Will of the People

Musings on love in the abstract:( Read more... )

On Sunday, I braved a bus from Penn Ave back to SqHill, and was forced into adventure ( Read more... )

A band that many of you might like: 「Gogol Bordello」. They're like a blend of DeVotchKa and the Leningrad Cowboys. Two videos for your perusal. (Note: My opinion of their brilliance may be affected by my general impressedtude with the Gypsy-Punk genre)

Reread Freud's 「Civilisation and its Discontents」 (despite being short and having some shaky foundations, one of my favourite works broadly in the sphere of philosophy), and I came across the following passage about love:( Read more... )

Also, as a general rule of thumb, people need to meet a minimum bar of being able to express complex topics in order to discuss philosophy (or even politics). If their framework cannot cover complex real-world-but-noncontroversial situations and terms, they should not even consider discussing something controversial before broadening their mind a bit. One of the things the scientologists said in my argument with them a few weeks (months?) ago sticks in my mind - they pointed out that the word psychology had the word "psyche" in it and thus the discipline should consider human spirits real. Such a hard grip on words acts as a barrier to understanding both the real world and concepts, and trivially falls over when other common words are taken back to their roots (which my webcomic, linked above, said another way). Another example: trace their family tree, ask them "is this person family?" as you move further out and back - eventually they should start saying "kind of" instead of "yes", or more ideally reveal that they have multiple overlapping concepts of family, some with fuzzy borders. If they can't do that, they're not ready to handle harder problems.

My apologies for taking this advance idea for a topic from someone who hasn't yet posted on it (I won't name them because the post is friendlocked), but I think it's interesting and I haven't written except in brief on the matter before. Storytime.. which eventually will hopefully meander onto/through some conclusions, observations, and impressions.

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Summing up, I don't think poly relationships are things that people only experiment with in youth even if that's true for some people, nor do I think they're interently problematic for everyone. They may in fact be a better thing for some people, although finding out for whom that is true can be a painful process. I think but do not know that I could manage a sex/companionship-style involvement in a polyweb but not a love-style involvement, and while I do desire sex and companionship and would not object to having it through either something casual, I also want love and I suspect but do not know that I could not manage that in a poly relationship. The more people who are in poly relationships, the more people who I'd want to date otherwise become unavailable, and so in an indirect way, poly webs disadvantage me in a way that hurts more than many other types of systematic incompatibility/difficulty.

Having some time to reflect on it, the Boston trip was a life-changing experience. How I react to it is up to me, but I am certain it has shifted the course of my life, one way or another. I may try to lift anchor earlier than I had planned, if it can be arranged. Everything I have and am is now withdrawn again into my hand, shaped like dice.

P.S. If I have any readers at MIT, please get in touch. Seriously.

I find myself happily with a good amount of reading material. At CMU, there's a guy who comes out with many boxes of books when the weather is nice, and sells them for between 50 cents and two bucks apiece. I grabbed a copy of Steven King's Dreamcatcher (which I once owned, but loaned to someone, I have no idea who, who didn't return it) and Machiavelli's Prince. I also was loaned Bruce Campbell's autobiography by J and R. Hurrah.

I also find myself with a lot of things to do. I volunteered to help with SSA's database, and am still digesting their schemas. At work, I'm doing a similar thing, and trying to decide if I want to replace a website written in PHP with something new I'd cook up in mod_perl or Tomcat/Java. Work is busy.

Today also has, for some odd reason, seen fit to demonstrate to me that a lot of people know me around here. I bumped into some members of Debb's family at lunch, then some people I don't see very often at work, and then some people who I fairly often see but don't talk to at Coffee Tree really opened up to me tonight (with at least a bit of TMI from one). On the way back, I got some spaghetti at Eat'n'Park, and ended up bumping into someone from work and then someone else from Coffee Tree.

My suspicious mind is tellimg me that all this means that something is going to happen to change everything soon. I'm guessing it's just one of those quirks.

Tomorrow morning at 6am, I leave for DC so I can be there by 10. I'm up late so I can get laundry done. I have no idea what to expect from this Wikipedia gathering. If I feel like it, I might go back through College Station -- it's a bit out of my way, but I've been curious to see Penn State's campus. .. Actually, no, after looking it up, apparently it'd tack on an additional 4 hours of driving. Too much. Oh well.

I've been chewing on a few things, in particular how I've met and gotten with each person I dated. I'm going to skip one of the people on here. Sorry. As for Martha, I met her on Sentient, a mailing list for my friend Aug's new student group, Students for Freethought. We had a fierce political discussion online (my being a Libertarian at the time), and then met in person at the first meeting I went to. Later, we started making the first steps towards a relationship when I tagged along when other people went to hang out at her apartment, and later apologised if I were cramping her style with her friends. She later remarked that this showed how sensitive I was, and we eventually started to hang out. We started to date later on when we hung out at my apartment and talked about a lot of things throughout the entire night. With Debb, we first met on the OSU oval when she and my friend Aug were walking through (I think I was reading or something). It was a fairly brief meeting. A few years later, after occasionally crossing paths, I started chatting with her on IM after work, while working at GoAntiques. Eventually we hung out a few times, and I told her that I had a thing for her. We kept hanging out and eventually started to date. With Nicole, we first met at Zets, the first time I went to a meeting. She was still dating her previous SugarDaddy-type figure at the time, and I had issues with keeping a proper distance, so we eventually stopped talking. Later, we started hanging out again, and it eventually slowly turned into a relationship. In essense, in each of the relationships I described, I tended to know the person for at least a moderate amount of time before I started to date them, but was attracted to them from the start. Hmm.

A few more strange dreams -- I dreamed that I was speaking Dutch whilewandering around the Netherlands again. It felt kind of irritating thatthe tolerance of society that we had struggled so long to build and maintainhad become so touristy. I then was on a large (space?)ship, partly made sane bysome kind of holographic projections that those with special glasses could seethrough. I was with someone who was summoned to meet the captain, and was goingto tag along, and after hopping into the elevator, and pressing the specialbutton marked captain's area, the floor display went wild and another displaycame down marking floors of a "earth simulator" floor. We stepped out into whatlooked like an area of downtown Columbus, and I was so happy to see real dirtin one of the nonpaved parts of the city that I sat there for a long time. Inoticed that my glasses didn't appear to show anything not to be real, and beganto wonder about that in the back of my mind.

More on that last dream -- often in dreams, I'm in a story that seems quiteplausible, but eventually, like a low-budget movie, or perhaps a story told bysomeone who's not all there, reality stops being lucid and starts to drift intosomething new. I think it would be an interesting form of insanity to live insuch an environment, mentally speaking. I wonder if we all spend our entire livesin our own paintings, with only the paint and fabric being common between us.

I think I'm whole again. That's good.

I recently finished watching the Baliwood movie, Kal Ho Naa Ho which Ibought from the indian grocery on Craig.. it was a great movie. I mostly watchedit at Coffee Tree, and the people behind the counter were amused. It'scheesy by American standards, which have a much more restrictive form of whatkinds of showcasing of emotions are appropriate. It's also much more interestingthan common American movies, which generally have some pretty regurgitation ofa boring set of American cliches (Disney movies are especially bad in this way).There are large aspects of the human experience that are never seen inmainstream American movies. I think part of this is because main characterstend to fit pretty squarely into a type of role that precludes signs of partsof their humanity, and it's rare that non-main characters get any development.While Kal Ho Naa Ho was largely a story about a love triangle, it also was about guilt, forgiveness, and families.

I've come to the conclusion that woot.com is a waste of time. It has new things most days, true, but they're almost always crap, like no-name speakers or things that arn't really good deals anyhow. Sigh.

One of the interesting things brought up by the movie is a discussion on first loves, to wit, that one never really gets over one's first love. I've heard other people say this as well, and it seems to be at least partly true. A question to my readers - does your first love still occupy a special place in your heart? Has this ever caused problems with later relationships?

They walked around, saying YES and NO in the harshest tones, to every littlequery. A normal life, driven by gears instead of flesh. A fingernail slowlymoves across flesh, finding the seam like the blind hand on toilet paper. Sosplit, we move in two directions, each leg freed of the tyranny of the other,and yet as they move, a sense of impending horror dominates. Freedom can beso harsh. A brief flash of light, a photograph, a strange kinship. An insightdeep into your soul, and then the scraping of a razor blade along a table,to catch every last part, to divide between what is and what you want. Willit be returned, shared with interest, or will it be deposited for laterdisposal? But first, can the clockwork be repaired? I feel everything elsefade, leaving just the oddly glowing hill, strange colours cloaking everything,tiny fingers or hands that would move over us like ground coffee or tilledsoil.

She understands me. She understands me better than anyone else ever has.She can't support my weight right now, and only will allow me to supporthers a bit, but this is a precious thing, when someone can intuitively walkmy mind, taking different but true paths. If time's sewing hand is rapid enough,and an offer is made, yes, I will go when the time comes. If not, I may goelsewhere anyway. I never thought I might leave, but the wind is loud outside,and the second chamber has laid sandpaper that chafes my feet.

My passport has arrived. There shall be no more barriers for our trip toEurope and later journeys. My passport photo is, as tradition dictates, notparticularly good, only kind of resembling me, but it could be a lot worse.

An interesting tidbit from dictionary.com -- the normalenglish use of the word 'an', is related to the number 'one', in fact is asimplified form of it. I didn't know that. This, na klar, does not apply tothe other use of the word 'an', meaning 'if', which is very cool (and asthe site notes, archaic).

There was an article in the local Pitt News (UPitt's student paper)on Pittsburgh's continuing efforts to avoid going bankrupt. In summary, to avoidincreasing property taxes, they're going to impose an 'occupational privilegetax' increase from $10 to $145. A member of city council sees this as beingbetter than increasing property tax because "no one wants to see that -- not themayor, council, or anyone else". I don't understand this. Particularly, studentworkers, as the article notes, would end up paying it just the same as bigbusinesses, and it certainly hits the workers harder -- if they work littleenough, they could end up losing money by working. Same thing goes for thepoor. They do note that currently the property tax idea would not help withpeople who commute into the city, who don't pay property tax. This does hit ona problem -- surrounding communities offering little more than a tax dodge fortheir residents who otherwise would pay Pittsburgh tax. Having the city andthe county merge would fix things, or forming special taxes to target thosefolk would also help. It seems, however, that it's a far lesser evil to stickpeople like me who make a decent salary and live in the city with the burdenof making up for the tax-dodgers than it is to go with a plan that hits parttime/student and poor workers so hard.

Apparently, Philly is ready to join the (small) crowd of cities that're thinkingof offering internet as a utility, in this case the plan being to providewireless on lamp posts. I've been hoping to see this happen all over the placeand it's good to hear of it moving forward. Hurrah.

It seems that the newer, better (sarcasm) Iraqi government has decided tokeep a ban on Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based middle-eastern cousin to CNN.

I don't understand this humour,but it's still funny.

I'm feeling kind of melancholy and reflective.. just got back from nightmealat India Garden.. I had another migraine today.. they are, fortunately,getting less frequent, I think, but they're still worth several hours ofa painful cousin to sleep. My brain always feels kind of 'dry' before andafter them, as it does now. Anyhow, back to the melancholy.. I decided torotate my CD collection in my car, and pulled out an old CD by Don McLeanthat I have.. I got it ages ago because I liked the clever wordplay of thesong "On the Amazon", which I heard on the radio in middle school. It turnedout to be a good album -- far better than one would naturally expect fromthe author of "American Pie".. one of the songs, "Oh What a Shame" isa song that, like "Memory" from Cats, always puts me in a particular mood.It's about when the closest personal ties and promises in life end up breaking,and lonely reminiscence over that. It's strange.. all these things, thesegardens of yesterday we wander through, the stubs of plants we loved thatwe can still touch.. How it feels to think of the people, the two chosen,the three lovers, the friends.. a beautiful web without spiders.. I missthem... quite seperately, I hope for something new, with the shattered birdperhaps, or someone I have not yet met. R had an insight yesterday eveningthat still strikes me, in response to a revelation I put to her that I hadnot told to another.. The things I want in a relationship are complex -- Ineed a warm person who is guarded to the world like I am. I need someone whohas the fear and need for contact, the struggling urges.. to be happy. That'snot common.

I also poked around, and found that TMBG has a new albumcoming out soon, and has some things I didn't know about available online-only.Some of it reminds me of the "old sound" of TMBG, and so I dropped some moremoney.. This is another bad month for money :) New DSL, the timing of autoinsurance payments, and other fun.. still, it's really not that bad. I'm puttingmore time into researching ethical investing. After a brief look into Islamicinvesting, while I think the ethics involved in Islamic investing, from avoidingethically problematic areas to avoiding interest, are quite good, perhaps betterthan those involved in more vanilla ethical investing, I'm not comfortable withthe idea that they likely will prefer investment into companies that arereligiously tied or populated by muslims. I requested information instead froma group called Domini, a nonreligious American ethical investment group.

I've decided to stop pining for a compatible iPod, and instead get a 2nd-genNeuros. It plays ogg files, has abuiltin recorder that can make MP3s, and in general seems cooler. I wasthinking about the Neuros some time back, but forgot about it somehow.I think Apple captured my brain.. they do make cool, nice-looking stuff,but it's easy to forget that there are other people who make nice products.I kept on comparing the iPod to crappy products like the current-generationRio, which was dumb. Anyhow, I don't know if I want to order the Neuros now(I have decided for certain I want one, and it's probably ok to go over howmuch I like to spend in a month to do so if I'm going to get it sooner orlater anyhow) or wait for next month. It amuses me also that the highestcapacity NeurosII has a bit more disk on it than my laptop does. It'scertainly sufficient to hold my entire music collection and then some.

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I'm at Insomnia, and Karl is .. er.. at Coffee Tree... wow, with that slip,I think I see them being in a lot of ways the same... anyhow, Karl is playinghis guitar loudly, so I'm needing to put my earphone volume obscenely loudto get the environment I want to code...

I'm currently thinking about the work needed to move my BLOG to usingWikipedia-style markup instead of raw, barely-wrapped HTML. Naturally,I'm starting out with a test program. Right now, it doesn't do anytransformation at all, that function being a stub that returns thedata it was passed, but I at least know what will map, and what won't.

Sections/subsections are definitely in. I think I can also all ofthe text formatting. As for lists, I don't fully understand definitionallists -- I might not implement them, but the others should be fine.Links are going to need some reworking to make them work with a BLOGinstead of a wiki -- external links are straightforward, and I actuallywill probably add a nice schema handler so I can, say, stick in handlersfor certain kind of resources, like wikipedia, and not need to specifythe full URL to wikipedia in external links. Internal links are a bitdifferent -- I could use seperate pseudo-namespaces for certain things,like topics, and maybe have an 'entry' namespace so I could reference otherentries. That might work, and may in fact create code paths that I've beenthinking of making anyhow. Eventually, perhaps I'd add a default namespaceand actually turn POUND into a mixed blog/wiki engine, although that'd befar in the future, and might not be a direction I'd want to go. Hmm.

And, on another topic, exercises of power seem to be recent in my life --a submarine just surfaced, and the second touch, which I'll need to deliverpersonally (which also has a different, somewhat more institutional target),is just about ready for enactment. However, I almost seem to be regrettingthe second.. things have been getting better recently, or so I think, althoughperhaps only because I know that the curent situation won't exist for too long.It's hard to judge these things - dissatisfaction is such an ephemeral thing.Perhaps this week..

And hey, it's good to have friends. I'm doing well with building social tiesrecently. It sure would be a lot more fun to share the building of suchthings with someone else, but that'll likely happen in time. Someday, I think,I'll meet someone, and they'll have beauty and brains like ex#1 or ex#2,culture like #1, will challenge me like #2, hopefully a bit more sanitythan either when I dated them, and will genuinely enjoy making me happy, andwill be made happy by me. I think I believe again. I wonder if I've met themyet. I'm actually feeling pretty encouraged by things. The changes I've madeand am making in my life are paying off.

A cracked mirror, distortion of a shattered being.. the first constructionhad a bad bend, and this funhouse has made monster upon monster. We lookin the mirror, further down this path of insanity.. we've already passed thepoint of no return. In fact, we never really were anywhere shy of the edge ofthe cliff, never had a taste of the real syrup. There's no way we couldknow the Truth -- we're beyond imagination. We live on the rosin dust of aviolin bow..

Somehow, though our goals align, you never gave me the support I needed.A casual friend taken to the extreme, you offer light praise, while Istarve on the street. You see my tears, and look sad, but walk on by.I don't fit into your schedule -- you have no budget for sympathyor a helping hand. Watch me being left behind as you continue yourgoose-step away..

It is like the wooden moulds used to construct sidewalks, the teachers who want,maybe need, to be surpassed by their student.

There were always two kinds of offers, the haggling between two people whowant to make a deal, and the silent, take-it-or-leave-it, that often sitsunused, invisible, unexplored. There are always paths to where you want to go,albeit with sacrifices that make the labours of hercules seem mild.

A vision -- dive, dive.. hands over head, no thought, eyes closed, hundredsof people diving through a waterfall, or a shower? It is only in fallingthat we appreciate how high we have stood.

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The final duty of the body, hand over hand, things leak, systems on the largeand small have given up, mail is piled up in the mailroom, undelivered,unretrieved. The syntax, shall we say it, is borked. In death, she showed asurprising tenderness, unlike in life. Determined look in eyes, she slowly movedto the body of her lover, his eyes open, immobile, watching the sky after thelungs stopped, before the light of life left his eyes. Pain, but the chance toend it right.. one painful pull later, her head rested on his hand,another, and she snuggled into his cooling frame. A gasp, and she felt thebreath leave her, death rattle, but she felt safe, unraveling with him. Thehabits peel back, revealing the strategies. "What do I want? To end with him"the strategies peel back, leaving the wants.. "Warmth, love".. the bright-eyedchild briefly awakens.. "Things are different.. What comes next?" and thenthe last things, the instinct and the feeling, given the whole of the brain.Their eternal struggle for the brain complete, they echo soundless pain astheir moment of victory ends all too soon.. vision, the inner fire, theflickering flame goes out, leaving only the repetition of the smoke, theremaining patterns first a parody of humanity, then the simpler patterns ofinert matter.

Some additional thoughts from the trip..I visited Chippewa, and while things looked very much the same as when I wasin elementary school, the back looked a bit more cutesy and small.The latter I understand -- I was a lot smaller then. The first? Maybe thingsare more cutesy nowadays, a need to counteract fears of rapid adulthood.Each generation's rosy views of their past leading to a convergence touselessness.

Yes, this trip involved a lot of visiting of Brecksville -- I drove all overthe place, taking pictures. The old house is for sale, for about $300k. Itwas odd, seeing the advertisement for it in the tube.. I still rememberevery corner of that place. I didn't really visit as much with my family as Ishould've but the time wasn't as free as I thought it'd be. More thoughtson the wedding? Not really.. I guess I've covered it all pretty well, althoughmy thoughts linger in my mind. Wistful happiness, loneliness, large dose ofnostalgia, longing, happiness.. and goodbye. I'm not good with that last one.So long.. Fare thee well.. The dancing, it's one way to try to keep my mindoff how I felt.. I danced to say goodbye (goodbyte) .. to express what I wasfeeling, because I was afraid to talk.. or maybe it hadn't progressed evento that point. The ending of the dance.. the last two songs.. we all joinedhands, and made a ring around the two of them, hands up and down, as we movedin and out, and then circling around them. It was the sweetest pain I canremember, overwhelming. I just don't know what I can say about it, but it's amoment I will remember forever, and even the memory of it fills my gut withemotion, the pre-prism kind of undifferentiated .. *stuff*, the kind thatmakes you lose grip of who you are, a little bit of heat to melt and reformthe wax of ourselves, brings unfamiliar shapes to our lives, makes us seethings in ourselves that never were there before.. an insight, or the eaglesees something truly new. In potentia, or novel intro.. the difference becomesnull with sufficient perspective. Overwhelmed, even a day and a few hourslater. Have fun, yes, have too much fun.. and farewell. So many things unsaid,so many things that will remain unsaid, and the duty of the prospective speaker,on the other side of the closed door, to hold them until they dissolve. Justas I hold another burden to someone else. Amber said something touching, orperhaps sappy, depending on what's in her mind -- "I've only ever really lovedone person". How nice that would be. To be with the only person one's everreally loved, to be able to say that honestly, and have it be true. The doubt --it's justification for one's current state in life. But I don't know her wellenough -- not my place to pry into every mind. I can honestly say that I'mnot in the state she described.. I really have loved twice.. different shapes tothe emotion, state of being, of love. Oy. Speechless again.

Today, after waking up suitably late to make up for getting to bed so latelast night, Jason and I went to IKEA, then drove around a bit, and thenthe tree, and then out for Indian food. It's really great to be hanging aroundhim again, even if only for a few days. For a long time, he's been one of myclosest friends, another of whom I expect will visit me again in a monthor so. My body is still sore as hell from so much dancing yesterday -- moresore than all the running made it earlier this week. From a preserving my bodypoint of view, I think dancing is more strenuous, the way I do it, thanrunning is for me. Note, na klar, that I'm talking about fast dancing -- Ienjoy slower dances too, but it would've been a bit odd for me to do much ofthat with who I was dancing with. I guess on the topic of fidelity, I ama bit more conservative on what I provide, and expect, than most people..or at least most people I hang out with. Some of my friends tell me that theydon't actually care if their s.o.'s have sex with other people, so longas their relationship is uniquely close emotionally. Others tell me thattheir relationship isn't unique in the emotional way, but is uniquely closein the commitment to being there for each other, or in planning life together.I don't know if it's the liberal folk I tend to associate with, or if thisis just unusually candid but still representative talk covering the lifestylespectrum.. and of course there are a number of people who have, or at leastexpress, viewpoints closer to mine. The majority, I think..To me, a uniquely close emotional bond, reciprocal sexual and, to a largeamount, sensual exclusivity, and planning/spending life together are the essenseof a relationship. A number of intuitive-type dos and don'ts also come with thepackage, and a few other minor points. There exists in my mind the possibilityof 'play' relationships -- no commitments, mostly sensual/sexual, with littleof the emotional (or intellectual, which to me does a lot of the feeding ofthe emotional) ties.. Some people suggest to me I should do more of that kindof thing while I wait to see if/when I have a chance for what I'm really goingfor. Hmm.

Idea - scene recognition. A device that maps out a room, via echo or similar,and when walked through enough rooms, would map a house or area.

I'm still leeching wireless off of my neighbors. It's decent, although theirwireless doesn't penetrate so well to my apartment, so I keep losing andregaining the connection. Not fun. I'll need to order new DSL soon.

Ugh, I am *so* sore from dancing.. blistered and sore.. Watching doors close.. and wondering about the other side..

Depending on how I look it at, that was either a prety good or a prettybad trip to Columbus. I could say that it wasn't really what I was expecting,but I'm not really sure what I was expecting. My mental soundtrack for thetrip was set some music I've had for a long time that I haven't listened toever. I recently learned that I've been unduly prejudiced against remixmusic -- I went to Beborn Beton's website, and downloadedsome 30-second samples I liked, which were different versions of songs Ihave on my "Songs From Another World" CD, and was unhappy that only that CDis available in the United States (yes, I could import, and I've been thinkingof getting an account on www.amazon.de to get European musicand books that don't make it over here..). Anyhow, while browsing their site,I learned that they were actually official remixes, and some of them areactually already present on the second CD (which I have but have ignored)from that 2-cd set. So.. after I got home, I ripped that CD to OGG, andwhile a lot of the songs are remixes of the kind I dislike, some of themare quite good. I think for my tastes, a good remix must not mess with themelody nor change the overall song flow too much. On the off chance, dearreader, that you have the CD, the songs that I like from it are:

• Dr Channard (Funker Vogt Remix)
• Peach (DJ Ram Breath Away Mix)
• Too Emotional (DJ Ram Sensuality Edit)
• Another World (Ephemeral Rage) - different, but well done

In almost all of those though, they have an annoying remix intro which is dull.I'm likely to edit them to chop out the intro so when I put them on mix CDs,I won't need to suffer those parts. New music is always a good thing forcar trips..

So, the trip there was pretty easy, although a general theme of the trip isthat it was ill-planned and kind of lonely. I wasn't able to find anyone toeat dinner with me, so I had Veggie Bento at the former Insomnia site. Iwish there were a Bento place around here.. hmm.. maybe there is. AfterwardsI swung by Aug's place, and tried to visit with people, but they were busywith organizing stuff.. so I wandered around for awhile and eventually went toOutland.. which was pretty dead. I later found out that it's midterms week atOSU, which probably contributed to the poor turnout, but at least one of myfriends, TimW, was there.. we left around 2am to grab some food at HoundDogspizza. He moved away from Columbus too, so there was much reminiscing. Ithen spent the night at my sisters' place.. which felt almost like I was backin my parents place in Brecksville -- they're rooming with other Brecksvillefolk, so their place is all decorated and souped up. I didn't sleep verywell -- it was comfortable, but I had bad dreams (in these times, that's notat all surprising..). After I woke up and hung with them for awhile, I went andhad lunch with Lorie -- we had a lot to catch up on.. she and her life havegone through a lot of changes, and she's getting ready to depart Columbus..seems that everyone is.. None of the people I hoped to hang out with werefree, so I drove around for awhile and eventually decided to go shopping --that's one of the high points of Columbus, especially compared to Pittsburgh..I swung by Computer Success, and was impressed at the variety in machine casesavailable now.. they had their usual mix of cheap generics and other things, andthen visited Micro Centre.. I was very tempted by their very small cases -- Ithink I might ditch the 'normal desktop' idea, but get another non-laptop systemin one of the 'small cube' form factors, hooking it to my TV to play DVDs andother media as well as using it as a download centre (running bittorrent andthe like). I might get a new TV first if I do that. I also was tempted by astandalone DVD recorder that promised to write things from VCR to DVD withouta computer (my VCR is unreliable).. Instead, I got a cheap but nice papershredder. I've always wanted one -- I keep getting credit card offers in themail that are scarily easy to activate, and I don't like just throwing themaway. On the way out of that shopping complex, I was going to stop by thepet shelter where I volunteered back when I lived in Columbus (and where,years earlier, Martha and I got Wally), and donate some money.. butthe place where it was is now just empty space for rent. It left me feelingkind of sad.

I couldn't remember where the Verizon Store was where I originally got myphone, but I passed another one on the way to the Sawmill area, and while allthe signs on the door disagreed on if they were open, there were somepeople there, the present owner of the store as well as some friends. It didn'treally feel very corporate.. and with the rain outside it felt like a tent innature, people just existing there, watching the outdoors and not reallythinking about anything. It was kind of nice. Eventually the guy got off thephone, I asked if he had the means to repair my long-broken phone holster, andhe recognized the make of the phone, went back and brought out a big box ofthings for my phone, and let me scoop out what I wanted. I got a spare batteryand a new holster, for free. Nice. I guess that's the nice thing about havingan old phone -- it's hard to find parts, but when you do, the owners aregenerally keen to get rid of them. I went on to Meijer, but didn't buy anythingthere -- and felt kind of empty for having made the trip. I wonder if I justwanted the comfort of going through the routines of a Meijer trip. I did passa rare sign on the way back -- a green circle, no slash, with a U-turn arrowin the middle, telling me that, unlike Ohio Traffic law generally, a U-turnis ok there. I wish I had had my camera -- it would've been a cool picture.

I hurried back to the campus area -- wanted to make the SFF social. We wentand had chinese food (meaning I had a very small dinner), then went out forpastries, and then went bowling. I had a good time, especially that I gotto interact a bit with a certain someone I like (alas, I'm both distant andthe feelings arn't as reciprocal as I'd like). It really was nice to havesomething like a good social circle again.. and I actually got a good amountof hugs and the kind of affection that friends share while with them..but then I got to thinking about two things.. that I don't have anything likethat here in Pgh, and the people there who were proper couples seemedso happy with each other. It says a lot about my life that I've had so littlephysical or emotional human contact for so long, and having a taste of thatonly reminds me of what I've been missing for so long. The community reallyhas some great people that know how to make other people feel wanted. More onthat later. Anyhow, we went back to the campus area, I got my car, and went toOutland. When I got there, it was quite alive, and I got some dancing in..Unlike before, I didn't actually seem to tire from dancing -- perhaps theweight loss (I'm down to 155 pounds at last check) and occasional exercise(bike rides to/from work, rock climbing, occasional running in the evening)have paid off. I saw a lot of people I haven't seen for a long time -- Jessica's (ex?) boyfriend (but not her), a girl who was trying to hit on meback when I came there regularly, various staff members, MathAdam, Dawon (whowas fairly drunk), Tim (was there again), and eventually Tom, who I went andgrabbed a meal with afterwards. Dancing really was a lot of fun, seeing allthe types of people.. it was interesting seeing the couples who danced --there were some of them who really knew how to show a lot of desire intheir motions.. There's fresh hints that Outland's days are numbered. *sigh*Again though, this connects back to the earlier theme, which makes it a themeof the weekend. Desire between people, and the connections between them. It'sbeen a very long time since I've really felt (desired by/connected to) anyonefor more than fleeting moments. This weekend I saw a lot of desire, of the love,of the sensual kind, and the circle-of-friends type, the last of which Ipartook of. That's part of what I think is the best stuff in life. Havingsome of even the friends-type made me feel like I was living someoneelse's life for a bit. Feeling wanted is just so foreign to my way oflife that it's a happiness that hurt. I could heal from wounds I've had so longthat I've gotten used to them if I had more access to that kind of feeling..So yes, I see what's wrong with my life thanks to a wonderful weekend whenwhat's wrong with my life wasn't as wrong as it normally is.

To finish the story (although the interesting insight I have is done), Ileft Columbus around 5am, drove about halfway home, and determined that Iwasn't awake enough to feel safe in driving the rest of the way, slept ata rest stop from 6 to 8, and then sleepily drove the rest of the way home.It's strange, how sleeping upright in a car leads almost universally toa 'different' sleep. I, na klar, had bad dreams, in this case, dreams ofdriving my car, crashing, and dying, over and over. I had trouble, in thedreams, telling if I was awake, partly because the dreams all started withmy driving from where I was at the rest station. When I finally woke up, Ireally was nervous that I wasn't really awake, and it took awhile to convincemyself to actually start to drive. I slept most of today, and to avoid totallameness, went to Coffee Tree from about 19:3 to 23:45. I met with Dmitry,and talked about digital cameras and the dating scene. He suggested I puta profile up on JDate, a Jewish-focusing dating service. I'm nottoo sure how I'd feel about that -- I'd feel weird, for example, putting aprofile up on a black-dating board, even if I happened to find people withthat ethnicity to be uniquely attractive, as I'm not black. More to the point,I imagine that the reason people use Jewish-centric dating services, asopposed to non-racial ones, is that they're looking to meet other people ofthe same race, so I'd be unlikely to be what said people would be looking for.On the other hand, it really couldn't hurt anything. I'll think about it.

Apparently, one of the techno songs I've been hoping to find is by a groupcalled "Levity", and I imagine the song title is something like"Pre-Millenial Tension", although google is powerless against its obscurity.If any of you know, or live in Columbus and can listen for the song at Outlandand ask for more info from the DJs, drop me an email. This sitehas lots of neat data, and is ambitious in what it tries to do with itsinterface (although to view it, I had to disable all kinds of security thingsin my browser)..

Finally, Mass has approved of gay marrage (sic). This is a good dayfor everyone, when conservativism takes another blow.I have other things to blog about, but they'll have to wait --my sleep patterns are presently really messed up.

I had to end it with Debb yesterday.
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I guess this means that I'm going to Martha's wedding in two weeks.Jason's flying in from the west coast, and everyone else is returning toOhio. It's going to be fun. I might also go to Cowtown next weekend -- Ineed to be with friends. Speaking of which, I went to the tree last night withDmitry, and we're likely to be loaning each other a lot of books -- similarinterests, and moderately similar collections.

To make Matlab work on my laptop, I had to install FlexLM, a really irritatinglicense mangler. This makes me unhappy. Speaking of irritants, Miguel, one ofthe open-source people who're known by a single-word Monicker, hasmore clueless and evil commentary. He thinks that theLinux community need not worry, because the rest of the world will forcethe U.S. to go to weaker patents and to use Linux everywhere. He seems tobe unaware that the U.S. is pushing the rest of the world to adopt itsstronger patents *sigh*, and that the U.S. never gave a damn about the restof the world. There's almost no metric system use here, American TVs andcellphones work differently than the rest of the world, and most Americanspathetically never even leave their home state. Of course, Miguel is notoriousfor his pessimism as well, in that he thinks .NET will be big, and is pushinghis open-source implementation of it, Mono, as hard as he can, having writtensome big and useful software in Csharp. I don't know many geeks who likewhat he's done -- it may make sense for businesses, offering them a migrationpath away from Windows, but Csharp really doesn't offer anything Java doesn't,it's in fact less useful, and Miguel's a little bit too enthusiastic aboutit (OTOH, having met Miguel, he seems enthusiastic about almost everything).Moving on to other people with a different view on things, I came acrossthis gem on Amazon.com, as part of a review of David Horowitz's autobiography,and as a time-honoured internet tradition, I shall make fun of it.. well,actually I won't -- it's too obvious. Just make sure you note the qualityof the homeschooling she can give her kids with such poor grammar, and na klarthe traditional threat of the truly backward, that they're going to outbreedeveryone else in a few generations.. Here:

It's priceless...

Oh, another thought -- remember how U.S. 'peacekeepers' are not to be subjectto international courts, because there was fear that said peacekeepers would beprosecuted due to political reasons? Well, this Iraq prison scandal is theperfect reason why they should be subject to said courts. They're facing acourt martial, and then will likely be discharged and go home. They belong inprison for life, no chance of parole. And, some quick to doublethinkfolks are quick to come up with excuses for the people who did the abuses.."Just following orders""Just a scapegoat""Wrong place in wrong time""I don't believe my sister did what was in those photos""merely posing"No! Being in the military doesn't excuse one from what one does, neither doesany such situation. As a moral agent, one is responsible for one's actions tothe degree that one is aware of them. Asked to do something you won't do?Resign, or tell them you won't do it. Responsibility to one's self is a highercalling, always, than to obey one's "superiors". And, of course, if someone youcare about deeply does something you dislike, don't deny it, learn to deal withit.

The U.S. is looking to spread its aggression to Cuba now.I've increasingly come to the conclusion, based on some readings of the historyof U.S. intervention (spurred but not based on a recent Adbusters article), thatalmost all U.S. interventions in other countries' affairs have been the resultof business lobbying to fight nationalization of factories and the like, andin fact the battle against communism has never been anything but profitprotection, having nothing to do with human dignity. Of course, the fact remainsthat we do have more human dignity in capitalistic systems, but mixed marketsprovide the same thing, perhaps more dignity than either communism as tried andthe relatively raw capitalism in the United States. The U.S. has oftenappointed as leaders of other nations thugs that are far more brutal thansocialist elected leaders... American foreign policy was and is disgusting.Wars, if/when they are fought, should be fought for the betterment of humanity,not fatter pockets.

Occasionally people break ranks in a surprising way..

Russia suffered a big setback recently -- the regional leader was killed andseveral other Russian figures were injured in a car bomb attack. I wonderif Russia will manage to hang on to Chechnya..

Let's end with some humour, and a comic.

Debb and I are so happy together. It's a real change of pace for me, butI'm actually constantly happy. It's like a piano that for most of its lifehas been out of tune with occasional tunings every 10 years just got aninvention plugged into it that automatically maintains its tune perfectly.I feel whole.

Last night, I had two dreams relating to music... the first (well, I don'tremember the actual ordering of the dreams) placed me back in elementaryschool, and we were in music class, asked to sing national anthems. I remembermaking fun of one of them, and the teacher looked at me strictly, and I didfeel like I had pushed things a bit too far... that feeling was odd -- I haven'tfelt it in years.. the actual obedience to authority in a person. If my memoryis correct, the mindset of a kid in school really is very different thansomeone in my position. Anyhow, I sung along to some of the national anthemsI liked (in the foreign languages, when I knew them), and the teacher, for somereason, made it a point to sing a bit louder and more near me when I wassinging. I wonder if it was to keep an eye on me or something. The second placedme and some friends in a park, and I was annoying one of them by singing thesong "Memory" in as low a key as I could.

Yuck!

I had to touch MySQL again today... and am again frustrated at brain-damagein its configuration tools. mysql_fixpermission in particular is badlybroken, and doesn't do what it's advertised to do. Asking some people on IRC,they said not to use it, and gave me the needed syntax to manage the usersin SQL. Fun fun.

Ever want to hear Beowulf in Old English? Look here.

I haven't yet finished reading it, but Paul Graham has what looks to bean interesting examination of the social nature of competing worldviews.It looks like an important and enlightening paper. The points referencingfootnote 5 and 7 give us particularly interesting viewports into human nature.

A Rube Goldberg device? Or a Von Neumann device? In the beginning, I'msure the second seemed like the first, and only long efforts of engineeringhave made it real. The current attempts at Quantum Computing take the ideaback to square one.. almost, although once the fundamentals are in place again,perhaps all the levels of abstraction beyond a certain point will be movable.

And recently, I've been seeing a lot of hammer and glue. Her? She's wonderful,and we're building something really great. It's great to have someoneso intelligent and pretty and cool in my life. And yet, slightly over a weekfrom finding the person of my dreams, a bad thing happened relating to myfamily, an invisible crack in a foundation revealed itself, and tainted memoriesand relations spill out. I'm trying to keep out of it until the dust settles,but it's really ugly.

Things are going really well otherwise -- I'm in love, and I'm happy there.I feel like my grinch heart is growing three sizes, under the hair-drier ofromance. I stopped by the bike shop, and although they ordered the wrong part(again) to repair it, I asked them about possible upgrades, and they actuallyhave the parts to put better brakes/gears on it, for $20 more than I was quotedto just repair it as it was, meaning it'll be done tonight. I'll have the nicercombined gear-shifter/brake thing that I've tried when borrowing bikes frompeople when visiting other places.

Wikipedia recently had hardware problems,and put up a letter asking for $20k in donations to replace/upgrade theirservers. I was going to plug them, but within 3 days, they had almost $30k.Wikipedia is so much a case story of the open-source community's triumphs overclosed/commercial areas of society that people care enough to donate, oftengiving much more than they would to buy a fancier (although with less content)encyclopedia like MS Encarta. There's value in my ability to point anyone Imeet at Wikipedia articles, without their needing to spend money to get accessto something on a CDROM. It's beautiful.

First, some Klingon TurkeysI am indeed happy to be in love with someone wonderful, and what was lostis found..

Last night, we watched The Believer, a fascinating film,very loosely based off of a true story, of an ex-Yeshiva-boy who, after a badclassroom argument, ends up leaving it, later to become a Neo-Nazi. The filmmakes a lot of interesting arguments about all sorts of cultures, and wasincredibly good.

For when you need your data REALLY secure... well,maybe that's a bit overboard -- if your company isn't still around, what goodis it?Is nothing sacred?I like this too.

Anyhow, it's time for a quiet evening of food and maybe some reading.I wish Coffee Tree were open.

I recently was digging through some old photos on my computer, and noticedsomething interesting about JPEG compression -- while loading a jpeg in myimage viewer, it starts out with fuzzy patterns that fade as more detailscome in.. but if you work on holding the fuzziness in your mind, you canstill see them as distortions in the original picture. I guess what'shappening, in a sense, is that the distortions, done sufficiently finely,define the picture, and the 'first shot' patterns would only truly fade ifa fully raster version of the graphic were there... I know my use of the termis somewhat unorthodox, but in some ways, vector graphics and compressionare related divergencies from raster graphics, with scalability being aninteresting twist. My brain is currently thinking about differences inscaling the display of a vector graphic and doing interpolation when scalinga raster graphic. I love that kind of thought -- when the 'out there' theorypart of the brain is chewing on a concrete topic.

Turns within turns. Life occasionally presents a pleasant surprise. As ofyesterday, something changed, and although it might take some mentalrepositioning, I think I have a good chance at having/sharing a kind ofhappiness I haven't had for some time. I'll write more when I'm comfortable.w00t!

A collective blog to look at

H-bomb info the government sued to keep quietActually, there's a lot of discussion, both within the issue ofprogressive this is and outside, regarding if it's a good thing thiswas published. As per the usual, I side with the free-speechers on this one,but it does seem to be an an exceptional case where I'm not as far fromhaving no position as I normally am. It's not that I'm interested inpreserving American hegemony, but this does seem, at least on the surface,to be like the Anarchist's Cookbook, a book I remember floating around thebulletin board scene 8+ years ago with detailed recipes for making pipebombs and the like. Sure, I probably have a copy stashed away somewhere, butdespite my concerns for free speech, I realize that people could cause a lotof trouble with it... like this.

A reflection -- you notice in my philosophy that I talk a lot about mypositions, my concerns, etc. I think this is due to the shift of perspectivefrom absolutism to value-based -- relativism mandates that we at leastacknowledge that our values are personal, and so we have to give up at leastthinking about them as absolutes. Thus, saying 'it is better' become'I/we value X more', or similar, and disagreements about the moral natureof things become realizations that people don't hold the same values. Itmakes sense, although it does often make natural a manner of philosophicalspeaking that seems .. wordy.

Apparently, Google has money for unusual toys.I've never actually tried one of those toilets that does water cleaning of the..body areas .. used after toilet use. If I had a chance, I probably would once,but it does seem strange to me. For $1200/toilet, I hope they really likethem, and that they don't break often..

A former netscape executive decided to donate about $4000 for the porting ofMozilla to the Amiga. I really am of mixed feelings about this -- that moneycould certainly have better spent, I think, but it is good to see the communityproviding in new areas. Perhaps the Amoeboids will join/support ourcommunity if they get hooked on our software.. at this point, they havelittle hope for any commercial friends :)

Some cellhpones will keep tabs on you.Apparently parents and bosses are using their provided cellphones to know wheretheir employees are. On the first point, I imagine there's a continualplayful battle between parents and kids on liberties, where the kids are,and what they're doing.. it might worry that that battle's limits arebeing shifted by new technology -- kids used to play with slingshots andskip school for a variety of reasons, from what I read (and hear from adults)..all sorts of adventures.. they learned not to get caught, and eventuallycaution, on their own. That seems like a good thing...

Buy.com is spamming me a lot... I might've bought something from them at onepoint, I don't remember for sure. Now I'm thinking of killfiling them.I wish businesses wouldn't do that kind of thing.

Here's a parody of a popular TV show.

A bit more on the French religion issue..

I've been chewing a bit on Sharon's recent statements and plans regarding whatto do if the current peace efforts fail. On the face of it, the continuationof the wall-building seems like a bad thing, and the unilateralism seemsproblematic, but it is possible that a long-term peace might be achievable,and while he doesn't present a plan that's anywhere close to being an idealarrangement, it's possible that it might succeed where other plans havefailed at achieving peace of sorts. I'm not really sure what to think aboutit yet. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. The liberal peace plan, whilenot proposed by anyone who can actually do anything, seems like it might bea good way for things to work out. The current efforts might also be fruitful --the current Palestinian leadership is perhaps more inclined to peace thanthings have been for awhile. A single, unified state sounds best, but so far itseems that option isn't being floated by anyone with any power.

Meanwhile, the situation in Taiwan continues to heat up.I wish coverage were better on it...

Ahh, love, music, politics, science... I guess that's what life reducesdown to, perhaps... (grin)

The president of South Korea is holding a referendum on his own replacement,indicating that if the voters tell him to, he's out. Interesting tactic --if he wins, he'll come out the stronger, and has a chance to change hispower base and goals (depending on how it works out). If he fails, he'lllook really silly.. but that's always part of politics. A thought -- howdoes the South Korean situation compare to the Taiwanese one?

Some studies on the psychology of rejection. In particular, theneed for intent to be inferred is fascinating, and ties into evolutionarybiology, an interesting field. On a similar note, had still another onlineconversation with a theist who felt the need to try out the latest lines heheard about how to argue with atheists on me. After a bit, he stormed off.Sorry dude -- your canned lines arn't impressive.

I recently found another hilariously bizarre thing online... *drumroll*How about ....The Red Army Choir sings "Down Under"Understand that I had to go through some hoops to get this out of theirritating format it was in and make it available for you. If you can'tplay ogg files, too bad :) Upgrade your sound program or something.

I lost my credit card, so I cancelled it and sent for a new one. Oh well,at least, for now, I have a moderate amount of money in the bank, so mydebit card will work.

Finally, as the topic, and last night's funky journal entry providescontext to, I've decided to light a symbolic bridge on fire, so I won'tbe burned trying to cross it later. There's still a chance that I mightlose, and a much slimmer chance that I might win, but more important isthat I get all of myself on the same page. I'm sure, reader, that you'veoccasionally had some pretty strong opinions on something that reallyshove you around in multiple directions. There's only so much turbulencethat one can take.. so sometimes it really can help, even if it appearsfoolish from the outside, to box oneself into one choice. It's possibleto undo any decision, should one prove to have been rash or irrational,but a temporary finality, as it were, can make life easier. :)

I was thinking about writing my counterargument to this out, but I have too manyother things to do (homework, studying, gah!).

And so you withdraw, pulling back, letting the game take its own shape in yourabsense. It's the only fair thing, you say, and you wash your hands of it, thedrips from your flailing limbs forming the smiles on improvrished children, ofnew civilizations. Meanwhile, the plant, the central focus of the old worldbegins to rot, its carcass falling over, crying for its lost parent, even asit dwindles, its edges blur, and the earth reclaims it. You sigh -- you lovedit, and it's hard to let go of a way of life, bot today's icons make tomorrow'slumber, and thursday's garden soil. The plants, they're always there, watchingus, judging us. An eternal judge? No, judges are as finite as possible. Onlythosee that really live can understand what life means. You want to touchinfinity, I want to touch finity, the briefest life. The old is not sacred,and even the most aged creatures still take breaths, still have that vitalityto postpone things another day.

I cannot see the edge of the lake -- you spoke the words, and the mist in yourbreath has made for me a fog. The words, they imprison us with the softestmanacles. In an age where technology drives for harder, more complex locksand timepieces, you've found the sundials and the stars, where we strive tospeak louder and more rapidly, you learn a new economy of words. Funny, thatword economy there, how it dances its meanings above and below. You can'tstand there with a candy cane, and claim to be mother nature. Death is somethingwe try so hard to understand, but always there's some doubt, some disbelief.iYou don't know if the new concepts are ready to be applied yet, but I tellyou, now's the time, if ever. And so another song enters the world, a cry ofpain and misery, and a programmed peace.

Anyhow, I'm pissed at myself. Crushes suck -- I keep making a fool of myself,on reflection, to people I have a crush on. Sooner or later, it's going tobite me pretty hard, I think.

How many astronomers does it take to find mars?Tonight, I found out. All of them. 2 hours. It turnedout that Flagstaff Hill was facing the wrong direction,and so we needed to wait for mars to rise. It did, andI joined someone from work in waiting in the long lines forthe two nice telescopes that were there. During that time,a really cute, athletic, smart girl was flirting with me. She actuallylooked a bit like Debb, but not quite enough so that it would'vebeen confusing. Of course I, being shy, was intimidated, and soI came across as cold. Oh well. Mars was kind of neat, but the telescopeswern't really powerful enough to get a good view. They were rather impressivethough.

Ugh, I really should get to bed, but blogging is a habit.

Holy foo?!!!I just tried something really off the wall, and was surprised with resultsthat are even more off-the-wall. Let's just say .. that shouldn't'veworked, and the fact that it did .. and that it meant what I thought itmeant, .. well.. that's just really fricking surprising. Hell, I'm stillsurprised that I even tried, much less...Anyhow, sorry, I'm not going to tell you any more about that.

Anyhow, yeah, it's time for *drumroll* the news on Pat's fairlynonexistant love life. Hehe.. it's not that bad, and I'm not bummedabout it too much. There was someone who I really would've liked tohave dated, but I realized that it wouldn't work out, and so that'sthat. There's someone I have a huge crush on that I see semiregularly,but I get the feeling she's not really looking for love right now inher life, or something. Although I think she's really smart, and prettyand that I could make her happy, I'm cool with what she wants. There'retwo really interesting people I've met online that might eventuallybecome dates, or friends. It's always hardest to make that next stepbeyond electronics in meeting people, but they do both seem to bereally cool people. One of them indicates they like massages. Huzzah!And.. then there's a little bit of unwanted attention from somepeople. I feel kinda bad for getting grumpy about it -- the thing thatdecides if its unwanted really is just if I find them attractive/interesting/etc,not the way they act. And, of course, this is all kind of odd for me..maybe it's the haircut, and the mild tan, and the somewhat more in-shapeness,but I've never really had people do much in the way of hitting on me before.So, yeah, that's my love life. Exciting, huh?

Classes continue to rock. Pre-heliocentric physics/astronomy, currentlya topic in my Philosophy of Science class, is something I might decide toread up on a bit.

Anyhow, no doubt I have things to talk about, but my brain doesn't workwhen I'm this sleepy.So, over to you, Cuba

Oh, yes, final note... I played with my laptop today and, courtesy ofxmodmap, xev, and windowmaker, bound some of the wacky custom dell keysso they did appropriate things on Linux. The volume keys all work now...The CD controls don't yet, but I might do that tomorrow. For those of youinterested, I'll probably post my .xmodmaprc.. Finally, I mapped the caps lock key into being another control key, andthe menu key to switch to the next workspace. Yay. I might do that forall my desktops too, although none of them have windows keys. At work andat home, I just use my model M's. Speaking of which... I might swing bycolumbus some weekend, go to all the computer stores I love and get somesupplies (maybe more used model M's), go to outland, and maybe stop byIndian Oven. It might be fun to do it in a night and not even stay anywhere.I could leave Pgh at 16:, be there by 19:, do Micro Center, then Indian Oven..and by then it'd probably be 20:.. I could take a quick walk or jog around campus,or maybe visit with one of my friends there, and then at 23:30, I could get alldressed and go to Outland. Hmm. Except, I no longer have any clothes thatare appropriate for Punk/Goth places. I guess I could probably find somethingthat's marginally ok. Hopefully. Anyhow, at 03, I could leave as usual, andhead straight home, and I'd be back in Pgh by 06, in time to snooze most ofsaturday away and then make my normal evening run to Coffee Tree. Sounds likea fun Fri/Sat thing to do sometime.

Zzzz

Let's get the title reference, which is obligatory, out of the way..Hmm. It really doesn't make sense, but that's standard faire..As APM was starting to become common on desktops, there were all sortsof weird features that were being added to systems that were power-related,from scheduled wakeups and sleeps to automatic power-back-on after powerloss and restoration. One of the more bizarre versions of this was a featurewhereby an onboard modem, when recieving an incoming call, would cause thesystem to come back from suspend. In theory, this would be useful, buteven a well-engineered system is going to take at least 6 seconds, at best,to come back from suspend, and often it's more like 20-30 seconds. Chancesare that the calling modem wouldn't still be calling by then. Maybe there's somebizarre use for this, but if there is, I don't get it.. Anyhow, now that itlooks like ACPI has replaced APM on most modern systems, I wonder if there's anew set of strange features... I do wonder what ACPI does that APM didn't..

So, on saturday, I went with R to the surplus store .. well, we tried, butthere was some kind of sporting thing that made parking impossible, so wewent to the McKnight area and walked around a mall instead. I don't thinkDebb and I had ever gone to this one -- there's a slummy mall in the area,but we somehow avoided the nice one (During those times, I became acquaintedwith almost all the malls and bookstores in the area). R got some clothes(there were some really good sales going on).. and I got the latest CDs fromBad Religion and Radiohead, as well as Pratchett's Pied Piper paperback.I haven't started on the latter, but the first two are good buys... I feel kindof silly buying into Bad Religion being so cliche for atheist/agnostic folks,but I really do like their music, and heck, I like Joseph and other religiouslythemed music too, so I think I can lay to rest any internal doubts that I justlike listening to music that agrees with my worldview. Anyhow, naturally, Iripped it right after I got home, and ogg'd it, and as we speak, the last bitsof the oggs are riding ssh onto my workstation here at work... I was mentioningto R that, had I not heard one of the Bad Religion songs as an MP3 beforehand,I probably wouldn't've bought the CD...

Later that evening, I had a date, with another R. I guess, for now, I'll attemptto just use pronouns. It seems I know a lot of R's though. Perhaps it's somekind of temporary rule in my life that all interesting people have namesstarting with R. Anyhow, we went out for very late night Indian food, andtalked, and went back to her place, and talked... She's into morris dancing,is moderately geeky, at least somewhat liberal politically, and has a greatsense of humor. She recently moved here from California, to get started on aMBA at CMU. Anyhow, we talked until it was very late and I was sleepy, andI don't remember (!!) all of the conversation. I do remember that she endedup reading from a humor book at one point.. and I had some good laugh out loudtimes.. I think I don't laugh enough in my life. So, everything was good.Two things we didn't talk about much were politics and religion, the two thingsthat are likely to be the hardest, thorniest things in my relationship withanyone. Well, actually, we did talk a bit about politics... If we have anotherdate, which would be a lot of fun, we probably will need to talk more aboutsuch things, as it really wouldn't be fair to either of us if we were to getattached but end up being fundamentally incompatible. But I think I worry toomuch. For some reason, I have an Italian lady in my head (which is odd, sinceneither this R nor anyone in my family is Italian) scolding me in a funny way,saying "Look what you've done, turning something fun into something to worryabout!". Heh.

So, I made it home, and the next day, I really didn't do very much at all.I cleaned my place a bit, and handled other errands. Then, very late at night,I got hungry and so I IM'd Jeremy, and we met up with R (the original R)at her place to go eat.. but first, we hung out at her place for awhile andsaw some really weird cartoon called "Hunger Force" or something like that.It struck me that one of the characters was actually something I had seen asone of my friends' IM icon -- a bucket of fries that could shoot lasers out ofits eyes. It was strange, and kind of amusing. Then... EatNPark... unfortunately, I was so sleepy for that that I remember almost nothing. See apattern here?

According to some spam, well, see for yourself:1061213541: 301 lines from "The Magazine Rack" <TheMagazineRack@stop-the-presses.com>Subject: Martha's back and she's bringing cookiesHmm.

Anyhow, this week, I need to get books, force myself to get back into theschool mindset, and perhaps get back into the habit of using the CMU gymbefore work. My laptop is now in the hands of FedEx, and hopefully willarrive at my office soon. I'll need to name it soon.

I've been thinking about something someone mentioned some time ago in aconversation about diabetes... They mentioned that there's an 'opposite'problem than diabetes, where the body produces insulin too rapidly aftergetting food, and so people get almost no sugar rush, and get very tired aftereating. That really seems to describe me well -- I'm always at my best whenI haven't eaten for a long time, at least until I get a hunger headache.Maybe the next time I have my regular checkup with my doctor, I'll ask himabout it. As is now, I'm eating food with less and less sugar to avoid fallingasleep at inopportune times.

Finally, in case you haven't read it, this might be interesting.It's part of Kucinich's campaign for the presidency. Interesting.