I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted. It didn't feel like 5 years. Well, it did in some ways.
Facebook filled the void. I guess I didn't want to manage both at the same time. Now... well, I have someone that inspires me to post here again. A friend that has been holding me up these last few weeks where I've seen everything in my life threatened.
I will write more about all that later. When I'm not on my phone. I have quite a bit to write about.
Today, July 29th, is my 10 year anniversary. Yay! Tomorrow, at an unspeakably early hour in the morning, I'm getting on a train and heading down to Ojai to work with Pol. We're going to try and hammer out a bunch of the application which is our next project. I get home on Thursday, some time in the mid afternoon. Then, the next day, after Melissa gets home from work, we're getting in the car and driving North. We're not stopping until we reach reach British Columbia. We'll come back the following weekend.
That means that today is the last full day I'm going to be home until August 14th, roughly. Wow.
7:36am: Getting back on the wagon
One of the biggest reasons I've not written in so long is that my perception of time has changed dramatically over the last few months. I think I may have written about similar phenomena in my life. Allow me to recap.
Basically, and I suppose I didn't need to use quite so many paragraphs to say this... I don't have a rigid structure to my day anymore, so my sense of time passing has been blurred. I should probably do something about that, since life seems to be slipping away more quickly, and I haven't done nearly as much with it as I mean to.
Let's see if I've got the big things down: 1) I quit my job at DST Output in January/February. 2) I work with my friend, Pol, in Southern California. We're developing software together. 3) Too much of my free time was taken up with the MMO, City of Heroes. It pretty much sucked up all my "free" time. I haven't played it in a week, and now I'm updating my journal. Next thing you know, I'll be writing again. 4) My 10 year wedding anniversary is in 6 days. That is, July 29th. In August, Melissa and I will be leaving the kids with her sister, and we'll be driving to British Columbia for a week. Should be a great vacation!
I'm alive. I'm actually pretty happy.
No. I AM happy. Without a real prospect for a "real" job, I left a position that was killing me. I'm now doing work I enjoy, working with a friend, and I'm managing to keep all my bills paid.
Merina... sorry I haven't written in so long.
Star Wars folks... I was thinking about you this evening.
To anyone else that's reading this... I'll try not to be such a stranger. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.
11:15pm: Monday Night Brief
I need to go to bed, since I've been sleeping poorly for the last week or so. So I'll touch on things I'll write about later, to entice those that read my journal, and to remind me that I want to write about these things.
Things I'll write about later...
We painted Bryanna's room over the weekend
I'm not on IM or updating or reading livejournal from work, mostly because my manager is an idiot
It's time for me to find another job. This is related to the first point, but a point all of its own
I hope merina is having fun. I've missed her. As long as point number 2 above applies, I'm not sure when I'm going to "see" her.
2:52pm: I'm Still Alive...
I haven't posted in a while. I've been a bit busy, and haven't really had much to say.
That's not true, though. I've had LOTS of things to say. I've had a number of really interesting ideas that I've wanted to write about, but I've been unwilling to go through the effort of transferring some of the thoughts in my head to an electronic format. So, I've avoided posting, just as I've avoided writing to Christine. Just as I've avoided a number of other tasks.
That's the long and the short of it. Work has been busy. I have a web app which is going to receive the highest level of attention in the company. This I find both satisfying and intimidating. It's also annoying, because it's been my main project for over a year now, and I really would like to do something new.
5:32pm: My Thoughts on Social Programs
I don't like the government getting into social programs. It's wealth redistribution, which is stealing, which is bad.
At the same time, I realize that social programs are necessary. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, and if society can't take care of its own, it has lost its primary function.
I've thought about it from a few different angles, and I always came away rubbing my chin, wondering how I could get the government out of the business of social programs, while at the same time providing an environment for them to flourish privately. While procrastinating over a mountain of laundry, I had this thought. If there's some obvious holes in it that I'm missing, I'd love for someone to comment and point them out.
1:35pm: Thanks, fragasm
My coworker fragasm sent me off to watch the speech by Barak Obama at the Democratic convention. I wound up reading it here.
I have to agree with him that it is a very rousing speech. I think it might be a little bit naive where it touches bipartisanship, but it is well written.
It's the sort of speech that makes me think, "I'm not a Democrat, but I think I could support someone like that."
I think that bipartisanship is an inevitable state that will not be changed. If there was such a thing as "social entropy", bipartisanship is the lowest energy state that such an entropy would lead to. It's also the most balanced state.
"Childhood immunization would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years."
Hmm.
On the one hand, if you're going to actually have a war on drugs, then this would be the right way to go. Forget the expensive and ineffective interdiction. Cripple the drugs by making them no longer satisfying.
On the other hand, you're completely erasing the possibility of a certain euphoric experience from an entire generation. I'm not sure this is a good thing. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a bad thing.
Let me see if I can build a comparison by analogy, that side-steps the knee-jerk "but drugs are bad!" reaction. Let's say that through the wonders of modern medicine, a vaccination was created that could make it impossible for someone to get drunk. According to MADD, there were 17,380 deaths on the roads that were alcohol related in the year 2000. If those people couldn't have become drunk, those deaths would have been prevented. Is the number of lives saved through deprivation of intoxication worth it?
I think it is better for people to be responsible for their own actions than deprived the opportunity to make mistakes. People will make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes will affect other people. Mistakes are supposed to happen, though.
Would I choose for my kids to receive immunizations from the effect of drugs? No. This doesn't mean I want them to grow up to be crack addicts. I want them to grow up to choose to not be crack addicts, just as I had to make that choice.
"Cash has become the U.S. military's first line of defense in some parts of Iraq, where U.S. soldiers are distributing money to encourage goodwill and to counter their enemies' offers of money to unemployed Iraqis willing to attack Americans, according to officers here.
Even patrol leaders now carry envelopes of cash to spend in their areas. The money comes from brigade commanders, who get as much as $50,000 to $100,000 a month to distribute for local rehabilitation and emergency welfare projects through the Commanders Emergency Response Program."
I wonder how many of those envelopes of cash are going into a soldier's pocket and never coming back out.
I wonder how much cash money someone would have to give me to just shrug off the fact that the person giving me the money is the person that just invaded my country.
I really like this quote: "I'm trying to give them something to do rather than take shots at someone," said Sinclair, who said he gets $50,000 every three or four weeks to distribute. "It's not bribery. It's priming the pump. And it works well."
Not a bribe, eh? Well, Merriam-Webster might disagree with you. Main Entry: bribe Pronunciation: 'brIb Function: noun Etymology: Middle English, something stolen, from Middle French, bread given to a beggar 1 : money or favor given or promised in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust 2 : something that serves to induce or influence
1:56pm: No where to run to, baby
The only thing I miss about living in New Mexico, specifically dorm 518 where Melissa and I met, is the easy access to the desert. When I'd feel all tense inside, all bound up by conflicting emotions, or mired in the endless onslaught of regretful memories, I could run out onto the sand and amongst the scraggly desert weeds and yell. Or just keep running, with the stars coldly twinking in a pitch black sky overhead. It was cathartic.
I don't really have anything like that anymore. I don't really have any primal sort of release. I come to work, I continue to try and wear the face that everyone would expect me to wear, and then I go home where I put on a different face.
That's really what the mature, responsible, adult life is all about. Putting on different faces to deal with different people. The person that we truly are underneath the facade is comprised of the choices we've made in our exterior presentation.
4:27pm: Anyone know anything about this?
I just received this: The Justice League is a member of MySpace and is inviting you to join.
The Justice League Says:
The Justice League Loves You!!!
Be Our Friend And Feel The Justice!!!
Thanky!!!
Join MySpace and you will instantly be connected to The Justice League, and to each of The Justice League's friends.
I've hovered over the delete button for a while now, trying to decide if this is purely unsolicited, or if one of my friends may have actually invited me to this group. I haven't clicked on the link provided.
Do any of you know anything about this? I could see the name and subject matter being relative to my interests. I checked out myspace.com, and it does have some sort of group thing going on, along with some blogger/journal widgets.
tired
contemplative
pessimistic
blah
curious