less,have the law on their side, but we've got a numerical and technologicaladvantage, and it's naturally harder to clamp down than open up. Grr.Imagine a world where companies are completely transparent.

Oh, here's Microsoft standing up for users liberty again.Reeeeaaall impressive, Microsoft. :)

Verisign continues to act badly, boldly pushing economic interests to mess withone of the most important artifacts of our time, the Internet. It's thebest example of what Academia, as opposed to business, has given society,an open network, with little or no mandated advertising, flexibility, andit's easy to hook into. It's only the businesses that screw it up, providingall that stupid spam, banner ads, and putting toll gates everywhere. Theinternet needs to remain at least driven by standards bodies and universities ifit is to remain the great liberator and knowledge-dissemination tool that it is.Businesses have a place, but they should not be running the show.As in the Republic, the philosopher king and virtuous people (academes)should run this place, and as explored in a class by one of the best professors I've had,we're fighting against a corruption of an ideal system of government.

Last night, I was going to go to a going-away party for a set of friends whohad broken up and are both leaving town, but the place where they said, a weekago, to be didn't have them. Either I got the time/place wrong, or the gatheringgot cancelled and my not being at Coffee Tree much the last week kept me fromhearing about it. Now I likely won't see either of them again. *sigh*Instead, I went to an informal friday Zets gathering, which was fun. It iscontinually a bit odd that everybody in the world seems to drink, apart fromme.

I caught up on my sleep debt of last week today, getting about 11 hours.I feel a lot better now :)

Today, I made a face out of the eyeball that's the logo of my group at CMU.

I was going to be cleverer yet, but my quota's up for today.. was going tomake a logo for my website by altering an image of an altoid can, changingthe text to say "Curiously Strong Opinions". Maybe I still will, sometime.But now I've ruined the punchline.

Had a long conversation with a friend in Columbus who's in a situationnot unlike mine, on so many levels, except they're coming at it from adifferent perspective. Conversation briefly strayed to someone Ifind cute there who I saw for a bit during my last visit. *smile*

Oh, you might find zis comik to be amoosink, Ja? Ja!

I've been catching up a little bit on my huge backlog of things to read,people to contact, and all. I still have a long way to go...Maybe I should just try to get every single person I know that I've beenneeding to catch up on things with to come with me on the Guggenheim trip,whenver it'll be. .. Hmm.. that might take a bus. *sigh*

Hmm.. it's strange how sometimes muscle cramps can be pleasant.

o/~ There used to be a road.. there might still be o/~o/~ Wasted all the time.. waiting for noone o/~

And here we are, on foot again, another glen left, another trip acrossnew mountains, the highlands. We can't ever go back, and it hurts tocontinue our trek across eternity. All the people we meet, becomeghosts, whispers, that we take in our heads... Sequel upon sequel,spin-off upon spin-off.. Never another actual episode.. Just at most acameo.. What a time it was, the original episodes.. a time when we didn'tactually even look back much to the predecessors.

A line next to the wall, parallel, a divergence like veins on an oldhand. Shrunken skin, an early optimization, efficiency, becomes a cripplingpull. I am forced to stand still long enough for the lobster to take a swing.Extra thoughts, words flow from mind to hand, the message needing buta few occasional glances to maintain integrity. Wind blows in a place that wecannot hear, a shaking earth, unknown caves collapse.

o/~ Goin down to cowtown.. cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean, and that's where I will be o/~
-- They Might Be Giants, _Cowtown_

Three hours in a car ... and depending on what I do, threehours back. Fortunately, before departure, I burned aCD with some new music... I'd list tracks, but then people doingweb searches, trying to find the tracks, would end up beingfrustrated seeing the titles listed here. Let's just say thatit's yet another strange, strange mix, with music from Bad Religion,70s-style stuff, russian red army choir stuff, and some musicals, amongother things.

What to do? So many places I could visit...And now, another gob of .. stuff.

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The red cushion.. like a veggie in a can, tempts me. Sleep, it calls.An odd time for a visit, odder still for an audience. Someday, willall my secrets be up for display? My feelings mix, and logic tries topry apart the meanings in that. Emotions are for now, rough guides, notlong-term clothes. But what of X? Well, I don't know. Remember all thethings you said you'd never do? And you did them? Remember all the thingsyou said, and you changed your mind? And you changed your mind? You learnedto forget the old things you said. Even now, dancing on the dried lava isnot entirely safe. Life behind the shield only protects you from otherpeoples' swords, and the net result of all those little cuts you giveyourself will do you in someday. Drop your sword, or get a band-aid.Again, I dissipate -- I know I'm not real to you, I'm not the real me,just a fabrication of memory stirred by a few strands of fabric and thewhispers of the wind. When you stopped believing in your imaginary friend,you entered a cold world. And me? Imaginary friends have imaginary friendsthat are even more imaginary. I've retrieved mine, they sit by the window.I am all the richer for it, as I tiptoe back through the unwelcome corridorsof your mind, to my room, in a place you won't let yourself go. The screamshere are loud, the laughter, the feeling of continual movement, crisis andcalm, all the bubbling beneath the surface. I regret you won't let mecalm you anymore. But maybe your reality is a better salve anyway.

Last night, I spent several hours chatting with a friend I met over theinternet. We dug through all the bizarre pages at supersnail.com,chatting on the phone while browsing the same site, thousands of miles apart,IMing each other particularly amusing things we found. It was, without a doubt,one of the strangest experiences I've ever had..

It's funny how a single stick of incense burned can create a smell in anapartment that lasts such a long time.. It's a nice smell...

A normal startup, almost. The screen comes on, the system boots up,a brief flash of penguin, and the text scrolls. The system is ready forwork, and work it does... pull back... the laptop sits in a field of grass,it's owner absent. Pull back, no people in sight, the field of grass apatch of green, a dimple in a mountain. Noone.

I recently stumbled on this. He's a philosophyprofessor in Japan, and his work on the history ofscience in Japan is fascinating. Take a look..

Oh, here's an example of committee logic, where a statement, throughdisagreement on its basic core, is diluted to the point of being meaningless,but is still made out of sheer momentum.

I recently had a conversation with someone I know on the net, a libertarian,where he, based on my thoughts on a few issues, insisted on grouping me withpeople that I don't really fit with. When I pointed this out, he said thathe's so tired of dealing with 'you people' that he didn't care. And thattendency, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly when humanity is at its worst,when it says "I'm so fed up with this that I don't care. You're a group, you'vehurt me, and I'm not going to listen anymore." I've heard this far too often,even among people I know, intelligent people who should know better. Yeah,sure, you're a special case, your causes following logic you don't think holdwater anywhere else. Ahuh. Just don't expect me to do anything but laugh.And how you squirm -- you reject detailed analysis of the problems, eithersaying it's very simple, and you're not going to listen to something complex,or simply say, like a mantra, "It's more complex than that", and use that asyour escape hinge from serious discussion. That's one of the things wrongwith a lot of people. And, so as to make this perfectly clear, I'm notsuggesting that people can always come to an agreement on everything. Thereare fundamental differences, things worth fighting over. However, before youreach that point, you should both be willing to admit that that is what it'sabout, not lying about the enemy or why you're fighting, and you should keepas cool a head as possible about things, making sure that that really is thecase before you start doing things. People are difficult, politics aredifficult, and sometimes there can't be any comprimise. It's still possibleto behave decently, even given bad situations. And that's my rant on worldpolitics for a little while. It's pretty flexible, so you can apply it toa lot of situations. It's kind of like a nice sweater.

I've recently found myself drawn (again) to the old music video for"Land of Confusion". I've been unable to find it online in mpeg or aviformat.. I'll keep looking.. but while looking, I came across a videocalled "faceless hill" by some artists styling themselves "aluminum", thatresets it to an environmental messaged anime. In turn, that got me tothinking about something in the game "Civilization: Call to Power". It'sa turn-based strategy game where you build a civilization, research stuff,and handle military units and the like. One of the units, available very latein the game, is called the Eco Ranger, and is only buildable to "Ecotopian"governments (which are also the only government that can build Ecoterrorists).Anyhow, the Eco Ranger has a unique ability that, when it scoots up to a city,it can open a nanite 'flower' on its back, releasing a swarm of nanites thatflood through the city, completely destroying it and everything around it,leaving only wilderness. The ethics of such a thing are fascinating -- it isat the same time monstrous (killing so many people) and beautiful (restoringnature on such a scale). Perhaps it's like the Genesis project from Star Trek2 (except with no side effects, and on a smaller scale). In this case, themostrousness outweights the beauty by a pretty wide margin.. If it could betargeted, perhaps deployed merely at the worst factories, and limited in scopeto the grounds, perhaps such a thing would be worth developing though, deployingat night when nobody's around :)

The wasp I mentioned is now quite large, and I am actually fairly stressedand a bit frightened about it. For right now, though, only my family and alawyer who's a family friend know the details, although when it's resolved,I'll reveal all. It's like a game of chess, really, except the stakes arehigher, and I'll tell you -- I'm not all that good at chess.

Oh, and the GAIM project has adapted theirclient to work with Yahoo again. Winter has come, or its predecessor, anyhow.Outland is closing.. I want to make another trip to Columbus within the monthto see it before the end. Maybe I'll try to get as many of my friends whowent there to come along as I can, so the final closure of that chapter ofmy life, and the closing, for the time being, of that part of myself, isat least one I explore to the limit. I wonder if I still have any appropriategeek-pseudogoth clothes anymore. Mhh.. so many memories... I want to dance thePanzermensch one last time.. to have my eyes stung to tears by the thickcigarette smoke, to see the wax and .. stuff.. the people stranger than regularsat Rocky Horror, the music... That's Outland.

Oh, some random funny pseudotech gobblygook I just shared with a friend..

(15:59:56) Improv: Interface the SCSI NIC driver with the etherfast bridge, and then upgrade the DLL driver(16:00:01) ColTim: lol(16:00:05) ColTim: they'd probably cry(16:00:24) Improv: With that in place, you can then go under the file menu, choose 'Save As', and then insert the DVD monitor(16:00:54) Improv: The CMOS will then take over, prompt you for your password, and then upgrade the internet to the FTP edition.(16:00:56) ColTim: the DVD monitor...lol(16:01:09) Improv: Then you'll be able to print.(16:01:10) Improv: :)

Dubin visited me this weekend, and it was a lot of fun.Plenty of walks, lots of conversation, much of it onpsychology and the mental health field, and some funtrips to some places in the area. I got my place relativelyclean before the visit (and with any luck will maintain it assuch), and am trying yet another food to see if Wally willgain some weight back and stop vomiting.. We hiked allover the Squirrel Hill/Oakland area, and because he had hisGPS with him, I had my first real experience Geocaching.If you have an ID there, look for 'stone stash', and you'llsee both of our notes. I need to get a GPS soon so I cankeep doing it. On that trip, I got a good walking stick thatI'm currently stripping and cleaning.. I might look into ways tokeep it from rotting. Anyhow, we visited IKEA, Coffee Tree, CMU, Pitt,and India Garden, and also drove through Chatham, up Negley Hill, anddown to the Waterfront. Yay.

I kind of missed Rosh Hassanah, and got a little bit sentimentalpassing the hill where about a year ago, Debb and I were carvingpumpkins... Oh well.

Anyhow, it was one heck of a weekend.. I'm probably going to stay intonight, make some spaghetti or other pasta, and get some reading done.

It's kind of odd, but since I no longer have a single tool to do aim,icq, and yahoo at the same time, but do have seperate tools, I don't actuallyuse any of them as often. I'm not sure why.

Some news blurbs..Defense of Bowling for ColumbineDie Kunst, Recht zu behaltenComputer HumPerl 5.8.1 (of particular note is the hash randomization, a la OpenBSD pids)]More uranian moons

I'm in an odd situation. There's an opportunity I'd normally attempt to takein a heartbeat, but I realize that I can't because doing so would breaka commitment I made, or at least endanger it. Sad thing is, that I recentlyfound out that there's a better chance than normal that I'd get what I want.Chance.. that's an interesting thing we're chewing on in my philosophy ofscience class -- in particular probability as being based on randomness versusprobability as being based on incomplete data. There've been a lot of awfullybright people taking various tacks on the issue, suggesting that one or theother notion is meaningless, or that one is more important than the other.I'm inclined towards determinism, myself, so the incomplete data notion ishow I normally interpret statistics. Anyhow, yeah, by better chance thannormal, what I meant is, given the data I have, there's a better chance thannormal. That phrasing is interesting -- an alternative, less theory-advocatingform would be, given the data I have, the inference that I'd get what I wantis stronger. Yes, they mean exactly the same thing to me, but the firstcertainly flows more smoothly.. and it offends those with other views onstatistics :)

Oh, one final answer from the straight dope that I once asked when I was muchyounger.. how do touch lamps work?

o/~ Victories don't mean a thing if they don't last o/~That symbol.. I didn't get it for the longest time... it'sa note.

Was just talking with my musician friend again.. he reminds me a lotof Charles. I miss Charles... Anyhow, we talked about the relationshipbetween moods, creative energy, making music, and inspiration. It wasa good talk, but hard to summarize. I'm glad I did so much music whenI was younger -- otherwise I wouldn't be able to have such interestingconversations with musicians... I really should start playing somethingagain...

Oh, yes, the development version of my BLOG, on my laptop, now has loginsfully working. It turns out that handling a POST request required verylittle additional coding. For those of you that arn't geeky enough to know,most of the time, when you're interacting with a webpage, your browser is usingGET requests, where it simply provides the hostname and the document path,and the server usually hands it over. Occasionally, when you're dealing withforms, or uploading files, it uses another type of request, where instead ofjust sending that data, it also provides key-parameter values in a specialformat (no, CGIs like altavista are usually still done with GET requests).Anyhow, it wasn't hard to parse those requests, so at least locally, I havea login button, and logging in changes to my test monochrome colour scheme.Now I need to make a screen for users to edit their preferences and info,so logins will be useful. At that point, I'll probably sync to my actualBLOG -- there's no real point doing it earlier. I think it'll be prettyeasy to add comments after that. Oh, yes, apparently, my code for settingtemporary cookies doesn't work. I'll need to figure that out soon --I really want to use cookies that expire on browser close instead of long-livedones.. but for now, long-lived cookies are ok.

It's SO COLD out right now. It's not a good time to be doing programmingoutside of Coffee Tree... and it's just going to get colder. I'll needto switch from fall jackets to my winter coat soon if I keep up the latenight trips here.

Well, I'm gonna try to get my psych homework done and maybe do some morecoding for work before I go to bed.. not yet sure if I'll give in to the coldand do that at home or not..Brrrrrrr

Dubin's not coming this weekend -- car troubles and other stuff.Hmm... so what to do.. It looks like I'll be going with R tothe going out of business sale for an Army Surplus store. I doubtI'll get anything, but it's often fun to browse..

My laptop is finally being shipped. This coming week is my lastweek before school starts. And, with that realization, I'm gettinga bit of the normal nervousness back. I remember occasionally I stillget dreams that take me back to my last quarter at OSU.. nervous overgrades, and the thought that I might've messed up one of my last classes.The dreams invariably end up being exaggerated versions of my actualworries of those times... Still, it'll be a good thing to get back ontrack for getting the PhD. I just hope my laptop arrives before classesdo, and there's sufficient time to get it configured.

So, I've been spending some time on the online matchmaker sites, and alsofriendster, which isn't exactly that, but it can be used for such purposes.I've contacted some people, and some people have contacted me. I've actuallymade some friends. Good deal. I haven't really had any dates from it -- therewas one, but I just don't think there was mutual attraction. There are somepeople who sound interesting who I'm having email conversations with thatI might meet up with at some point. Some have pictures, some don't. I wishmore did -- it helps to avoid a disappointing face-to-face meeting, if theconversations were good but there's just no attraction. I mean, there areplenty of people I might be friends with, but I want there to be mutualknowledge that that's the nature of things, if it is, as early as possible.Anyhow, here's the main thing that I got onto this topic for... There'ssomeone who's been interested in me, who I'm not attracted to, who usesmore than one of the matchmaker services. I've never really been sureabout what the etiquette for these things is -- if you're not attracted,it's been suggested to me by all my friends who use such things (who,by the way, seem to have a much easier time finding people to date. I thinkI'm too picky..) that if you're not interested, you just ignore them, anddelete the message. So, that's what I've been doing. And, of course, onthe other side, I've occasionally messaged people, and often when I do,I get no response. It's frustrating. However, when I've thought about sendinga response, I really can't think of what to say that'd be less unkind thansimply not responding -- "Sorry, I'm not interested" suggests that they'renot good enough, or something like that. Maybe the silence says it too, butat least then there's room for doubt. I could even spell out the reasonsfor some of the people who have emailed me -- apparently some reallyreligious people neglect to notice that I'm an atheist, or similar. Moreon that later. So, anyhow, I really don't know what the best thing to do.I guess I wonder if I could stand specific notes of what makes meincompatible with someone. I hope I could, and it reminds me of some timeback when someone I knew said that I looked kind of hippie-ish. I probablydid look like that back then .. heh. I wonder, if I were to tell people Iknew things about them that they'd rather not hear, if such a brief tellingcould preclude a friendship. I'm not even sure I know such things for manypeople.. but sometimes some kinds of facts or opinions are an assault onpeople's self esteem. For example, let's say that one of my friends said thatthey always thought me to be ugly. Perhaps true, perhaps they would've beenthinking it for some time. It still might be weird dealing with the knowledgethat they think of me that way, and instill some worry that I am, indeed,that way. Is it merely that some areas of statement have been so regulatedby society into the 'insult' realm that touching them invariably makes onefeel hit as if one were insulted, or is it that there are some areas that are,more or less, inherently sensitive for most people? It's like there's an areawhere there's a big out-of-bounds marker that's always there between peoplein our society who want to remain civil to each other. Anyhow, that's thethought for today. I will leave it to you, my dear reader, to judge as to ifI'm ugly, plain, attractive, or something else. That was just a theoretical :)

Hmm. Forget the later. I need to get moving and showered and stuff.

I had an awesome sleep last night. I have no idea why these thingshappen, and I'd love for it to happen more often. With those 7 hours,I was completely refreshed, and had very little of my usual "stay in bed"urge. Perhaps related, the insomnia, which seems to be on its way to aregular part of my life, didn't strike at all last night. Anyhow, I'mfeeling rather good right now. Oh, as an added bonus, my legs are almostback to normal again -- the right leg feels pretty normal, and the leftisn't far from it.

PerlMongers meets tonight. So, I'll be skipping Zets. I wish they didn'toverlap, but so it goes. I've never been to a PerlMongers meeting yet,and I'd at least like to check it out. I also met Casey West at OSSCon,and he suggested I at least show up once..

Dubin is coming to visit this weekend. Yay. I'll try to figure out the best tour to give of the localarea, as well as Pgh in general. I'll also need to make sure my place isclean, although it's actually not too bad right now.

The weekend afterwards, there'll be a gathering of the Carvers (my mom'sside of the family) in the Brecksville/Bath area, so I'll be heading tomy parents' place for that.. I've been told (by them) that they're very loud andvery opinionated. Sounds fun. It's been awhile since I've been back to visitmy parents/grandparents.

I finally have the funds appropriately arranged to buy the laptop. I'm going togo over to the University Computer store to actually do the ordering -- Iwant no bureaucratic problems -- Some of the deals I'm taking advantage ofend today, and if the order doesn't get in, I'll lose out quite a bit.Actually, I'm probably going to go take care of that now.

I noticed, while heading back from Coffee Tree today, that Busses havestrange windshield wipers, at least by car standards. Instead of pivoting,they go over the windows like a broom.

So, yesterday's accident ... let me explain in more detail. I was headingto Sree's in SqHill, to grab dinner, and I was dodging a pedestrian. Unfortunately, I didn't dodge quite well enough, and had to slow downto avoid hitting a garbage can. Well, I was going downhill, and wasn'taware that bike brakes are tricky to apply while going downhill. In short,the bike did a somersault, and unlike last week's near hit by a car, thistime I didn't land on my feet. It must've been quite magestic though -- I wasflying straight forward through the air, probably looking like superman.No flight powers here though -- I hit the ground with my chin and hands.My chin bled quite a bit, and my hands were really messed up. I was shakinga bit from the pain. Sree's wasn't even open.. *sigh* (wasn't open todayeither, hmm....). So, I delicately made my way back home and, as is my customwhen I don't feel well, went to sleep. I woke up in time for Zets though.

There was a Zapme after Zets.. it was a funny britcom, but it was on a topicthat I'm always sensitive -- betrayals in relationships. Even though I'mnot in one, and indeed don't even have any 'prospects' apart from someoneI see every so often in passing who isn't interested (no, it's notN, who I have found out is unfaithful for disturbing reasons -- someone else)Anyhow, yeah, something about hearing about, or seeing depicted, someonewho is unfaithful to their SO, even being too familiar with someone else..it's like an icepick in my brain. I think the roots of this are pre-Debb,although her lack of loyalty probably enchanced it. When I see it in a movieor on TV, I can just feel myself getting tense, emotional, and all that.I think it's one of my biggest fears, and perhaps the easiest emotionalhotspot by which I can be played with. And, of course, I've had people playwith it before..

Anyhow, yesterday I also spoke with someone who I never thought I actuallywould speak with. Not really a mirror image, but similar enough that itreally would've been interesting to see what might've come, had circumstancesbeen different. I suspect eventually, a bunch of good-natured ribbingbetween people who think they're living purer lives than each other. Maybe,in some fashion, that still can be had, along with the other things. It'sall probably about learning to untangle a complication that emotionallyshould be there but logically and in view of best results, should not.

And, perhaps, someone who I judged harshly doesn't deserve such harshjudgement. I am judgemental, as those of you who know me, know. Some peoplefind the notion of judgemental moral relativists to be odd. Get to know me.It won't seem so odd. I'll explain it to you. :)

It rained *really* hard today as I was heading home. Quite amazing -- thestreets are flooding in some places. .. And my wounds.. My chin is a bitswollen, my jaw hurts a bit after all the chewing of a meal... and whereit hit the ground, it's still raw and a bit ugly. My right hand is mostlyok -- it's not nearly at full strength, and hurts a bit, but it's, all thingsconsidered, my good hand, and probably will be ok tomorrow. My left hand is abit of a mess. For most of today, typing was really unpleasant, and I can'tcarry anything with any weight at all in it. I lifted my bookback off theground a few minutes ago, and it hurt quite a lot. Still, it's mobile enoughto type now, and with any luck, it'll be where the right hand is now withina few days. It also looks rather unpleasant -- swollen, with a very visiblebruise and some spots where arteries show that shouldn't. Oh well.

The last few days have been good for reflection. I'm thinking about the lifestylechanges I'll need to be making soon when school starts again. It's not going tobe easy doing fulltime work and taking two classes. I'm going to need to getbetter at getting to bed on time so I won't be tired while I'm trying to learnstuff. With studying also stuck back into my life, I'm going to have lesspersonal time to program, read, and all that. Still, I should have plentyof time for that, as well as PUSH -- it'll just switch from there beinghuge margins for error to there just being moderate margins. It helps, I think,to live relatively like a monk. Heck, maybe I'll meet someone, and they'lltake some more time and stuff. Still, in the end, I think that'd be a goodthing -- it's easier to live when one feels that there isn't a huge area oflife that's unfulfilled and not going anywhere. :)

I have two things that I want to chew on for purpose of essays..One is exactly my vision of what a good philosophic life looks like.. I'vewritten on this before, but I have new ideas to weave in, and I want tomake it a good quality writing, and the other is a nice, more unifiedcritique and discussion of capitalism, consumerism, and all that.

Alas, I can't think of such things right now, because I have a reallyadorable cat sitting on my lap, looking up at me with fantasticallycute green eyes. I'm so happy that he's in my life. Apart from the aspectof him leaving special presents all over the apartment that keep me fromforgetting where the mop and paper towels live, I trust him completely.I even gave him his own email address recently. How many cats do you knowof that can claim that?