Perette

There are more important things than me.
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Perette's journal: 2007

Contents

1. More on information overload

2007-01-16 17:26 (Tuesday) journal

        Becker's work was based on the simple observation that
        consuming takes time.  As people get richer, and own
        more and more consumer goods, there is less and less
        time to spend with each of them.  Unavoidably, use of
        the Walkman, the VCR, the camcorder, and concert tickets
        gets crammed into the space once occupied by the lone
        record player.
The Overworked American, Juliet B. Schor, p. 23; Schorr is talking about the views of economists Gary Becker and Staffan Linder.

This represents a piece of what's going on with information, too -- especially the alternative realities of TV series. The more we time we spend following the lives of all the characters of Buffy, Veronica Mars, House, Doctor Who (to name a few), the less time we have for ourselves. We become obsessed with knowing the whole story, which is encouraged by increasingly complex writing with season-long story arcs (or, in the case of Babylon 5, 5-year long story arcs).

In simple series like Star Trek or The Simpsons, the start-point and end-point of every episode is the same. Whatever things happen along the way, things are Back To Normal in the end. This is no longer: while episodes often have a self-contained plot, characters change and develop. This ropes us in, providing us artificial friendships, and requires we watch regularly to fully understand the growth of Our Heroes.

I think this is related to our distorted sense of what's important. We worship celebrities like Gods, but: Who is more important, Nicole Kidman or the EMT who just saved someone's life? Who has more impact on my life, Morgan Freeman or the architect who designed the new signature Troup Howell Bridge that I travel over regularly, that defines the city I live in? But whose name do I know?

I've been thinking about entropy and how everything requires a force (some source of energy) and "direction". I can't find quite the right word, but something to guide how the force takes effect. Without the guide, it happens randomly and nothing is achieved. I was thinking that I'm like that: if I don't actively choose and push myself in a direction, then I do what's easy and don't grow, although I might change somewhat over time. While I don't control my life (I can't make a job offer happen), I guide the process that interacts with the world around me to make job offer appear. Subtle difference though, maybe academic.

2. 2007-01-19 17:59 (Friday) journal

I got a new curb vacuum the other day to replace my old one, which has a crack in the vacuum housing that lets dust through the motor and it's one its last leg. I scavenged the cord and some other parts from it to make the "new" one run, and it seems to be okay, although the belt runs hot since I put in one I had around that I think is the wrong size. Anyhow, I put the old vacuum on the curb, and a few hours it was gone -- but an aging pushbroom was left in its place. I thought that was funny touch.

Being completely insane, I decided to try to fix my kitchen floor which was made of stick-down vinyl flooring which has been falling apart pretty much since the day I moved in. I started putting down laminate flooring, although given the inexpensive cost of real hardwood I must say I was tempted -- but, I have questions about how hardwood would survive in a kitchen, and this was somewhat cheaper. So far, it's about 1/3 of the way done.

In RKS, a spot on the board opened up when someone took a leave of absense, and I was asked to fill in. I've agreed, and I've also inherited being head of the space committee. I was already some some stuff along those lines, so this is okay.

3. Winter, sunlight, and a case study of information overload and p0rn

2007-01-29 20:54 (Monday) journal

happy Mood: happy

Despite not hating winter -- I more just prefer summer, autumn, and spring -- winter can be harsh on me. To get through the winter, I look forward to key days: December 8, when the sunsets start happening later in the day; Samhain, the winter solstice on December 21, marks the days starting to grow longer; and January 4, when morning finally catches up and the sunrises finally start happening earlier. In the stars, meanwhile, Orion -- an omen of the oncoming winter when I'm up late enough some late summer or early autumn evening, and he's riding the sky -- is now high in the sky, maybe even a little toward the west, while it's still early in the evening.

The late part of January is the coldest part of winter, typically, and the Pagan calendar celebrates Imbolc or Oimelc on February 2, marking when the chill will begin to recede and give way to spring and summer. Round about then, there will be a day where the sun is shining, and it's brutally cold -- but despite the cold one can feel the difference in temperature between the sunlight and shadows, and feel the warmth of the sunlight direct on the skin. This year, that day was today.

As I think about the day growing longer, I don't think about the day being extended at the edges. I imagine a few minutes inserted at midday, with the existing time pushed out to accomodate the new. So each day, the new minutes aren't just the dim light from a sun on the horizon, they're vibrant new minutes, the strongest light of each new day.

pensive Mood: pensive

I've also been thinking about sensory/information overload. Thinking back, the first sign of it in my life was probably alt.sex: when RIT joined the USENET backbone in the late 80s, I started grabbing stories. I'd check periodically, and stash all the new stories, tar & compress them, then download them. Before long, I had a collection of stories that was far larger than I could ever sort through, and the collection is pretty much in that state to this day. But, there was no cost to collecting them -- so I did. And they're just ASCII files, so there's no cost to keeping them -- so I do. Yet... the lion's share are still haphazardly stored, unorganized, so I don't even know what's there.

There's been several interesting effects, though:

Occasionally if I'm feeling frisky, and want to read something unusual, I take a gander through some of the unsorted stories. But often, because it's so disorganized, it's easier to find something new & applicable to my interest by doing a quick internet search.

My standards for erotic stories has been raised. Typos, haphazard paragraphing (typical of old USENET stuff), weird character encoding (I think a result of AOL and Prodigy) bug me, and I like them fixed -- and I used to do so. These days, though, problematic stories get a quick scan and unless they're exceptional, they just get thrown in the trash.

Stories also have to be more particularly tuned to my interests. Characters have to not just be participating in whatever sex/fetish I'm randy about -- well, sometimes that's enough -- but more and more, I want to identify with the character's emotions, non-sexual activities. Even just that I want the non-sexual interests to round out the characters says something.

Some of this is just that I appreciate good writing more as I age -- but sometimes I wonder if there is a focusing of interest, similar to what I've seen with AB people I dealt with when I was a pro-domme.

And then there's sex. I certainly have some level of sex drive, and I'm involved in RKS and having fun with all the stuff there. I'm finding that I enjoy the sensual, the erotic; I like intimacy and snuggling/cuddling. Gradually, though, I'm losing my interest in sex: I'd rather just masturbate. Which, given that I've got this 3-year vanilla relationship with Dave creates a question of what to do about it? He's sweet, I care about him, and I know he cares for me. But as I'm increasingly moving toward `I don't want to have sex', how do I deal with this?

I do have sex drive though... it just seems to be focused on women. And there, I'm so intimidated; a bit trans-related fear of incompetence or inadequacy (which I know is stupid, but sell the horses).

amazed Mood: amazed

I went to Spin Caffe last week, and when I walked in the music was playing this funk rendition of the 20001 theme that I vaguely remember from childhood. I asked a discophile friend about it, and he identified it as Also Sprach Zarathrusta, arranged and performed by Eumir Deodato in 1972. What a piece of my childhood! Hearing it again, listening to it end-to-end... It's deja vue; I would have been very young when it was popular. But I remember it being amazing, and it still holds up. It's sort of like the Pinball Number Count, being an important part of my musical upbringing, except it wasn't drilled into my head by Sesame Street like the Pointer Sisters' "One two three four five, six seven eight nine ten, eleven-twelve". It's wonderful to hear music again.

4. Fracking roof

2007-02-12 16:57 (Monday) journal

annoyed Mood: annoyed

So the latest excitement with home ownership is that my roof has (again) formed a massive ice dam on the north side, and is forcing water up the vent and down the wall. This the same vent which is supposed to prevent the ice dams, according to the roofing company, by allowing ventilation to ensure a consistent temperature along the whole surface of the roof. It last did this in 2003, just after the house was re-roofed; there was no evidence of it having done it in (at least) many years before the new roof. I don't know whether they screwed something up in installation, or just applied new technology inappropriately to an older house; either way, I'm going to be having them come out to look at fixing it right once the ice melts.

If they refuse, I'll be first going to the BBB and, failing that, I'm going to look into small claims court. This isn't acceptable. At this point, I'd either like the vent replaced with an under-eve vent (which is more work to install, but probably the proper solution) or tearing out the vent and replacing the fascia board. The venting is supposed to extend the life of the roof, but if it's going to do $1,800 of damage to my house every 2 years then I'll prefer to replace the roof a few years sooner.

On the good side, it did it this year before I painted the north face of the house, so the exterior painting becomes part of something that was going to be done already. So far, this time, there is no interior damage, but the extent of damage won't be apparent until we hit a warm spell and it all starts melting.

In the mean time, to try to mitigate the damage, I'm installing a warming cable. The software-controlled sump pump in my basement already knows about outside temperatures so it can respond to melting snow, so I added some code to handle the ice melting cord. When the temperature approaches freezing, the heater turns on to help promote ice melting and gutter drainage. I have a feeling it will do very limited good, but I can hope.

5. Hibernate

2007-02-23 17:09 (Friday) journal

crushed Mood: crushed

I've been brushing up on new technologies to open up more software opportunities for me. I started yesterday looking at JUnit 4, which involved a big change versus earlier versions. Some of the documentation is not updated, so it explains old ways of doing things -- which don't work anymore. It's a freaking nightmare to try to figure out.

The one thing that eventually came through clearly is that Xcode, the developer's package on the Mac, doesn't support JUnit well despite Apple's claims. I switched to Eclipse, which is an amazing IDE... with a lot of complexity and a huge learning curve. This did help with JUnit 4 progressing; JUnit 4 isn't terribly different in function or use but is somewhat different in syntax.

So today, I decided I'd start looking at Hibernate -- my goal being to take a project I did for Java class and replace the database interface with Hibernate, then add unit testing with JUnit 4. I've been bashing at this all day, and I just can't get it to work. Hibernate keeps complaining it can't find things, so added everything I could find to the classpath but I still get error messages and things just don't work. And I just want to cry, because I *want* to learn, but there's *so* much. I'd like to take this on a nibble at a time, but technology is resistant to that... I can't play catch-up, I have to come forward to the bleeding edge and confront all the new stuff at once, without the opportunity to absorb it a piece at a time. God damn it's frustrating.

6. Whoo!

2007-02-26 15:33 (Monday) journal

I finally got my first Hibernate transaction to work. I'm in the new millenium!

7. 2007-03-01 15:41 (Thursday) journal

Now that I've finished the 3 books (Data Smog, Overworked American, and Overspent American) I've been thinking about where all that leads me. I think they provide me with more information on what has gone wrong, and why, but I'm not sure there's a clear solution. Maybe I should start by stating the objective.

Objective: To fulfill my life. At present, I think this means:

- Having a close set of friends that I trust, and with whom I share my life.
- Having time to explore my interests.
- Having fun.
- Doing some things to help others... donating some time.

I think one of my problems is that I have many interests, and so I don't devote myself to any particular one. I like cycling, orienteering, science fiction, sunning, coding, massage, kink, hiking, ... So many things, that I know a lot of people from a lot of different circles in passing, but I don't get to know many that closely. The person who only goes to the Rochester Bicycling Club, or only does the Orienteering Club, or only goes to Lilly Valley (the nudist club), eventually builds a circle of friends who share that same common interest.

The one interest I that would mostly fill this hole is kink, but even there I attend events but don't become close to many people.

And one of the AA things one of my friends talk about, is to stop looking without and look within... And, it's true I'm sort of anti-social. I don't know how to interact with new people, so after greeting them I'm dependent on them for moving beyond "hello". If they don't try, there is no chance of me making a friend.

And the problem there is that I don't think anything is interesting. There's nothing to talk about, because what have I done that's worth talking about? Some software project? Some books I read? Some thoughts I have? Some stupid TV series I saw? None of it, in my opinion.

8. I hate open source software

2007-03-02 16:09 (Friday) journal

frustrated Mood: frustrated

The idea of open-source software is great. You write something, you share it, other people build on it and make it better, and the world is good.

The reality is that stuff gets enhanced but documentation not updated, and even when it does the people documenting write for crap; all the projects are inbred worst than a family from Kentucky, so if you want one, you have to install 10; they're always changing at high speed, so as fast as you learn them your knowledge goes out of date, and any books you buy are out of date by the time they're printed; installation almost always require a solid understanding of every other open-source project that anything is built on... Being a coder, that's not good enough. I have to have the skills of a freaking system admin to configure any of this stuff up. Fuckin' hell!

I want to learn Hibernate. Right now, while I'm learning, I don't need to be overrun with Eclipse, ANT, Log4J, the Dom4 libraries, figuring out classpaths, MySQL, MySQL connector for Java... The list just goes on and on. This is insane.

9. Toronto, Nichification, and gaming

2007-03-14 20:42 (Wednesday) journal

Spending a bit of time in Toronto, having shared a ride with Sue and Amanda when they were returning from Palenville. Hanging out tonight at Arcadia, playing Lord of the Rings board game. I'm told that when you know this game well enough, it's fun and flows well. But anytime I've played, it feels like manually tracing 8086 assembly code from paper on an abacus and pencil. I'm sorry, but there are more enjoyable ways to spend my time.

Rachel and Dana made Thai stir fry thing tonight. Yum! Arcadia seems like a good place, with people focused on friendship and caring, a small family.

I went to the poly social on Monday, and thinking about the experience on Tuesday I came to a conclusion: while in Rochester I can find polyamory folk, or kinky folk, or intellectuals, or gamers. In Toronto, I can find intellectual kinky polyamorous folk who like to play games. And the communities I find them tend to have high levels of gender variant people who are socially progressive (or is that just because it's Canada?). Anyhow, I can find one group of friends that overlaps many of my interests. Given that one of my struggles in Rochester is the choice of leaving aspects of me unaddressed in favour of building stronger friendships with those aspects I do address, or forgoing closer relationships in favor of addressing personal various desires, the possibilies presented in Toronto look really sweet.

Making slow progress with Hibernate.

Dealing with RKS, I'm feeling not understood by most of the board. I feel like when I make recommendations or commentaries on things, they find my answers frustrating and think I'm just being a windbag. But, I think there are difficulties we're facing that are complex problems, and I don't think there are simple answers. I'm a little frustrated, concerned; but I've been thinking about it and I need to not back down in frustration or questioning myself. I truly believe my ideas are good, and that they're not seeing the big picture, so I need to stick to my guns and figure out how to help them understand.

10. Progress

2007-03-16 13:48 (Friday) journal

I'm in a mellow-but-happy mood as I ride towards Rochester on Amtrak #64. I'm glad the train is running: I bought a ticket Monday figuring CSX would have Monday's derailment cleaned up by now. No, but they're bussing people between Syracuse and Albany. Maybe they better get cracking on that plan mentioned in the Little Falls Times to asses some of the workers.

Oh, the Lord of the Rings game the other day... It did *finally* pick up the pace and turned into fun. Not nearly as bad as my Munchkin.

Anyhow, I've been spending the ride home hacking on Hibernate, with some success. I managed to hammer out some of my mappings, and can actually pull aggregated records from the database and display them in my unit test.

I also am getting along better with Eclipse. It stopped compiling things for no apparent reason yesterday, so I deleted all the project configuration data for Eclipse and moved the files into a src/bin/lib hierarchy, then pointed Eclipse at it again. Previously things were just imported the way XCode had set them up, but this precise hierarchy is a bit of magical incantation that Eclipse recognizes, and configures some of the build stuff automatically; stuff is now building correctly again and some of the unexplained weirdness is in remission.

11. Orcas LOVE Doggie Style

2007-03-25 23:37 (Sunday) journal

Mood: amused
orca spam

I normally don't see my spam, but on a low-volume day when there's only one it renders as I delete it. And today I saw this. I still don't want their product, but bonus points for originality, comic value, and for working the whole 'fish' motif for me. I wonder about the implications though: is this some slam that your girl is going to go lezzie (fish is slang for lesbian), or is the implication that she'll turn into a Furry-loving ho'. Or flipper-loving ho'? Or are the people that are stupid enough to believe offers in spam clueless enough to believe their girl might go out looking for the biggest orca she can find to do her doggie style, unless they get a bigger member?

So it gets a laugh this time. Unfortunately, I know I won't be laughing by the 50th time I've deleted the same image from my spam bucket. Which should be about next Thursday. *sigh*

12. Sunny weather

2007-03-27 22:26 (Tuesday) journal

The weather has been fantastic the last few days. Pleasant temperatures, a little rainy at times but periods of nice sun, and thunderstorms when it was raining. In the last 3 days, the lawns have greened up noticeably. Today I went to the Boulder Coffee Company in the South Wedge, where I hung out on their back patio and basked in the sun. The patio has a little fire-pit spot, so I may go down there some evening and check out the happenings. It seems like a potentially good hangout.

The RKS board meeting tonight didn't suck, which is encouraging.

13. 2007-03-28 13:28 (Wednesday) journal

happy Mood: happy

It's another gorgeous day here, and I'm enjoying it by sitting out at my picnic table doing work. I'm not sure it's a good thing as far as climate change that I'm doing so in March, but I find it nice that I need to put on sunblock. The breeze is chilly, though, when it goes. I'm making progress on a project for BCC Consulting at a relaxed pace, which I suppose is financially good.

I probably will need to cash out the smallest of my 401(k)s soon, as I'm going to need some money to paint the house and other incidentals. Looking at the last few years' worth of statements, though, I've been doing okay overall even though I've been pretty stable on liquid assets because the investments are going up very steadily. I really need to worry less about doing anything important, about saving; I have doubts about the utility of saving for a future that looks (to me) very unlikely -- I expect something to go wrong before I arrive at "retirement age", and I think I'd do better to make a point of having a good time now while I'm young and healthy. If my investments grow at the rate they've been doing, I'll be okay. And if there is a collapse, we'll all be in the same boat -- when it comes right down to it, all these "savings" are really just numbers in a computer, and if those numbers stop meaning anything...

The RKS Fetish Fashion Show is coming up this weekend, and I actually feel prepared for it. I'm doing sound along with Severian, and this year we made it clear all music was going to be fixed a week ahead of time -- prior years, models always showed up with their custom songs, trashing any plans or organization already made. I arranged the music and cue sheets this weekend, Severian did equipment check yesterday, and I set up his laptop with redundant copies of the music on Sunday so, should things go wrong, we've got a backup ready to go.

14. Perette Barella, Legal Secretary

2007-04-04 18:41 (Wednesday) journal

So I've finished my first week being gainfully employed for 2 days/week (Yeehaw! Not workin' crazy) as a legal secretary. The first half of the first day I had no idea what I was doing, but by the end of the day I kinda knew what I was supposed to be doing. Today I felt like I got some stuff done, and I feel like I'm actually understanding things. Enough so I hope I didn't screw up anything too bad the first day, and enough to detect a few things I almost screwed up today. Like almost sending a bill to the wrong half of a real estate transaction, which I'm sure would have gone off like Canned Ground Chippermunk.

It's odd, the whole thing feels like I'm in a little state machine (the law office) that's part of a distributed system (network of law offices). The protocols are very ornate, with lots of flowery language that provide social grace and cooperation between the different nodes.

So that's there, and bringing in some bacon, so I can continue to afford health insurance and crap like that.

I'm sort of fascinated by my struggle the first few hours, dealing with not understanding what I was doing. Trying to grasp what to do and why it was that way... There was some throwback to being overloaded at HDi, but it feels like it's passed quickly.

Now it's time to rush off to an RKS social, after picking up some equipment for a friend who is doing a presentation at The Society this weekend.

15. 2007-04-12 19:29 (Thursday) journal

happy Mood: happy

I'm mellow at the moment, but happy.

Today's been busy catching up on laundry, a bit of house work, some e-mail, and then working on the Asterisk project for BCC Networks. I felt like I did well at work this week, and continued to improve my grasp on what it is I'm supposed to be doing.

Tuesday night, after an RKS board meeting where we started incorporation, Dave and I rented Secretary, which is both appropos for current events and plenty erotic on its own. Dave even enjoyed it with all the D/s sexual tension. Good sex afterward.

My sex drive in general has been picking up in the last 2 weeks. I'm curious what the reasons are of the many possibilities: the winter duldrums being in remission (and consequently more sun and exercise) change of hormone suppliers (it's supposed to be the same stuff... but my sex drive kicked in just after I got the new batch, which came from a different retailer and manufacturer), new roommate, new job. It's pleasant, too, a submissive side I've felt before but not had anyone to explore with; I've talked about it with Dave, and shown him Secretary, and hoping that he'll be open to trying some stuff out. Kinky me. It'd be great to know why I'm feeling more sexual, so I could make sure it stays that way.

I'm off to do some SciFi with Severian this evening. Friday I may try to hit up with Naturist Rochester. Saturday I'm doing a flogging workshop at RKS, then play-party. Life is busy, but good.

16. Independence

2007-04-15 01:06 (Sunday) journal

pensive Mood: pensive

I'm pretty sure this idea of necessary independence is a bad thing. We're brought up to believe we have to be able to provide for ourselves, able to live on our own, able to live without any assistance from anyone else. It's a goal we're taught on kids: we're supposed to grow up and get our own place.

But then, you have a whole place to yourself. Nobody to share it with. Nobody to share the expenses and maintenance with. Not that finding a good roommate is easy, but still... Having our own car, our own domicile, our own bed, our own furniture, it's a huge waste of resources. For what? We're so intent on having these things for ourselves, that we end up not spending time with others, building friendships, which is what we really should be doing.

I'm also starting to see a dark side of the Internet. It's done some wonderful things: lots of information available, allowed people of obscure interests to forge friendships, been instrumental in bringing out groups like transgender people, BDSM folk, and the like and providing opportunity to organize and share information.

Increasingly, though, I see a downside to this: it's so easy to reply, so fast, that the vocal ones, the squeaky wheels, the ones with the time on their hands, are the ones that are heard. The ones who sit back and consider aren't heard from as often, along with those who have input but are in communication overload so they keep quiet and aren't heard from at all. The old group meeting where people got together for a limited time, and everyone got a more alloted equal time, seems like a solution less prone to these problems.

People are choosing to have internet friends rather than real friends, and so they stay in and chat on-line because it's easier than going out and meeting people in real life. On-line acquaintances as an opportunity to find friends it's difficult to find in real life seems like a good thing, but not if the real life opportunity is going to go away.

sleepy Mood: sleepy

Then there's the games: Second Life, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings On-line. Enter a world being someone that isn't you, filled with hundreds of other people that aren't themselves, and then play together in a pseudo-reality that isn't real, though it would seem some would like it to be. I mean, D&D as something to do with friends, to hang out and role-play at someone's house and have fun with them seems like a good thing. The game is just the glue, the excuse to bring us together, something to help pass the time we have and a framework around socializing. Maybe I'm just getting old (Darn these kids and their World of Warcraft), but it seems like we got wrapped up in the activity and lost track of the point, which was making friends and experiencing those friendships. Once in a while, something to pass the time seems okay. But when the activity starts reducing time with friends, reduces times people will go out and hang with groups of like-minded people, keeps people from going out and making new friends, then it seems like the activity is misguided.

17. Things have gone wrong...

2007-04-22 16:06 (Sunday) journal

Since I'm working in a law office, I'm seeing more about how parts of The System work. It's strange, because there are things that happen like property transfers, which happen pretty much by rote, but there's a huge set of text that goes along with the actual data. If this were a program, I'd write a function and parameterise it. But that can't happen because of the architecture of the system, so everything is repeated anew for every transaction. Well, not exactly anew, but there's a ton of boilerplate that goes with it.

And so, there's this immense amount of stuff that is transacted and since the specialists -- lawyers -- know what all the paperwork says, they only look for the differences in the boilerplate, in the form of cross-outs and custom additions to forms. Which makes it difficult for your non-specialist to do anything with it, in part just out of sheer intimidation.

And some of the things, like restraining orders, separation agreements, foster care orders, etc., are these tomes of paperwork that seem to be an attempt to beat the associated party into submission with text, if just out of sheer innundation. I can see where something like SCO UNIX claims against Linux or the RIAA's claims against various people for music pirating, become essentially unfightable -- it's cheaper and easier to just fork over some money, than attempt to defend yourself.

Anyhow, in the last week two of my techie friends have talked with me about similar experiences with the tech industry -- overwork, constant uncoordinated change, inbred open-source projects leading to distraction for people trying to use projects. It's struck me that I have the beginnings of a piece, The Failings of the Bazaar in my head, named after The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond.

And then there's the shafting of the little guy. It's been said that those with the money (or the power, but money buys power) make the rules. I think that's always been true, to some extent, but it fluctuates over time, and it may affect one class/race/religion more at any given location or point in time. Like after the Civil War the landowners keeping Black folks locked into indentured servitude. I'm concerned, though, that at the present time with huge growth in debt, this is going to create a huge number of essentially indentured servants in the United States. People who will be locked in crappy jobs trying to pay off debts that are unpayable, locked in a cycle of debt.

The changes that the banks have pushed through to change the bankruptcy laws reduce the ability to reboot and start fresh. And the individuals responsible for racking up the debt are partially responsible -- but what about the responsibility of the lenders to lend wisely? At some point, they've got to know this person can't afford any more, but they just keep doling it out. Then, when the person can't pay, the banks put them into default, and crank up the interest to make sure they can't pay it back. Then they offer to reduce the interest rate to one that is not great (it has to be sub-prime because the level of debt is inappropriate for the income level), and which can only be attained with collateral. The house goes on the chopping block.

Meanwhile, the people with money create corporations to create distinct limitations of liability (the corporations go on to make subsidiary corporations to limit theirs), so when something their corporation does goes wrong those in charge don't loose all their holdings, just the chunk delimited by the corporate ownership.

The corporations further have the problem that they are treated as distinct, functioning entities, equivalent to a person. Within them, however, the individuals running them have their respective goals, but all too often nobody is assigned to things that require moral or ethical judgement -- so the corporation behaves psychopathically, looking out for it's own interests only because stockholders demand profit, but nobody is demanding ethics, and so nobody is assigned to this role internally.

Extensive credit is letting people live a lifestyle above their means. Because more people are competing for more higher-priced items, the price of goods is inflated, especially for limited-availability (non-commodity) items like houses. To own these overpriced houses, then, people have to work harder to earn extra money to afford them including those who aren't directly buying outside their means.

Medical prices are crazy, but insurance companies negotiate deals and pay less than I would if I pay doctors directly. Insurance prices are also spiraling out of control. But, if you get really sick, you need to have insurance to pay for the care -- or give up your house paying for it, because you can't get most government subsidies unless you have nothing -- so, you either struggle to pay for insurance, or risk losing everything to a disease when it happens. And if you have the insurance, you're probably still in trouble because you'll be off your feet and income will drop, but there will still be co-pays for doctors and medications and stuff. So you live off credit cards, which you'll get plenty of (see trap described above).

It seems to me that things have gone very, very wrong in America.

18. I made a decision

2007-04-23 22:03 (Monday) journal

I took on a small software project for friend's firm a while back, working with the Asterisk PBX to track and log events that are broadcast over the AMI manager interface. Despite my frustration with the project, I'm glad I've taken it on. Because it makes it clear in my mind that I don't want to do this. At all. Not even 32 hours a week. Not even 24 hours a week. I just don't want to interact with the software industry, and especially not the increasingly pervasive inbred sans-documentation ever-mutating hodge-podge interfaced open-source bullshit.

I mean, when I was doing the stuff with Hibernate, I thought it was just a hurdle to get over. But the problems are systemic, pervasive: it's Sturgeons Law squared; 99% of everything is crap.

If it's a choice between being poor/struggling to make ends meet or doing this shit, then f*ck this.

I'm going to see about finishing this project up if I can, because I committed to it, but enough is enough. There's a reason I burned out, and a reason I've got fears of this stuff... I thought maybe it was just a bad employer, but no. It's the industry.

So I won't be moving to Canada, tempted as I am by all the hot ubergeek babes up there.

19. The problem with communication technology

2007-04-26 08:51 (Thursday) journal

Was talking with Severian recently, and we were talking about cell-phones and e-mail and the destructiveness of improved communications to personal relations. This is probably obvious, but a bit of an epiphany to me:

The appearance of new technology for communication should be good; it's a new tool in the toolbox, and more tools is always good. The inevitable problem, though, is that the new method almost invariably replaces existing communication, and each new technology provides an additional level of abstraction that depersonalizes the communication. (A text message conversation is a replacement for a telephone call, which is a replacement for a face-to-face conversation.) Thus, the new technology doesn't provide new, improved communication -- the communication level stays about the same, but the personalness of it decreases.

20. Escape from Fishie Car! And an OSS essay.

2007-04-30 13:36 (Monday) journal

My fishie car broke the other day, and the driver's door didn't open anymore. It's been getting worse over time, being fussier about being locked and unlocked from both inside and outside, and it finally just locked me out at Wegman's over the weekend. I got her home by climbing in through the passenger's door, a feat complicated by my being dressed in a dress to please Dave, as I was preparing dinner for him and feeling domestic.

Anyhow, today I disassembled the door, a task not made easy by the fact that most of the bolts are on the edge, and you can't get to them until the door is open. After breaking some stuff to get access to shove a fist in the door and release the mechanism, I lubricated everything up and found that, for unclear reasons, the rod for the door handle was now excessively long. I made a precision, careful adjustment of it by twisting it with linesman's pliers until it looked right. It seems to work well, so I put the door back together, though it's now held together somewhat by packing tape and hot-melt wax.

In less mechanical news, I've started reading the 1989 (original) edition of Richard Wurman's Information Anxiety. It's clearly an important reference for Data Smog. It'll be interesting to compare this, which predates mainstream internet, with Data Smog which was released in 1997 during the 'net boom, and the second edition of Anxiety which is in 2001, after net access has had a chance to be around a few years.

One of the problems it's gotten me thinking about, tangent to some of the open source ideas I've been considering, is the issue of excess competing efforts to do similar things.

Before 'net ubiquity, adverts went into the Rochester D&C, the daily newspaper. One source for all job listings. There were a few employment rags and free papers competing, and back in the day there was also the Times Union, the evenign newspaper. But, essentially, one source.

The 'net provides the easy ability to search for jobs throught the country, even the world. But, the cost is that the local jobs aren't centralized anymore. There's hotjobs.com , monster.com, wnyjobs.com, rochesterdandc.com, salon.com, thomsoncareers.com, craigslist.com, and dice.com, in addition to business's own career web sites.. This creates a problem for both employers and employees, who no longer have a single, established forum for this type of transaction.

In additon, before there was no established structure. A perspective formatted their resume and sent it over, and someone read it. Since job listings and perspective employee lists are no longer local, the size has grown; the data became unmanageable and so the sites introduced detailed education/skills recording and matching. No longer could you just paste your resume in, you have to dick around with their UI to paste things in the right fields (their automated parsers sort of work, but not real well). Thus, the 10-minute task of posting a resume on a site before, has turned into an hour-long task of posting a resume now.

It's really an a protocol thing, which is one of the big issues for the OSS community: If we all use open protocols, sharing data is easy. But none of these companies want us to share data, or there'd already be an XML spec for resume data and you could just paste that in and it'd work. But then, what differentiates one of them from another? They're all trying to climb to the top, be the primary job search site so they can make their dollars.

The OSS community could try to solve it with another open-source job site with an XML format, but that'd just make the problem worse until the others accept it. And they have no reason to, until it starts to become a standard; it's a catch-22.

Anyhow, I think there's a parallel with all the languages that have cropped up in the last decade. In the beginning, there was C, BASIC, Pascal, Assembly, and Shell. For 10... maybe 15 years, pick one or two and you were good. Now there's PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Java, C#, to name a few. Most jobs require you know a couple of them to get by. And in addition to the languages, each one has libraries. Which means, the same things need to be implemented over and over again in each language, and you need to know the slightly different calls necessary in each lanugage.

Every language has some assortment of SQL interfaces, and they're not exactly the same..

Java and C# both have Hibernate implementations.

Every language has a string library, no two exactly alike.

Each has an I/O library, and provides different ways for formatting and parsing data.

And so forth. The big advantage of Python is it's cleaner the Perl. Ruby is more c-like than Python. Java and C# are a lot alike, but one is Sun's and one Microsoft's. And at the heart of PHP is just being able to embed it in a <!PHP> tag in HTML source, but why did we need another lanugage, why couldn't we adapt an existing one?

So the two big ideas:

  The software industry needs to figure out how to start adapting existing
  languages to different needs, rather than inventing new languages for
  each need.

  The software industry needs to invent a hyper-standard library, which is
  not just common to all platforms for a specific language, but shared
  by all the languages on all the platforms.

Open source is supposed to provide collaboration. but it's being hampered by the proliferation of languages, all of which can do pretty much the same thing. In the past, I think these things happened in academia, with someone in a university trying out a new language. Most didn't catch on, and only the really good ideas did. Thus, there was limit on the rate at which technologies entered production, and only the best got there. Now, not that any of these languages are bad in and of themselves, but their proliferation is causing a problem. Instead of building on top of each other's work, the idea of open source, we're now forced to play catch-up with the latest technology that's coming out.

21. Kim's comments on my OSS essay

2007-04-30 20:44 (Monday) journal

Kim comments:

Well, how are up-and-coming programmers -- I'm sorry, software systems engineers -- ever going to make names for themselves if they don't design new systems and convince others to use them?

Sounds like I'm being flip, and I am, a little, but there's an important point here. Larry Wall would be an obscure little nobody, slaving away for Hewlett-Packard or something, if he hadn't designed and promoted Perl. You know better than I do that getting a comp-sci degree often if not usually involves designing an operating system or a language or a similar complex entity -- and that's how computer scientists become famous in their fields. Not by making adjustments and improvements in existing systems, but by designing new systems. And promoting them. And getting others to use them. It introduces confusion and a raft of conflicting standards into the field, you say? You're not going to get that message into the head of a new graduate who sees a choice between the glamour of designing new systems and the quiet heroism of making the old systems work.

As much as hyperstandardisation makes rational sense, there are other pressures that drive computer science away from what makes rational sense. For that matter, it would make rational sense if Microsoft fully documented Windows system calls -- but I wouldn't advise swearing off sex until that happens.

I completely agree. In the OSS world, the economy isn't about money, it's about image or cred or respect. While these seem less of a bad goal than money, they're still prone to problems. Particularly when they become a singular goal, without looking at the bigger picture (which really isn't so different from money). -- Perette

22. Damn ex'es.

2007-05-18 11:12 (Friday) journal

I went out to the Lilac Festival last night to see the Coupe De Villes and Edgar Winter Band, both of which were quite good. I was bothered by the extraordinarily high food prices around the fest' -- I expect things to be a bit expensive at a fair, but there is a point of ridiculousness. I know they have to pay for a vending permit, but $5 for $0.20 of dough, $0.10 of sauce, and $0.02 cents of propane is a bit expensive. Inside the big tent, though, I did finally find a fried dough with sauce for $3, which is a `reasonable expensiveness'. Not as good as the from the New Hartford Volunteer Fire Department at New Hartford Days (growing up, that was fair food to me, so it's a throwback to those days).

Anyhow, I get home and put my bike away, and find some papers laying on the ground outside my door. Intending to throw away the junk mail that slipped off the door handle, I pick it up and glance at it to find a summons for my ex, who hasn't lived here in 5 years, and who I haven't seen since 2003, and who I haven't talked to in a year and a half (and even then, it was just an IM to wish her a happy birthday).

frustrated Mood: frustrated

So now I'm wound up because I don't want to be involved -- I just want to be left alone to do my thing -- but this summons is important, and if the process server says they served it and Kat doesn't show up, she loses by default. I'm pretty sure the serving should be invalid, because I don't think leaving it in the driveway counts, but...

Paradoxically, I just got her name off the credit card and direct mailing lists a few months ago, stopping the constant barrage of credit card offers and junk mail from companies that continued to think she lived here. And now that they can't offer her any more, they try to sue her. Bastards.

So, I'm going to go submit myself to the court clerk, and make an affidavit that she hasn't lived here in 5 years, and provide a forwarding address and see if I can push back on this. F*cking lawful alignment, I *could* just drop this and let her lose, like anyone else would do; but no, I want justice and fairness. Damnit.

23. Feelings about my job

2007-05-29 21:14 (Tuesday) journal

I'm liking my new job, so far: only 2 days a week, not terribly stressful, people are tolerant of my mistakes. Usually, I don't think about any sort of power dynamics at work; I'm just a service provider to everyone else. They want stuff typed, transcribed, copied, filed, or whatever, and I do it. And meanwhile, I answer phones.

Every now and then, though, it comes up that one of the lawyers in the office is two years younger than I am. And attached to that is a little jab of discomfort. It's odd, because in software I generally thought of myself youngest, although at my later jobs there were younger people, mostly in the testing groups. I believe I was pretty far up the skill rank: I was, after all, doing kernel work at Heidelberg; albeit struggling with it, I was managing to do 64-bit conversions and add features to kernel STREAMS modules. So, I don't think I'm inaccurately assessing that I was a higher-up in the skill ranks. While I prided myself on having skill, whenever I thought about rank, I think I tried to discount it; if I was young but unimportant, I could do anything but didn't want to feel too much responsibility.

As a secretary, I'm the grunt. Which I don't mind; what I'm doing is "necessary" (at least to the office... in the grand scheme of things it's debatable, but that's getting into the philosophy of The Way Things Are). When I realize that I'm serving someone younger than me and she's way higher on the ranking and skill hierarchies, there's a twinge of emotion that's hard to describe: I'm her elder and I'm "supposed" to be above her. A blend of a bit of guilt that I'm not living up to what I "should" do, some competitiveness and a sense that I'm not as good as her, maybe some shame that I could do better. It's a little unsettling.

It's like jealousy though: when I feel it, I try to see it for what it is (emotions surrounding my failure to live up to the expectations set by the world around me), know that what I'm doing is what I want, what I choose to do, and then the feelings just dissipate.

24. Drunk Peri

2007-06-21 03:29 (Thursday) journal

I decided I wanted to experience being drunk so I went out drinking. I got drunk a few years ago after Phil and Beth's wedding when I drunk a whole bottle of plum wine, then I dialated and went to bed. But I've never really experienced the whole being drunk in public thing.

So tonight I went out to Vinyl, and not much was happening but I had a Reisling. This hot girl who was there, Samantha, suggested a band at the Dub Land Pub, which was a funk/rock/blues mix which sounded hot so I went over and had two vodka and cranberries, at which point I was at the edge between tipsy and drunk. Then when the band took a break I had a long beach, and this guy who wanted to get in my pants got me a shot, so I successfully accomplished my 'get drunk' goal.

Now I'm sitting in my bathroom, kinda feeling nauseas (I can't figure out the proper spelling quite), writing in my journal.

I feel very dizzy. I haven't thought about my complaints with my job in several hours, although the funk music was superb. I think I might have even appreciated it more if I was fully sober. I didn't notice that it was really loud, although I notice the lack of upper frequencies in the keyboarding noise as I type.

I should probably drink a bunch of water to ensure I don't have a hangover.

There was this girl that was turning 24 that was wearing a short, tight white dress and a sign that she was a birthyday girl and she was pretty hot.

I can't say the being drunk experience is quite bad, at least in and of itself, but the whole 'feeling too much nausea to fall asleep' kinda sucks.

So now that I've done this, my goal should be to find a more productive way to find a world where I fit in.

Sleepy. Good night.

25. Hangover?

2007-06-21 09:33 (Thursday) journal

Couldn't sleep after 7:30 this morning. I'm not sure I was still exactly drunk, but still had no sense of balance. Felt like someone had turned off my sight's framing servo. Nausea, mild headache, soreness in lower back. No memory loss, from what I can tell, but then if I had some I wouldn't know. Memories seem consistent though.

Generally weird and paranoid thoughts as I gradually transitioned from sleep toward awake, which isn't really fully awake given I've only had about 4 hours of sleep. Recent stressors (work) blend together with imagery from last night's outing; reminds me of the paranoid dreams I get when I'm sick and running a high fever. Or maybe it's the lack of sleep, which would definitely apply in this scenario too.

So I've gotten trashed, and I can see where alcohol removes inhibitions. Dancing, I didn't feel self-conscious in the least. Still, though, I was aware of the social interactions happening with me, the guy trying by hook or by crook to get me to "put out". I think Samantha was just friendly; as we said good-bye after the band wound down I recognized that she was intoxicated too and felt a bit of kindredness with the feeling.

Still, though, there was a sense of "XYZ is a bad idea", and a sense of what I want. As I went out to my bike, seduction-man Lou walked with me and tried to convince me to sleep with him. And still, there was consciousness that `I need to not get raped', `It's nice you like me, but I have Dave', and `Sex transmits STDs, and I don't want a disease' (which falls, as I kept repeating as Lou and I walked together last night, under `Rule #1: Don't die').

There was a young guy, I think he worked at Vinyl where my bike was parked at a parking meter. He said hello as he went by, and wanted to make sure I'd get home okay. I think he was worried I'd crash the bike; I had enough sense to know I needed to walk a ways first. Or maybe he thought I was in danger from Lou. Anyhow, he felt genuinely concerned in the little we talked. I suppose my judgment could be off, but that's what I felt, and I still do; there's a real beauty in the idea that this guy that works in a club, sees all these people doing stupid shit all the time and is going home after a long work-day, and still interested in protecting the dumb little confused 36-year old drunk girl trying to find herself on the street. You'd expect him, if the archetypes we have today are true, to be completely jaded, distancing himself from people, just doing his job of bouncing or whatever it is he does. That he mightn't be seems wonderful.

So that was a dumb adventure. I'm glad I did it; it's an experience. It was nice to have a little break from the crap in my head, but it was only a temporary escape, and the same issues that were there before continue to exist today.

Cost of trip: $19 (+4 tip), plus $2.50 shot from Lou.

Revision is playing again at DubLand Underground next Wednesday evening. They're from Ithaca.

26. House painted

2007-06-28 20:19 (Thursday) journal

scary height from the ground

I painted my house, and I took pictures but I can't find the cable to upload them from my camera. So, anyone who wants to see what it looks like must come to Rochester. UPDATE: I found the cable.

Dave has been amazing in supporting me lately; part of me feels really lame that I'm not running my own life better, but the other part thinks it's just good karma being returned for Kat, Matt, and others I tried to help.

On the tangible front, he put in huge effort helping me paint the house, and acquired a power sprayer for the painting phase, which made the job much easier. And he got me this job in the office. He's also doing a sort of life-coach role, providing me with commitments to work toward. All I do in return is install new doorknobs on his house.

On the less tangible front, knowing someone loves me so completely feels good. He's trying to get me through some of the residue of the original breakdown: guilt feelings about the "start frey" spell I cast, remaining fears about working a "real" job, general floundering with my life. He argues that my reaction to stress is excessive and thus likely due to a brain chemistry issue, which is supported by recent over-reaction to turbulence surrounding me in the office. (There are parts of secretarying that I suck at. Or maybe I'm exhibiting the old addage: "Any verbose and tedious solution is error-prone because people get bored." Or maybe I'm not trying hard enough because the job, while apparently simple, is imperceptively complex.)

I think Dave expects that if we could fix the anxiety, I'd go back to being a happy software employee. That's where I disagree; I loved doing software *but* the industry has still changed, and I've changed. Yes, evidence supports continued existence of an anxiety disorder in me, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't want to be stuck in a f'ing cold air-conditioned box with no windows for 40 hours a week again. And I don't see how I can get back in without being willing to do that, and it's simply not worth it.

Which brings up the question of what to do about a career. Dave has told me he doesn't expect me to secretary indefinitely; he expects I'll move on to something else. Despite trying to deny it for a while, out of a feeling of commitment to him, he's right. And to that end, one of my commitments is providing him a list of career options I'm interested in, which I plan to do pro/con style. I'm considering networking engineer (overlaps old things, but different), massage (part-way done), automotive repair, teaching, nursing, electrical and/or miscellaneous plumbing/heating things. Gut-wise, I'm leaning toward tasks in the semi-physical domain, especially automotive.

27. Big ol' core dump o' writing

2007-07-12 19:05 (Thursday) journal

Writing helps me deal with the shit in my life. Paradoxically, I wonder if the crap I've written holds me back a few years down the line. When do I ditch the stuff from my past? How do I know what is worthy of keeping, and what should be deleted? Then there's the problem that I don't want to spend the time, unless I just mass delete stuff older than N years.

Painting is progressing, nearing completion I think. It's a bit frustrating; even though I knew I was only maybe half done, the perception that I'd painted such a large percentage of the square footage meant my gut kept insisting I was almost done. And now it feels like it's dragging on. As of today, though, the only stuff left is a couple of window frames and part of the porch exterior (and not even detail work on the porch, yay!). I hope to finish this weekend.

I went to my first session of dialectical behavioural therapy today, which wasn't much new. Coulda been Massage or Wicca 101, but wrapped in psychological theory.

A lot of weird feelings going in. Kept feeling myself trying to tell me that I'm not like the other people, they're really broken and I'm just messed up a little. I know they're lies made up to defend my fragile ego, and do my best to throw them out. Still, some people seem to fall into trying to make being in therapy their life, and I don't want want to do that myself.

Pandora was playing a really sweet mix of music earlier today. I love good music.

I'm so happy in my romantic life. I've been slowly opening up over the last month about the last, and most private, of my fetishes; he's been accepting and this weekend we finally left the realm of discussion.

The coolest thing is making up a story. We did this twice; I think we need to do it more. I started one, surrounding my fetish but trying to work in one of his (I didn't want him left out). I was supposed to tell it myself, but while I was pausing to rebuffer, he started adding to it. Back and forth, we took the story in directions I didn't expect but which were extraordinarily hot! There was good sex to follow, complete with multiple biscuits! (I think that was the night, anyway; tryst rate has been high recently...)

I still don't know how I ended up with such a wonderful and fulfilling relationship, and I want things to continue to escalate in orgasmic and cuddly and friendly loving goodness.

I would still like to build a new circle of close friends. I miss the old group, and I want to have something like that again. I know I can't recreate what I had, but I'd like to have a group that's at least somewhat closer, that does more things together. Okay: Get off my ass and create it. But there's that paradox: I'm afraid to commit the time, fearful that I'll be trapped into events I arrange when better things come up.

It's really odd: I can see the deadlock, I can see when I'm overly anxious about something, when I'm worrying about something unimportant; I can feel when I dissociate from what I'm doing because I don't know how to respond: but for all these things, I still can't do anything. Like when I deadlock, I realize I need to choose, and it doesn't matter, and choosing one is better than not choosing, but I'm still just afraid to choose. But, I guess this is what the DBT class is supposed to help with.

doYoga().

28. Bicycle parts

2007-07-19 14:30 (Thursday) journal

Parts came in for my bicycle, so soon I'll be disassembling and rebuilding my wheel. Can I correctly say that I'll be busy rimming this afternoon?

29. Vacation

2007-08-06 13:11 (Monday) journal

Mood: mellow

I spent last week with several of the Looneys at a cottage in the Adirondacks. Derrick arranged renting the lake-front place on Schroon Lake from Saturday - Saturday. Hopes to have Amanda come down for a week fell through; relationship questions there... But Dave did come up on Thursday.

Derrick & family, Jan, Mike & Tina, Joe, and Ed made it for various lengths of time. It was nice to see people, and we had plenty of yogurt owing to Derrick's algorithm for food purchasing:

        last int InitialYogurt = 20;
        Collection<Yogurt> fridge = new Collection<Yogurt> ();
        int yogurt_needed = InitialYogurt;
        do {
                // load the fridge
                for (int x = 0; x < yogurt_needed; x++) {
                        fridge.add (new Yogurt ());
                }
                sleep ();
                // determine new day's yogurt needs by seeing how much
                // yogurt is left in the fridge
                int yogurt_needed = InitialYogurt +
                                   (InitialYogurt - fridge.getSize ());
        } while (yogurt_needed > 0);

I finally threw an exception on Wednesday evening when it was evident that the growth of the yogurt supply was out of control, and that we weren't going to manage to eat all the food that had managed to accumulate in the first 5 days. With efforts to eat like Hobbits Thursday and Friday, we did manage to make a darn solid attempt at attacking the hoard of food but I still ended up with some snacks, potatoes, and of course yogurt; I think Tina took some stuff home too.

I got in some exercise: Sunday I rode around Schroon Lake (pronounced skroon, the /sch/ like in school), hiked Severance Mountain on Monday, and did Pharoah Mountain with Mike, Tina, Jan, Derrick, and Derrick's dog on Wednesday. The map-indicated fire tower has since been removed from the peak, but it had some nice balds and by moving around there was still great visibility to surrounding areas. On Friday, Dave & I did a short hike into and around Gull Pond.

Saturday we cleaned up and headed out, a half-dozen yogurt in my cooler, off to a private play-party in Syracuse. We decided to be adventurous and cut directly across the Adirondacks rather than take expressways, which worked until we got to the Old Forge area and Fishie Car's battery packed it in, done in by the alternator that'd started failing Thursday. I'd decided that the charging failure light had come on erroneously, or that at least it wasn't a serious problem, because I'd made it to Ticonderoga and back to pick up Dave, and the light would turn off when the car had a chance to cool down. It's intermittent... How bad could it really be?

Well, the thing died in Old Forge, and Dave has AAA so we got a tow. But, there's only one garage in Old Forge, and that guy went on a 2-week vacation. But luck worked out, and we were heading for Syracuse, and they had plans to flatbed another car out that way 15 minutes later. They hooked up Fishie Car to the back of the truck, and hauled us out to where this other car was going. This was great: we were closer to civilization, although we still needed to figure out where to get the car fixed, and not knowing the area, not sure where to go or who to call. As the destination of the other car came into sight, there was a fortuitously placed Saturn dealership across the way, so they dropped us there and I rang the friends holding the party Saturday night to let them know what was up. A half-hour later Otter came to rescue us, and we were off to a fantastic party Saturday night.

Sunday we carpooled with Severian and Karra back to Rochester, and Dave and I spent some time together Sunday evening.

All in all, it was a great trip. Even the troubles worked themselves out without a hassle. Today's goal is to return to Syracuse and get my car, which is now fixed although Saturn mentioned it has a lot of other problems and is in need of some TLC. I'm unsure what to do; it needs a lot of work, but then, what car doesn't? Is it worth spending a significant chunk of cash to fix up the car with problems that I know? What if I drop a wad of dough on it, just to have it blow the head gasket in 1000 miles and be in need of $1,500 more repairs? I find decisions like this really stressful, because there's no right answer. I might win, I might loose; even a mechanic can't give better than a crap-shoot guess what my chances are. Given I've thrice failed to seal the valve-cover gasket correctly (a relatively simple and innocuous procedure; the worst outcome is it leaks a lot of oil, which it was already doing), I really lack confidence about my ability to work on critical systems and save money doing it myself.

Unsure.

I've been thinking about relationships. Hanging out with my university friends was nice, but there's a stagnancy there. Even though I follow their journals and talk on the phone occasionally, I have a sense that they're not who I think of them as, and I'm not who they remember either. It's subtle, too; if I could point out obvious ways in which they've changed I think I would feel better, but in practice... It's like a dress that fits just perfect, just the right cup size, just the right cut to fit the hips and curves... but then you gain or loose 5 pounds, and you can't point to anything obvious, but it isn't quite perfect anymore.

Going from there into this party with new friends, with people I see regularly, gave me a chance to compare the two. There was newness, life, like the relationships have a future. It accented the idea that even though they'll never be the same of my university relationships, that they are the future. I can long all I want for the past, reminisce about the relationship I've had... but it's still not going to happen again. So, I need to keep going forward, and make new memories with these new people.

This is also becoming evident between Sue & Amanda and me. They've got their life, and the distance has come between us. We've been gradually slipping away, maybe with Dave is a factor in it too because I want to spend time with him; and then there's the new group, still vague as it is, it's real and happening and not just something that could happen if we could all arrange the time.

I miss them, and I miss the Looneys, but holding onto those relationships too hard will hold me back, keep me from moving on to new and different things. Confident, if scared: I can do this.

30. Busy days...

2007-08-10 19:57 (Friday) journal

It's been a busy couple of days.

Monday I stopped and bought a different gasket sealant, and re-did the valve cover gasket again. Fourth time was, this time a charm; that polished off that problem for now at $100+ less than mechanic prices. Thursday the car went to a nearby shop who looked it over, and agreed with Saturns recommendation on the oil pan gasket but said other things could be done as needed, piecemeal. So, I'm saving up pennies for doing that, because although the new oil pan is only $50 and you make your own gasket with this cheap caulk-like stuff, the labour is $400 because the oil pan is conjoined with the transmission.

I got a good answer on one question though: Why does the head gasket, subjected to much more brutal conditions (combustion and compression strokes), last longer than the others? The answer is that it is made of a soft metal, and so much durable. But, it's much less tolerant during installation -- the block and head must be near-perfectly planar, which is why they need to be machined if there is even mild warping. The other gaskets don't last as long, but the tolerances on the parts they seal is much greater.

I addressed a few of the Saturn points myself: I checked the air conditioner myself; there's no issue with it. And today I replaced the torque axis engine mount, which was amazingly easy (although I did have to break out my big freakin' wrench!). I'm going to change the transmission fluid after the oil pan is done, and I'm considering changing the steering fluid by sucking up the stuff in the reserve tank with a syringe, then putting new stuff in; if I do that a few different times, I figure it should dilute out any contaminants pretty good. Not as perfect as emptying it, cleaning, and refilling, but a whole lot cheaper and easier.

Yesterday after therapy, I came home and Christine and I were talking... She wants to put a new front door on the house because she doesn't feel secure. She's afraid it's too easy to break the glass and open the door, and I've put my foot down that I don't want to live in a prison. Now she's proposing changing the door and putting in a new one with a window, which I'm trying to be open to. But at the same time, I'm questioning what the difference will be then? It's not a security improvement, it just creates an illusion of security. So why bother?

It's interesting that when she moved in she talked about the good energy of the house... but she has plans to put a lock on her bedroom door (which I've approved), proposed at one point a security door without windows, and generally keeps suggesting things that strike me as destructive of that very "energy" she was seeing, which I think is the openness, the warm and inviting nature of my house... because I don't do those things. If my house is locked down like a friggin' prison, then how is it going to be warm and inviting anymore? Frustrated, confused.

So, at some point I trapped, successfully caught it, applied DBT skills and wasn't sure how to apply them in the scenario so I forced a new context and started working on stuff, which I did most of yesterday and this evening. I did the car, laundry, vacuumed the porch, freecycled some crap, painted my downstairs window frames (inside) and rehung the curtains for them, cleaned the garage, and generally put away a lot of stuff that's been getting left out. I've only made a little dent in the house, but it's a pleasure to walk into my garage and see how usable it is now. Now if I could only do that well with the house, because I think it's a little weird that if the clutter bothers me, I have to go to the garage to escape it.

31. Fixed, and broken

2007-08-28 22:26 (Tuesday) journal

The problem with fixing things is you often break something else that worked nicely, dependent on exploiting some flaw that gets patched up in the repair process.

I decided Christie should have a separate account on the house server mainly because of battling music preferences. I like deleting crap I don't like, and I she was disabling stuff I do like. So, I created her a user account and all was good.

Well, that was until I looked at the house interface. Turns out the home automation stuff couldn't control iTunes when Christie was logged in, and since that was all tied into the alarm clock that's tied in with my calendar, the alarm clock was broken.

I tinkered around, and found if I su'ed to root, I could control Christie's iTunes! Go Apple, building on top of and integrating with the existing UNIX security infrastructure! But, setuid'ing the Applescript executor wasn't good enough... Setuid only sets effective UID and GID, not real UID and GID. So I coded up a wrapper, and it worked! Now my alarm clock was going to work whether I or Christie was the current desktop user (we could both be logged in, though, since we use fast user switching). shelly jukebox login

So that's all good. But what happens when she logs out and Shelly is left at the login screen? Holy security hole Batman! iTunes and Finder launch as root behind the login window! Still, I was able to import some songs, and it plays music when commanded to by the house automation daemon. It meets spec: my alarm clock works, goofy and insecure as it may be.

32. Yay! Bad ideas interrupted!

2007-09-14 00:11 (Friday) journal

I had a crazy delusion that since I can export my calendar to iCalendar format, maybe I should use iCal2html to build the RKS calendar and modernize the web site. After tinkering with it, and fixing a couple of things, it became evident that there were several other things broken in the converter so it's inspiration not to take over the calendar or web site. I'm staying out of it.

33. Perette, Fighter of Entropy

2007-09-17 11:15 (Monday) journal

  -Or- The greatest think I ever learned
    Was just to love, and be loved in return.

It was a busy and productive Sunday, with some karma going around. After doing a Saturday night slumber party at Torch's pad, Dave & I came back home. Dave insisted on helping me cut the muffler off my car, because I was planning to replace it and he wanted to take me to get any additional parts I might need. Turns out I didn't need more parts, but the extra set of hands was indispensible. The muffler crimps on to the exhaust pipe, so we ended up cutting it off with my Sawz-all, then having to carefully scribe the side of the remaining overlapping piece until we could crack it loose. We cut off 5mm of the exhaust pipe, but that's not significant; I'm happy with the result. We also replaced the muffler hanger, and wired up the loose heat shield so there's no more resonant clanking at a low idle.

That done, we showered and Dave headed out to a family event, while I checked my spark plugs, and found greasy residue on the wire connections - possibly a result of leaky oil before I got the valve cover gasket sealed right. I cleaned them off, and so far, the intermittent hesitation Fishie Car's been exhibiting is in remission.

I headed off to the RKS munch, which was good. On my way home, I got a voice-mail from Anya about a movie at the Dryden, so I picked her up and we went to see The Gronholm Method, which was about how capitalism sets us up to fight with each-other in a way we all lose, both on an individual level and allegorically on a grander scale.

Afterwards, Anya and I went over to Boulder Coffee, which sadly didn't have a fire because they were out of wood. But we had hot chocolate and caught up. She's looking great, and smiles a lot more than I remember; afterwards we went back to her place and looked at her furnace which hadn't been working right. We isolated the fault to what looked like it'd been a fire in an electrical junction box; after about 2-hours of passing on the karma of Dave's help she was set up with heat, we got the humidifier running, and we'd even lubed the blower motor.

Today's goal for me is to fix my tumbling composter, which is rusting out badly and needs some more patching. At some point, I should look into getting some new sheet metal cut for it; the manufactuer is really overpriced but I imagine a place that does custom duct-work could cut me new parts somewhat more reasonably.

34. Busy week

2007-09-20 22:10 (Thursday) journal

It's been a busy week. Instead of patching the composter, I broke down and spent $70 on new tie rods and a new piece of sheet metal and rebuilt it. Expensive, but still $200 cheaper than new parts from the manufacturer. The new steel is a little thicker than the original, so I think it'll last longer. It is certainly much less of an eyesore, being all shiney steel coloured now (except for the door).

Incidentally, congratulations to Canada: The Canadian dollar is now on par with the US dollar, and will soon out-rank the US dollar if trends continue.

Dave & I went to see No End In Sight, a documentary about the US occupation of Iraq. Unlike other films which argue that we never should have invaded, No End doesn't express much opinion on the matter and instead focuses on how we screwed the pooch after we got Saddam: we dismissed all the Ba'ath government workers (most of the government), who were actually keeping the governmental essentials operating, which resulted in their shutdown and chaos; we dismissed the Iraqi army, who would have helped keep order if they were paid, but instead joined the insurgence when we took away their method to fund families; and we generally floundered about installing a new government. The movie doesn't say it, and I'm not sure it intended the idea, but my impression (paranoia) is that The Powers That Be (Bush/ Cheney/ Rumsfield) intentionally used bureaucratic snafus to stall reparations and cause strife with the expectation that civil unrest would stone-age the country. And it's plausibly deniable that it's just a mistake, inefficiency of bureaucracy. Besides, we didn't really do it, they did it themselves, so it wasn't our fault. We just didn't know it would happen. Really, we were doing our best. Yeah, that's it, our best.

I broke down today and replaced the pedals on my bike, one of which had cracked and was flexing in response to pressure. I bought a set of Pyramid "clipless" pedals, and the special shoes that clip into them. Toe-clips are weird with a recumbent, so these are the alternative; I can see some performance gain, which I'm surprised by: I haven't used toe-clips in 5 years, but I've very quickly modified my stroke to pull as well as push. I'm also surprised how difficult it is to get used to them at first, specifically the clipping and upclipping, but I feel I'm adapting quickly.

35. Monday's Ride

2007-09-26 20:25 (Wednesday) journal

Monday I went for a bicycle ride, just to ride, something I don't do enough of around home. It was enjoyable, and I slept well both Monday and Tuesday nights.

I went up to the lake, and hopped on the newly build Lakefront Trail at the Culver Road end. It twists and winds through the woods, crosses a swampy area on a boardwalk, then continues along the top of the embankment of Durand Eastman Park; this section was quite nice. After that, it hops sidewalks and really isn't much of a bike trail, as it makes its way to Charlotte.

In Charlotte I saw a pack of cyclists coming into port, so I scooted down and caught up. It turns out it's a Monday cycling group, apparently mostly ex-Kodakers. I may try to catch up with them for their last couple of rides of the season; it's free and Mondays when not much is going on for me.

I had an overpriced average burger at Cheeburger Cheeburger in the mostly-empty Port of Rochester building, former terminal to the Fast Ferry. On leaving, a "Coming Soon" sign caught my eye that was advertising a bicycle trail opening in 2006, which, as I thought about it, was probably where the other cyclists had appeared from.

I sought out the trail and was pleasurably rewarded as it made its way along the riverfront, crossed the turning basin on a kilometer-or-so long boardwalk, then climbed the gorge wall to follow an old rail bed up to Lake Avenue. It follows the adequately-wide-for-multiuse sidewalk past the cemetary, then separates off from Lake Avenue again, passes through Rosewood Park, crosses the Genesee at RG&E Hydroelectric Plant #5, and terminates at St. Paul not from from the DSS building. Even there, the sidewalk is wide enough to reasonably cycle on.

There are moderate climbs along the trail as the path drops down to the Genesee and climbs back out of the gorge, but they're a comfortable grade with the exception of the one at St. Paul. This struck me as being a pretty viable way of bicycling into/out of downtown and staying off roads.

As I passed Kodak, what a sight: Kodak is demolishing numerous buildings along Lake Avenue. There were multiple cranes out sorting the rubble, which was piled everywhere. I'm guessing this was the clean-up after the building 23 demolition; seeing it left me with mixed feelings: I'm glad they're not leaving building husks laying around, but at the same time it's a sign of how much less Kodak is now than it was in its heyday.

36. Foolish

2007-10-05 23:22 (Friday) journal

It's been a good week. I got a few compliments at work, which makes me feel less unconfident about my performance.

Then, on Wednesday, I got my hacking groove on and fixed 'libical' so the date comparison routine works right. This fixes ical2html so the last 4 hours of the day (5 when we're on standard time) don't get put onto the calendar on the next day. I still need to submit the changes back into the code base, or point out the bug at least since I'm not sure they'll like my change (I changed a function prototype to include the comparison time zone, rather than let it always use UTC).

So, I now have a calendar that Dave can view, to see what I'm up to. Or anyone else, I suppose; it's at

  barella.org
The password should be obvious to those that know me.

Foolishly, that inspired me to work on some rewrites for the RKS site. I should just not ever do anything, because anytime I offer to do something, it just upsets someone else who either claimed they were doing it, or were just about to, even though they simultaneously contradict themselves about how everything was fine just the way it was, and there's no reason to change anything. Never mind the spelling errors, wordsthat runtogether, HTML that doesn't validate, and complete lack of major noteworthy events held since 1999 that would be worth mentioning as the kind of stuff we do (say, like, having Jay Wiseman, author of S/M 101, come present in 2006).

And there's the catch, isn't it? In the short term, it's easier to just not care, and let everything decay into crap. But crap is depressing when you know things could be better, and the depression sidles up and draws at you. The nagging feeling that I could make things better, but I choose not to because I don't want to deal with the fight to make it happen, even though it's not hard to do.

I think that's the first time I've expressed it that clearly. I also think it's probably a key conflict in my emotional turmoil over the last few years. I do well at Reynolds & Henehan these days because my limits are clear; I type stuff, I don't fix stuff, and so I don't even worry about fixing stuff. I see stuff that could be improved, but I just think, `That's not my job' and the thought passes by. But as long as I could or maybe should fix it, it creates this desire to fix vs. desire to not encouter problems.

So if I'm ready, willing, and able to fix something, but holding back because of not wanting to deal with bureaucracy or play political games, then how how do I resolve this? We cover similar issues in therapy class, but I can't figure out how to apply it to this instance. How do I decide whether to make change or accept the status quo, in this instance? And once an initial decision is made, how do I feel good about it and not wish I'd chosen the other route?

I got a decent bike ride in yesterday when I rode out to a health fair at the dome to get a flu shot. Strange how they make such a big deal about the health hazards of things, then they use attenuated flu vaccine with thiomersal, although it was unclear if it was used as a bacteriostatic or if it was just residue from manufacturing. Reading Wikipedia, though, it sounds like only a tiny fraction of the mercury is absorbed long-term when it enters in this particular compound form, so I guess I'm safe.

Tomorrow I'm going to get up early and watch Kodak 65 get knocked down. If you mailed in film to be developed, and it was slow coming back, but you think it might have just been misplaced and they'll mail it back when they find it... your hopes are pretty much dashed as of 7:30 AM.

37. Falling buildings

2007-10-06 17:28 (Saturday) journal

I got up at 6:15 this morning, ate a spot of breakfast, and came to my senses at about 7:00 after getting distracted by some stupid e-mail bullshit. I quickly filled my water bottle, donned my cleats, and pedalled my ass of up to to Ridge Road. I got there about 7:32, so fortunately the demolition, like oh-so-many other Kodak projects, was running late.

I hung about at Ridge and Lake, slowly walking toward the doomed building to get a better view until the KodaRentaKop started hassling me. About 15 minutes later, I heard two rings of a fire siren, and a bit later, one ring; I clued in and started counting down from 60. At about 12, the blasts started: loud, clear, rhythmic. I'd never felt anything but curiosity about it until that moment, but as the sound resonated off of Theatre on the Ridge, I felt a sense of foreboding, a mixture of dread or sadness about 65's imminent, inevitable change. The northeast corner went first, apparently dropping straight down, the downward slide expanding backward through the building. And then it was gone, except for the cloud of dust and pile of rubble.

I cycled over to Dewey, where the remains were visible. There wasn't much left; I imagine a lot ended up inside the former basement. I think I always envisioned it would just disintegrate to dust and stone, never stopping to consider how ridiculous this image was. The rubble was broken up slabs of concrete, with steel girders sticking out at odd angles, still straight, like daggers plunged deep into the building's heart. A couple of circular concrete pillars with flanged tops to support floors stuck out at odd angles, like the broken bone of a compound fracture.

I cycled over to 23, the one they took down a few months ago, and it's still a rubble pile but they've got some gravel sorters and have been busy sorting the smaller remains into assorted piles by size. Or maybe they feed the slabs into something and grind them up.

Spooky.

38. Image Out festival, Playing with Knives

2007-10-08 09:36 (Monday) journal

This weekend I attended 3 programs at the Image Out festival, all of which were quite good. Another Woman was a film about a transwoman who has a very different experience from me, having had a family prior to transitioning and being in a much less accepting arena. King and the Clown was questionably gay-related, but well-produced with some excellent cinematography. The shorts program was more hit-and-miss, but several were still interesting, a couple of them humourus.

I had German food with Anya before the shorts on Saturday. I was reminded of the special sausage Grandma Kuehl would have for Christmas Eve.

Saturday night I went out to a Rotary function with Dave, where I met a lot of the crowd that he hangs with. He's met many of my friends and some of the family, but this was the first time in a social situation where I've met a bunch of his. It seemed to go okay; I sense I'm in a different social group or strata, but they were all quite nice and polite.

Sunday morning we made pancakes and bacon at my house. The fancy pancake recipe on the Bisquick box, which involves lemon and baking powder, is excellent. During the washing up, though, there was another accident involving a Cutco knife. This time, a knife pointing up in the dish drainer got me when I was reaching for something else. I ended up with a clean gash that looked like it was through the dermis and hypodermis lengthwise on the wrist. There was minimal bleeding. I didn't want to miss Another Woman, though, so we got out sutures, betadine, isopropyl alcohol, and some rusty tools (we cleaned off the rust best we could) and sewed it up. I watched the last time I got sewn up from a Cutco accident, so I was able to walk Dave through it. It took 8 stitches; he did a superb job of stitching for a first-time effort. It took both of us, him working the string and needle (we used a reverse cutting) and me using an improvised mal-probe made of paper clip to hold string taught while he was tying. It looks like it's healing well and no sign of infection; I had a tetanus shot in 2000 so I'm good there.

He is amazing the things he does for me. I love him.

39. I'm in a movie!

2007-10-13 16:39 (Saturday) journal

There was a need for extras for the movie Sophomore and they were paying $50, which was enough to convince me to go get myself into a movie. I cycled up to Charlotte today for the scene, apparently set in summer despite the chilly weather today. At least it wasn't snowing. It all seemed to surround the final scene of the movie. They filmed numerous takes of 5 cuts, 3 of which I appear in - although only in one am I even possibly more than someone walking in the back of a crowd. For what I imaging will total 15 - 25 seconds, they spent 5 hours -- and that doesn't include the set-up before I arrive, which was at least an hour. So... 14 to 24 hours of filming to make a single minute of film. Damn. Though that might not be average; they seemed to be fighting with the wind today.

I doubt it's the type of movie I'd typically go for; it seems targeted to the teenage market. But I'll have to make an exception now, and maybe even get it on DVD to be vain. "Hey! Look at me, I'm on TV!" I'm excited to see how it comes out.

40. Why do we need authority?

2007-10-21 17:10 (Sunday) journal

I've been watching one of my acquaintances from RKS go about, from what I can tell, trying to validate his interest in BDSM via art. He's taking assorted scenes that happen, doing film/video with them, and then declaring them art. Like that somehow makes them special.

Not that I think there's anything unusual about this; in fact, I think we all do it although we use different authorities to give our actions or desires validation. How often we are treated unjustly, but we can't or won't challenge it until there's a popular psychology theory that says it's wrong, that we can then cite. Or some scientific evidence to back us up - say, a discovery that there is a genetic predestination or even influence on behaviour that makes it not a choice/less of a choice (for example, GLBT interests). Others look to the law as authority, maybe some G-d. As for me, I look to some capital 'T' Truth, something that can be rationally argued out from obvious truths, or at least reasoned out from some statistical data.

I think we all do this because then we have something to point to when we're questioned. If someone calls me on my not wanting to work a full-time job, I can point to Juliet Schor's research and describe the related work-spend cycle, and justify my position.

But, why I need to do this? Why does anyone need to do this? Wouldn't it be great if we all just did what we want, so long as we're not harming anyone? If when we're doing something instead of questioning why, people just accepted that it's our life to be lived our way?

I'm being naive, aren't I?

41. Republican FUD

2007-11-03 16:20 (Saturday) journal

You know, I really can't fault the Republicans on trying to keep the illegal immigrants out. I recognize they're just people who want to make some money and support their families, but if you think that they weren't born here so they aren't deserving then that's fine.

I can also understand wanting to fight terrorism. I think we're crazy stripping ourselves of our civil liberties and bankrupting ourselves in a fight when there's clearly other battles to be fought, like, say, global warming. But, if you're really scared I can at least understand it, if not agree with it. republican fud 1

But equating the people who come here to make some money and support their families with terrorists just goes too far. This is the kind of shit that makes me shudder when I hear it. That which takes Republicans from being other, differently opinioned individuals into crazy nut-jobs loonatics that I fear I'm one day going to need a gun to defend myself from. This makes me not want to vote for any Republican, just out of not wanting to identify with the name, even the moderate ones ones defending the constitution and promoting freedom who are just fiscally conservative.

May this outrageous level of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt; typically said of advertising tactics) bite you guys in the ass and wake people up to what a bunch of emotion-manipulating bastards your party's leadership is. republican fud 2

42. 2007-11-15 12:19 (Thursday) journal

The New York Times ran an article this past Sunday relating to information overload.

I've been trying to stay away from making diagnoses and applying labels to my psychological condition after noticing various people using these as sort of 'badges of honor'. A sort of, "See, I'm really and truly sick, so none of it's my fault" or "See, I'm sicker than you". I don't think this sort of comparison is healthy or conducive to trying to get better.

Nevertheless, I've come across a condition that does explain a lot of what went wrong in 2003: learned helplessness. It jives: when the job went wrong, I wanted to leave but felt I couldn't leave because of need for money; I wanted assistance, but there was no one to go to after the lay offs; I tried to switch to part-time, but my employer mandated this would only be temporary; I tried to move to the manufacturing floor, but was denied. And as I was trying to find an answer, my brain was being torn up trying to do my own job plus the other 2 projects that were assigned to me after layoffs.

The symptoms fit too: poor self-esteem, wandering attention, poor problem solving (panicing rather than focusing), depression.

School helped, because it restored self-esteem and made me understand I was still functional; I'd believed I was permanently damaged and useless after Heidelberg. With this all in mind, I need to make sure I don't fall into the pattern again. In my job search, I want to find part-time (or intermittent) work, so that I can have a sane balance of time between work demands and life responsibilities and my desires. With full-time work, I'm going to re-create the problem that work demands and life responsibilities take up the lion's share, leaving little for my desires. To this end, I can't allow myself to just accept a full-time job, because that's the expectation and what everyone has to do to get paid. I need to set a hard-limit as part-time/intermittent work only.

43. Thanksgiving with Dave

2007-11-21 19:40 (Wednesday) journal

Dave and I are enroute to Connecticut for Thanksgiving. He's met mom & dad before, but now he's going to meet the rest of the family. We're also planning to do a bit of hiking, go to New York City and visit the Museum of Sex, and make a visit to The Society.

He's helped me grow so much. I love him.

I did some work on my house this week, trying to get the upstairs to stay warmer. I used some spray foam to seal some air gaps where the porch and pantry roofs abut the main building, and looking at a weirdness with one of the ducts. I'd always thought it was just an old duct, but it turns out it's probably just rusted out because the air flow is blocked because, by my best guess, someone used it as a garbage chute. Now that it's cleared out, and the rusted out section patched, there's noticeably more air flow to my room, and the chill my bedroom's always had on a cold night has disappeared.

I'm hoping that makes Dave want to sleep over more, or at least makes it easier to play when he does sleep over!

44. Ethernet voyeurism

2007-11-25 20:41 (Sunday) journal

So I got home and fired up Unison to check on some newsgroups, and found it kept giving me problems trying to grab the headers -- it appears Rochester Road Runner is now limiting connections to 2, rather than 4.

Along the way, though, I considered the possibility that someone sharing my connection was also using the news server, and occupying some of the connections which was creating the limitation. So I started snooping my wireless ethernet, and indeed there are 2 neighbor's machines borrowing my WiFi. One is 'Brendan', and doesn't seem very active right now. The other seems to be abusing my wireless by not getting a proper lease on an IP address, and just took one at random, which annoys the engineer in me.

But, he does surf for interesting stuff. I fired up EtherPEG, a program which snoops the wireless ethernet and builds collages of images that people are viewing with their browsers. Call me biased here, but I'm going to guess this is a guy because Mr. No-name seems to have a penchant for sports and porn. Not 100% clear the details of the sports interest, but in erotica he really seems to lean toward black-guy-on-white-girl porn. He's been bouncing from one site to another. Not much interest in anal sex based on his not digging when he encounters it, as opposed to the vaginal intercourse sites which he seems to spend more time on. Nothing kinky either. Some oral sex, and lesbian action seems to be a bonus.

This voyeuristic thing could be very addictive, I suspect.

So today's lesson: wireless interest isn't really all that private.

45. Fuck!

2007-12-12 23:04 (Wednesday) journal

frustrated Mood: frustrated

This has just been a shitty day, one thing after the other.

I lost my cell phone.

The shower faucet broke.

I found out a file got overwritten, and the archiving backups haven't been working right for the last 4 days. Dammit! I had gotten it into the shape I'd wanted; all the effort was lost. Fuck!

46. 2007-12-16 10:59 (Sunday) journal

I spent the last half of the week cleaning up from Wednesday.

The shower has a working knob again, although I think I need new knobs that fit better -- there's some slack in the adjustment, with is annoying when trying to get the temperature right.

After enabling the archiving backups on my web development directory to my secondary backup site in California, I went about redoing the changes that got clobbered, and am back to where I was.

And I broke down on Friday and bought a new phone, which is a lot like my old one but has Bluetooth and some other fancy new features. I managed to talk them down $75 on the price, plus there was a free activation sale, so in the end the new phone will run about $30-40. I bought one that's got a good rating on reception, and compared to previous mobile phones the sound quality is noticeably better. I'd have been perfectly happy with my old one, but I've got to admit I'm finding Bluetooth to be very cool -- I exported my address book from my laptop to it in minutes, avoiding having to re-key all the phone numbers and stuff into it. It also accepts calendar files, although I had to tweak some scripts to export in an earlier calendar file format (vCalendar v. 1 versus v. 2) to get it to work. And I can back-up the phone to the laptop, so nothing gets lost later on, although it's a manual procedure and I'm the weak link in ensuring that gets done.

I'm making a chili-like stew (chili recipe with corn instead of beans; I don't care for beans) today for the RKS holiday social.

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