It was announced yesterday that Widemile (where I work) has been acquired by Webtrends (PDX). I’m not going anywhere, life continues on. Should present some new opportunities for my one man operations department. Needless to say this has completely changed my work plans this week.

The SBMF volunteer meeting went well, despite a few dropouts due to the heat. That’s all exciting.

I don’t even know. A ton has happened. Rode with .83 last night, wanted to see people, had a lot on my heart and my mind. Drank enough to stick around and go swimming, which ended up good because I had a good time going to a show and hanging out with a friend after as well.

“Haven’t seen you in a while” says the coffee girl in the building. Yeah, I get a cup at All City on my way out of Georgetown these days (oh right, there’s that too, and stickers!). So OSBridge was rad, Toorcamp was rad, OSCon was rad, which means Portland, the desert in Eastern Washington, and SJC/SFO were all rad respectively. Lots of bikes, friends, and good conversation have been happening.

Looking forward to the Dead Baby Downhill, have cool plans for that too with Divide. Then back to the grind for SBMF I think? Who knows what else is to come, I can’t even keep track of what’s already happened.

At what point does owning who you are cross the line into being unwilling to take responsibility for your own growth?

[and generally avoiding responsibility, because, you know, life is hard, and you’re fine without it?]

“Yearned for, dreamed about, and, for the fortunate, reveled in, limerance inspires even ordinary persons to verbal excess.”

Gilly, you’re awesome. Thanks!

Do you describe yourself by who you are or what you do?

What personality trait do you want people to associate with you? Why?

“we should talk”

Holy fucking crap, it just hit me like a brick shithouse how awesome it would be someone said that to me. Not in the stereotype way of it being synonomous with “we should breakup”, but in the way that’s “I want to talk about what I think and feel”.

In the course of thinking about value, and being valued, or specifically not, this makes me wax sentimental over the vulnerable ones.

Dad explaining to his parents why I didn’t fly to San Jose: “knowing Bryan he probably showed up with his bike, backpack and his laptop.”

I’m glad he gets it.

On the Coast Starlight headed north for the PNW. I finally got tethering working in Linux, so I have internet at least until we get out into the mountains again. I’m pretty sure Ubuntu Jaunty helped a lot, I just had to setup resolv.conf.

I’m happy about everything now, and excited about the future. I’m a little regretful about the past. I’ve never considered myself a regretful person. Upon thought, the whole idea that one should never be regretful is far too black and white, immature and idealistic. Regret teaches us much like the pain of touching the hot stove. My own vulnerability made me mistread. That’s okay. I can live with that.

I wish I had some way to visualize my journals and my writings over the last ten years. While I wrote recently about how time doesn’t change anything on it’s own, it gives us a certain amount of perception, and angle upon which to peak other than that of the present. Perhaps because I just wrote a cathartic email, I feel good. Most of all, I’ve been facing some fears and while they don’t always not hurt, it is the right choice.

i have only one thing i want to be absolutely sure to say:

if you continue to let your father influence your life, whether you’re doing it willingly or not, you will turn out just as shitty as he is. i don’t understand what or why you’re doing what you’re doing, but it’s pathetic and selfish and just like him.

It’s really great to have perspective sometimes, to be able to look back at the times we felt insane with the experience that’s come since then.

I look forward to the day when I never have to disclaim my intentions again, when my life is full of only people that know that I mean well, even when it unintenionally comes out some other way.

Not everything I want to say fits in a tweet. Of course, most of what I say I don’t think everyone needs to read. And therein is the line.

Or, as says Sherri Grasmuck, a sociology professor at Temple University who has studied Facebook profiles: “I become the social movement as an affirmation of my identity, rather than choosing the social movement because it matches my identity.”

“Just like we need stuff to furnish our homes to show who we are,” says Colding-Jorgensen, “on Facebook we need cultural objects that put together a version of me that I would like to present to the public.”

As usual, I am not a scholar (IANAS?), but this is pretty fucking awesome stuff. Sourced from a WP article.

More awesome conversation with Andy recently about many of these things, and a interesting quote from Amber at another conference:

Teenagers are leaving the letters “idk” on their tests when they don’t know. #isf09 @owyang

So many more conversations and thoughts than I have the time to write about. Life is hard.

Oh! Seattle BMF twitter and facebook page are up!

A friend created a Foursquare venue called Sanity and then checked in after her talk. This is awesome.

I’m pretty sure I’m usually a few inches from the edge. Mother often says “I wouldn’t want to be any other way” when we talk about being advocates for having and expressing feelings. I’ve talked about trying sleeping medication to ensure I’m not so edgy. I’m not sure that it really matters anymore.