a niece finally writes after long absence, expressing an "ailment" that has elements fairly common in this family. in the human family, really. hell, i'm going through much the same thing myself, for a period that has lasted years. there's nature as well as nurture in this. evolution had its reasons.
comfort zones suck. almost literally - there's a sort of existential suction that limits movement. on the other hand, sometimes the zen thing to do is give up the struggle, and simply observe one's own behavior. what the hell, who put all those "should"s in our heads, anyway ? thinking is confusing; what is it that i actually do ? and however distasteful the answer often is, the honesty is undeniable.
and yet is-ness is only part of the total state. baggage. inertia. something to be jettisoned before it accumulates to insurmountable size.
games: i learned long ago that these were an achilles heel of mine, so i limit indulging this need to infrequent bursts. yeah, i know i'd like it, but i also know i'm better off not going there. once the habit (any habit) is broken it's best to stay away.
i never even thought to expect this:
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:00:00 UTC
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
******
Signs of Voldemort's return emerge as Harry's (Daniel Radcliffe) friends (Rupert Grint, Emma Watson) help him prepare for a tournament with Europe's best student wizards. (Fantasy, Adventure)
so what was that nonsense last week ? i have heard that part three of the potter saga is particularly problematic for "those" people. of course, it isn't yet time for this to start, so they may still bail.
a reminder to everyone who pays attention that when working i'm pretty tied into that mindset, and will generally let various personal comm streams go - email, blog, mail, phone, whatever. trying to get my diurnal cycle back into a mainstream match, and so far it's in an odd half state - crash at 8:30, up at midnight, back to sleep at 4:30, up at 8:30. whatever works, i guess... define "works".
need to get all my online billing info off of the aol service, before they shut it down in a few days. sucks.
flowering things around the area are at their peak. best year ever for the lilac bush out back, right by the bedroom window. the dogwoods, however, are in a sorry state. even sorrier is that the evergreens are mostly dead now, and those are what gave this property its character. and finally, the sorriest state of affairs is my own total lack of maintenance of, well, anything. the grass is now longer than the depth of the last (record) local snow storm.
noticed a week or so ago that subscriptions to this weblog tripled momentarily, mainly because of the tech stuff. i took care of that with last saturday's rant - subscriptions are back to normal now ;-) of course, it's only double digit numbers in the first place.
the conference last weekend was good enough, too gray / wet / cool to get nice spring visuals on the drive, but still good to get out & around. havn't been out that way in years, and there's entire new towns that have sprung out of nowhere. as for the conference itself, the sessions pretty much confirmed my current perspectives on all kinds of things, and that has its pros & cons. haven't run into anything for a while which really gives me pause and challenges my highly critical outlook on the state of the software development industry (and related), and most practitioners thereof. too many people are too unjustifiably confident about too limited perspectives. there's almost incestuous optimism, and it's damned near embarassing.
current engagement is going well enough. discovered they had broke their website's email relay configuration, no one has been receiving email from the site for four months - and no one noticed ! and there are plenty of other head-shaking things going on around there. i like to rant. the opportunities are endless. they are really sticking it to themselves, and the numerous vendors are more than happy to oblige.
and that's it for the current events list. beyond this point there be dragons.
been taking the xo places lately:
at the conference last weekend, xo made a tiny splash. self was overshadowed by the machine, and rightly so. the clip is from a youtube video someone cobbled together. well, ok, self's knee is lookin' good too ;-)- a couple of days later i was up at four am thinking about some recent website configuration i had changed for a customer, decided it wasn't going to work quite the way it needed to. so, sitting on my couch, i pick up xo and rdesktop in to the server and make revisions to the settings. teeny tiny font sizes, but does the job.
- sitting at the neighborhood bar - yesterday ? - i happened to have xo in tow, i log on to centerim (yum'ed earlier), and instantly there's craig talkin' at me.
this thing really reaches out for wifi access points. couldn't find one from inside a customer's location, though, which is a good thing.