In the office upgrading hardy boxes to intrepid tonight in preparation for jaunty’s release. It’s mostly smooth, except that I didn’t realize nagios2 was so old until it disappeared, so I think writing a nice chef nagios3 recipe is probably next on my plate.

More of my earlier hypothetical story.

> You really need to read your messages before you sent them, because
> your tone is often negative.

Actually I put particular thought into the wording of this because I have a nervous problem with being a burden on people. Short of using an emoticon which I can’t decide on the appropriateness of with business people, “What’s up?” is the most passive phrase I could think of to express that it wasn’t a big deal. Being interpretable as slang to most, it denotes a personal nature and ideally this would be disarming.

Having grown up socializing electronically I’m pretty familiar with conveying meaning in a textual format, but those colloquial techniques don’t seamlessly apply to all electronic communication and must be used cautiously when interacting with people who may be unfamiliar with them. I tend to assume non-technical people are in this group, because it’s usually people who are involved in the open source community, and thus somewhat technical, that are most familiar. This is markedly different than generational context like chatting over text or instant message, because it develops from a community.

On a personal note, you can consider anything I say to have no negative connotations, my esteem lends to the BlameYourselfFirst mantra. Any sarcasm is another programmed response at lowering expectations and thus putting people at ease. I’m sorry I came off any other way.

I talk about this because it’s pretty interesting… communication is pretty interesting. I have really strong feelings, I often say this. This also makes me pretty nervous about my ability to communicate this with others. I’m usually pretty sure that people don’t get what I mean. Which isn’t to say they don’t, I just feel that way. Or fear that way perhaps.

I’m not sure I’d want to open much of a personal door with business people I don’t know, but I also tend to have a difficult time not doing that. I was consoling a old buddy over IM tonight who was having problems with his girl, and got to telling old stories he hadn’t heard, and how I’ve dealt with the consequences of them since.

Which, to devague that a little, was that I’ve compromised too much in the past in relationships. I haven’t always been asked to. Perhaps more often than not I did it naturally to ‘fix things’, even before they were broken, but I’ve since figured out that all this ranting about who I am does represent something that needs to be protected to maintain my own happiness.

Alright well, work needs my attention more than this and keeps distracting me.

I saw wordle go through Matt’s flickr so tried it out. The image was created from the rss feed for this blog.

First the griping; they don’t let you save the image but say that if you somehow manage to, then you have to attribute them and apply a Creative Commons license. If you’re going to bother with CC licensing, why not have a save option? Seems defeatist or such.

But it’s pretty interesting which words come up a lot. No surprise seeing “things”, which is my common word for vaguery. So much so that I’ve started using “bits” for a touch of variance. Otherwise, except for bowling popping up out of nowhere it’s pretty centric around.

Let’s say that hypothetically you sent an email saying something like,

My HSA still doesn’t have the 2/28/09 Employee or Employer deposits yet. What’s up?

And someone hypothetically wrote back,

You really need to read your messages before you sent them, because your tone is often negative.

Deposits are going in tomorrow.

In this hypothetical situation, you didn’t have a scheduled HSA payment bounce because the 2/28 deposit didn’t go in, and you didn’t send that email on the 9th, and you didn’t get that response on the 12th. Let’s just say that, and ignore it.

Would you start using emoticons in work email? Googling for “smileys in work email” and “emoticons at work” returns only stupid graphic emoticon web spam in the top results.

If I had thought about this beforehand, I would have a really hard time not responding with a “Actually, you need to not be so negative and assume I’m a jerk. Jerk.” or some snipe remark about charging interest until the deposit is there + a late fee. Because I’m sarcastic as hell, but I’d never for a moment consider myself negative. Maybe compromise on being a ‘realist’ or such, but not negative.

Blah. The world sucks.

I slept a solid nine hours last night, maybe ten. Obviously I was tired, but I don’t like that sort of sleep generally, because of the dreams it produces. I rarely dream outside of those episodes. I had a dream about moving into my fathers house. At least David, Tori and Mom were helping. I don’t think Dad was there, which may have been part of what made it disturbing, in a Dad died sort of way. We were cleaning the house, maybe the basement, David was arguing over how to make another batch of some solvent Tori had cooked up. The only food in the house was beef, and somebody made some. I think I had some, which was upsetting too, until someone asked if I wanted to go to Squid. Which is geographically bizarre, but in the state of dreaming not wholly surprising. Meh.

I thought I mentioned this recently, but on a ride someone came up to me and expressed they thought this journal was cool. That’s been on my mind a bit. Last night a few of us met one of my current and previous coworkers (we started as students together too) Eric at Acme Bowl. What an insane venue. I walked in and immediately felt like I had come home to suburban America. It’s giant. 51,000 square feet gives you 40 lanes, 7 pool tables, private dining rooms, a bar plus it’s own seating section.

ACME combines a cutting-edge urban/industrial environment with the social entertainment of bowling.

Yeah, it’s nothing like bowling lanes are supposed to be. Mom commented on how it doesn’t smell like a bowling lane. We were put in a special area for by the hour bowling and private bowling parties that at the end of about eight lanes had five projection televisions. Two of which were playing music videos, mostly hip hop full of scantily clad woman and the likes. The others had various sports on, including poker. The sound from the music videos was blaring and there were all sorts of lighting effects.

Back to the point. Occasionally though, an old video would come up. Once of which was Head Over Feet by Alanis Morissette. I got thinking about the lyrics, and people identifying with lyrics. While browsing some compilations that included her songs on iTunes, I noticed iTunes Essentials, Gay Pride: Girls 2. I couldn’t figure out if this was “music by gay girls”, or, “hey, if you are a gay girl you might like this” or what, and I found this article. Alanis shows a little surprise that she has a large gay following.

When I heard about your and Ryan’s breakup, I said, “Well, that sucks, but at least some incredible music will come out of it.” Did you have a similar realization?
Wow. Once the record was finished, it dawned on me that so much beautiful art comes from transmuting pain. It’s always been the case. But there are two great life forces that have the power to move worlds: anger and love. For me to become empowered postdepression, I have to move through anger. So [the new track] “Straitjacket”? Angry.

So keeping an online journal. Many people tell me it’s great that I do, and they’re almost always (if not always?) people who don’t themselves. I think it’s a privacy concern out of the gate, although I think it’s unfounded and unfortunate. The only time I’ve had any other response to my journal being online than “that’s great” was once or twice with an ex-girlfriend who was worried about what her friends who read my blog talking about my feelings would think about her. This was insanely convoluted and I’ll leave it at that. One of the things I like about writing an online journal is that people can not only read the things I’m thinking about, but hopefully see that we think about some similar things. Growing up I always felt like everyone else had it figured out because nobody else I hung out around talked about what they were thinking about. I didn’t either at first, out of fear of being weird and alone. Eventually I started writing and with no negative consequences coming out of it, I ended up where I am today.

This post is like how I tell stories, too many are getting mixed into each other. I was talking to Mom in the truck last night about keeping an online journal and where other people find their connections and express themselves. I mentioned that watching that Alanis Morissette video made me think about how people connect with music and lyrics. She agreed that there’s some relief and not feeling alone about how you feel in identifying with someone’s lyrics.

Brain dump in five minutes, go.

Meant to come into the office and look at some Samba code I’m having problems with, but plans have been made for food, biking, and bowling already tonight. Whew. It’s good though, sometimes I need to make sure I get out on the weekends.

I’m falling down the rabbit hole again, as usual with all of the best intentions. I feel better about where I’m going with life and relationships with the last month of thought about it. I’m not entirely sure if that changes a whole lot for anyone else, but my problems are generally centered around how I feel, so it does make a difference.

I feel bad about past relationships occasionally, like I’ve left a strewn mess behind me. But I can’t take responsibility really, because I do express how I feel honestly and try to act accordingly. I guess I worry that my feelings are a burden on other peoples lives, and sometimes I worry they’re too whimsical.

Which I don’t think is true, but I’m more apt to blame myself than anyone else.

Here’s to acting on feelings though.

I once dated a girl who’s sarcasm was impossible to read. In retrospect, it probably was meant to be that way. I haven’t met very few people who claimed to be able to tell the difference. It makes it hard to look back at the things she said and take anything from them. She once attributed some changes in my life to choice she made. It sounded serious, but it could have been a joke. Grain of salt, blah blah blah.

It’s an almost perfect night out. I was riding my fixed down Airport Way between the Awful Shark and Georgetown, listening to The Bends. I’ve talked and thought in the past about how many of the things that have transpired since I’ve moved to Seattle totally shifted my views of the world, industry, culture and myself.

Fifteen years ago, the list of things I didn’t know, couldn’t comprehend and hadn’t done was tremendous. The Bends hadn’t even been released yet. That’s not a particularly epic event to transpire in my life, but I associate Radiohead with memories of the nineties. People in Seattle don’t seem to listen to Radiohead either, at least not with the fervor reserved for a band Dan Bejar has touched; maybe I’m just getting old for reals, in the ways that count.

By day, I’m a fan of systems. I pierce them with a hard glare until their secrets are revealed to me. This usually takes time of examining the parts. There comes a time when you look back and realize that you now see the artful beauty of a system that is much more than the bolts and threads that went into it.

The parts that make up who I am are no longer the bolts they once were. Once let loose on the world, bits from everywhere leak in and your personality is weaved into a tapestry of life. I can [and will] tell you endless stories of how I got here. I can also, now more than ever, tell you what direction I’m heading in tomorrow. No more, as I have no destination in mind. If you try to pick the threads out to see where they came from… well, that’s a long story.

Poor commute execution again on my part. No fender on the bike, cotton long underwear, totally wet. But the sunshine is leaking in through the window behind me and it’s making me smile.

Thinking about Dad’s list of three while waiting for a virtual machine to copy to backup. I’ve always had trouble with looking forward to things, and making future plans. I fear disappointment, it’s a vulnerable feeling. It’s one of those feelings that people don’t talk about enough, and it leads us too often to feel alone. Thinking that nobody else feels the way that we do. Which is absurd if you ponder it, but when you feel, it’s a different story. The risk of loss is generally something I’m okay with, that is when it’s something material. I’m particularly vulnerable to fearing the loss of people in my life. Not so often in a “they’ll get hit by a bus” way, but insofar as they are individuals, who make their own choices and I must accept them.  It’s not that I want people to be who I want them to be, I don’t feel that way and think it’s ludicrous. The value of the people in our lives are that they are individuals, which is what makes those who we identify with more special.

I’ve declared and accepted my future lately. That is that it isn’t going to be what I assumed it would eventually be. I simply wouldn’t be happy settled down. When I’ve had conversations about it in the past about what life would be like, I’ve left them with an ill feeling. I’ve identified that, it’s heavy compromise. One might argue that this is a part of growing up. I declare it isn’t. I don’t do very much right, I do most things how I feel is right. Which is right enough for me. Of course this indicator comes at a cost. I’m okay with that, I’ve always been okay with that.

The meaning of life is learning to live by your heart, right?

Sung to Piano Man by Billy Joel. Because I need more sleep apparently.

It’s nine on clock on a tuesday
The regular crowd shuffles in
Theres an IT dude sitting next to me
Making love to his acks and his syns

He says, son, can you blog me a memory?
Im not really sure how it goes
But it’s smart and and a feat and I knew it complete
When I spent all day watching tubes flow

He says, son, can you blog me a memory?
But it’s smart and and a feat and I knew it complete
But its sad and its sweet and I knew it complete
When I spent all day watching tubes flow

La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da

Write us a blog, youre the hacker man
Write us a blog, youre the hacker man
Write us a blog tonight
Well, were all in the mood for a memory
And you’ve got us flowin alright

Now john in the NOC is a friend of mine
He gets me my fiber for free
And he’s quick with a joke or to give you a coke
But theres someplace that he’d rather be
He says, bill, I believe this is killing me.
As the smile ran away from his face
Well I’m sure that I could be a garbage man
If I could get out of this place

Oh, la la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da

Now bryan is a systems administrator
Who never had time for a wife
And hes talkin with burt whos still in support
And probably will be for life

And the secretary is practicing security
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes, theyre sharing a job they call loneliness
But its better than workin alone

Write us a blog, youre the hacker man
Write us a blog, youre the hacker man
Write us a blog tonight
Well, were all in the mood for a memory
And you’ve got us flowin alright

Its a pretty good uptime for a tuesday
And the manager gives me a smile
cause he knows that its me that made the redundancy
to unclog the tubes for a while
And the servers, they sound like a carnival
And the keyboard smells like a jolt
And they sit in their cubes, usin my tubes
And say, man, what are you doin here?

Oh, la la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da

Every once in a while I get an email saying someone has created an account here, but I rarely see comments as a result. What am I missing?

I’m trying to make graphs for some new data collection I’ve done against couchdb HEAD, but last time I tried the result was pretty disappointing. I blame open office’s chart wizard. Jaunty has oo 3.0, so I’m trying to pull those packages right now. That’s slow, which means I probably will go to bed, or maybe I’ll just stay up writing. Going to Jaunty on a lone desktop is probably a mistake at this point, but testing we shall have.

I gave up and set up a payment plan for out of state tuition. Everything I’ve read from the forms implies I’m in plenty of time for a judgement deadline there, but I’ve also read a number of bits requiring payment within seven days of adding the class. So that will just happen, and hopefully we’ll get the rest resolved over the next month. Having to dig up so much paperwork for the SCCC residency forms is frustrating.

Getting shared library errors on the desktop already while trying to run vim. I guess I need to commit to this upgrade.

It’s a stark reminder to read the insight in my older blog posts. I’m going back through reading the product of the last six months of living.

Part of me wishes I could find some direction in other peoples writings, but I know that my problems are my own.

Reading these passages assures me that I actually know exactly how I feel, what I want, and what I think. There’s very little fluctuation in what I’ve been saying for some time now. I’ve been worried that I what I think could be wrong. I’ve been wrong plenty before. I worry too much about how other people are going to feel about this, and I don’t believe it’s done me any good.

Book: You got a plan?
Mal: Hiding ain’t a plan?
. . .
[Mal mentions that he could have left River behind.]
Book: It’s not your way, Mal.
Mal: I have a way? That better than a plan?

I may not have ever had a plan, and at this point I’m pretty sure I won’t. I do have a way, and I’m going to keep living it.

After nice weather was abruptly ended during my commute home with a downpour, I searched a bit for some place new to eat on Yelp, including a brief review of Squid’s comments, once again reminding me that I am not most people, and in fact am often upset by the priorities of most people. In the end, Tori and I ventured out in warmer clothes under drier skies for dinner at Smarty Pants for chow. Somehow field roast gets you drunk. So it goes.

I distinctly separate the things I think and the things I feel into two parts of me. While they affect each other, I’ve come to accept my feelings as a part of me that changes over time in reaction to experiences, but that I don’t change. On the other hand, I believe that the things I think are open for reinterpretation and manipulation to progressive ends.

I made the comment over the weekend that I view my father’s stoicism with negative feelings. I express the way I feel, and more often than not worry mostly about other people having to deal with the consequences of my feelings. Thinking back to early relationships, I remember years going by of not telling people of how I felt. Out of fear? Probably feelings of insignificance. Not probably, definitely. For those that feel and haven’t constructed complex defense mechanisms, or even those that have, the vulnerability of these kinds of feelings are awfully strong. Distracting, disorienting.

I never got over transgressions by my first girlfriend. It took me a while to come to terms with that. That may be why I have a problem with being stoic, I’m prone to it, and don’t feel okay about it. I don’t ask a lot of girlfriends, mostly I want them to like me and want to be around me. I’ll never have the skills/tricks/ability to manipulate a situation otherwise. I say that because of how I feel.

I’m an independent person though. I take care of myself and I have no expectations of anyone else doing anything for me. That’s as black and white as it gets. I get the benefit of appreciating what does get done for me because of it. The cons? Loneliness? I don’t know. I’ve never been any other way, it’s hard to say. Perhaps that I end up in dramatic situations more often than I should? I hold on too long?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter in the end. I will continue to do what I do, even when it’s one step forward, two steps back, because I simply don’t know any other way to act. I’m honest and straight forward, perhaps to a fault. You do the things that feel right, and do what needs to be done. Perhaps that’s ever bit a part of where I come from.

The lack of coffee filters in this house is distressing. Fortunately it appears all city opened at 6am, so I’m off in that direction shortly.

Seems like it was a drinking weekend. I worked late on some java + couchdb projects Friday night. Java is frustrating. So very much time is spent writing setup code and dealing with classes hidden deep in jars rather than just writing code. But it’s coming together and I got some results.

Sweet, Ken’s going to All City. So I’ll wait for that.

Mom and I met for dinner at Cafe Flora, and made it to the Shark for Dollhouse and BSG. The latter is coming to an end in three episodes and, well, as they say, is heating up. Saturday and Sunday morning were described already. I did get a second outlet into the garage later in the day yesterday, and pulled down the EMT I had picked up to make the bike rack with. I got thinking about my lack of a mitre box for making the 45 degree cuts when Scott and Meg showed up at Jules Maes, so Ken and I joined them. Ken and Scott floated the idea of using a chop saw, which seems mostly like a semi-good reason to blow more money on tools. Meg thinks Colin may have a tube bending machine in his shop that will go that big though.

It took me a couple years, but I got up to Seattle Central and took the compass placement exam for math/english. English scored were near perfect and placed me in ENG101. I assume from that it’s mostly to determine you don’t need any remedial “what is a comma” type work. Having had a math class history that’s suffered from being in and out of school when I was younger, I didn’t know where that would end up. I got placed into Pre-calc II. That class is full, as is the Computer Science class I was looking it, so I think I’m going to take Pre-calc I at night, which has space and will at least get me going. I’m still considering if I should take ENG101 as a correspondence course. I’ve got to deal with getting in-state tuition setup, so perhaps I’ll worry about that later. Oh the maths. And school. I’m not really sure what’s gotten into my head.

The latter part of the story goes as so. After dropping out of high school I spent six months coming to terms with existentialist angst, although I didn’t call it that at the time. Once that was settled, on with life. I spent some time working at the University of Maine in the Chemical Engineering department doing computer work. I wanted to go there, but I’d need a diploma. Since I was under 18, I couldn’t get a GED without a college having accepted me, and I couldn’t apply to UMO without a high school diploma. I got a letter from the college that looked all fancy asking them to let me take the GED, and one from a high school guidance counsellor explaining I was much better off this way, but it didn’t work. There’s some irony in the laws meant to keep kids in school, keeping kids out of school instead.

So I went back and took some night classes, tests and whatever through the adult education department to finish off the diploma, graduating a month early from high school to the surprise of many family members who were still convinced I was a no good drug addict, mostly because I must be immature and a failure because my parents raised me mostly without strong moral guidance tied with strict punishments. And a gold star to my parents for supposing I could learn all that on my own if allowed to. Eastern Maine Technical College (now a community college) was starting a new networking programming which I was interested in. I took a physics class at night there to meet the entry requirements. The class was incredibly frustrating due to the other students and towards the end of the class my attendance fell off a cliff. My instructor looked at me puzzle when I showed up on the last day, but let me take all the tests I had missed as well as the final and not let the time have gone to waste. By the time I was finished with that I looked at the syllabus, and saw the final quarter of the second year would be spent studying the material I had been reading for the last couple of months myself. With that, I that idea went out.

Some time later I had another college foray, taking some Interactive Television (ITV) courses through the University of Maine at Augusta (as opposed to the engineering college at Orono) for business classes. Having given up on getting any interesting Information Technology classes anywhere, I decided some business classes wouldn’t hurt. They did. All of my classes amounted to working out of text books. Having long ago learned to read a book and understand it on my own, I ran out of reasons to be there quickly.

So what exactly do I expect to garner this time around? Certainly not a diploma, at least this decade. Some theory I suppose. My practical skills and my thoughts about them in my industry are already leading edge. Some time ago I realized this when I went to the computer aisle in a book store and realized you couldn’t buy books about the software and technology I’m working with because we haven’t written them yet. We’ll start with some maths, ideally get some computer science classes in there to cover some prerequisites so if I do see something that really engages me down the road I won’t be screwed on account of that. I’ll try to stick to classes that are transferable to UW or directly applicable to something else I do. I’ve considered the meteorology courses for my flying, for instance. It’s sort of like the boy scout motto applied to school. I’m certainly crossing my fingers very hard in hope that I’m not going to be paying hundreds of dollars to be read to.

Which reminds me of a funny story at an unnamed private vocational school for computer certifications. I took a Microsoft SQL DBA (Database Administrator) (MCDBA) certification training course there because at the time the four tests for this certification had two that overlapped with the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MSCE) certification I was aiming for to get someone to look twice at my resume and actually give me the opportunity to talk. Anyway, the instructor was terrible and read directly from the coursework. We weren’t really held to the material strictly though, so I made due. The funny part was that he ended up leaving, and I had just started working there. I was one of the few instructors that had a solid set of the recent certifications to match the classes I was teaching, and I got picked to teach the MCDBA classes. The argument was that it’s more important you know how to teach than know all of the material. It’s certainly essential you know how to teach well and moreso to engage the students. (I’m curious to see how my experience teaching affects my interest in classes now.) All the same, I always felt a little shifty about the teachers not always having the certifications, or on the job experience, with the technology they were teaching.

Before the event that caused me occured, it was hinted at. I was specifically asked if I was on board, yet without any direct statement of what ship I was joining. This felt like straight out of some business book, or “CYA for Dummies”. In response I said simply that they should do what they felt was right, and I would do what I felt was right. This wasn’t what they wanted to hear. I found some irony in this too because of another event.

A supplier once sent us twice the product we paid for by accident. When I asked what we were going to do about it, I got this lecture about how we were an honest company and expected to make the right decisions. Really, I wanted to know exactly what we were going to do; such as who to call, should I drive over there, etcetera. When folks get up on their soap box like that, I tend to let them have it. I don’t feel the need to justify myself to people acting that way. So I found amusement when shady actions were justified as being on board, having been lectured previously about doing the Right Thing.

In the end, I left the company after said event. It was an extremely difficult choice for me, but I stuck by it because I felt strongly that leaving was the right thing to do, for a number of reasons. I’m getting back to giving The Cathedral and the Bazaar a solid read. By design, it’s one of those books that puts to words things you may already have though, provided you are a part of the open source community. This has brought back a lot of memories of working for people that tried to direct what I did on a regular basis.

I’ve worked in technology almost all of my life. Definitely all of my life since high school. The time before then I often regard as a pre-cursor to life. I’ve never worked in fast food. My after school (and sometimes during school) jobs were in computer repair, then system administration (starting an ISP). Through Matthew, I’ve had a lot of experience in trades, solving unexpected problems daily in unexpected places in the world. I’ve put in a “hard days work” in both labor and tech in ways that I’ve found very few willing to (or capable of). When I employed a few friends doing electronics salvage, I remember one asking me how I was still lugging around piles of scrap cable after twelve hours of work without complaint. How do you explain to someone that you just do? He only lasted a week or two.

I don’t know how people get to feel so entitled. I suppose I could relate by thinking about how difficult it is for me to deal with emotional problems at times. However I’m pretty sure that my difficulties are that I try to, whereas most people don’t.

Reading the aforementioned book and thinking about places I’ve worked shows a pattern of success when working for people that give me a task and let me go; trusting me to come back if I have a question but otherwise get the work done the best I can discover on my own. Those who have ever tried to outline my day have only caused me undue stress, and my eventual departure.

When I told my father I was going to take some college courses, he asked me about how my certifications were going as I hadn’t talked about them for a while. They aren’t going. They got me a couple jobs here, and enough time has passed that I know enough people here that know how capable I am that I don’t doubt my ability to find other work if necessary. Ideally future jobs will be squarely open source, and I think the internet will be able to speak for me in short order. I’d still like an RHCE or a CCIE some day, but I touch Cisco equipment only out of occasional necessity or fun now, and I haven’t touched Redhat since 6.2, despite promising Scott Dodson I’d give it another look sometime. The power of being both a solid system and network administrator fits where I’m going now in a different way than it used to. The jack of all trades skill set sells “I can take care of everything if you let me do it” well, but it’s forming into a background that makes my design choices well founded as I almost subconsciously pick apart systems in search of flaws that aren’t stable or scalable.

Coffee is devoured, I should get to the office.