This morning’s bus ride thoughts were about maturing, Mom. While I’m no fan of destiny, and at this moment I think only those with fear of uncertainty are, I wonder how much of life is maturing as opposed to figuring out who you’ve always been.

I was thinking about the “traumatic moments” of my childhood on the bus and the only thing that makes me believe they were is the impression that they were supposed to be. A passage I read in High Fidelity last night speaks of how much of an “average” person the main character is. I can’t find it online in short notice to quote it, but I found this and found this quote interesting:

High Fidelity has been talked about as portraying the romantic existence of the “average guy”, but in all honesty, if Rob truly was an “average guy”, I’d feel pretty sad for the human race. There is something to be said for being a jerk, a bit of a loser, and still managing to attract a lot of people, and that is anything but “average” (and this ignores his passion for pop music, which most people do not possess).

I’ll come back to the music part, but some of you who have seen the movie will remember the early scene where he talks about being average. The passage in the book is longer and goes on to describe how he believes his greatest trait is that he’s average all the way around. While no part of him is particularly above the high water mark, none lies in the wastes beneath either.

I’ve always considered my childhood as average. Certainly in 8th grade when I went to “the warm and fuzzy school” and the vast majority of my classmates came from “broken” (separated or divorced) households, such things were average. I don’t know if my generation was the generation where having divorced parents saw a sudden influx, nor to I really care to look it up to know, but it certainly seemed like people were a little surprised at it becoming the norm. Enough that I’ve grown up to expect it.

It reminds me of a conversation with an ex-girlfriend where she was worried about our relationship “going to fast” and I questioned where it was going to go any faster, as neither of us appeared anxious to get married or move in together any time soon. Maybe that was a false assumption in retrospect, but that’s another volume, perhaps to never be opened.

I’m not saying I feel pessimistic about marriage. Maybe to some I appear that way as “average” for me is this way. I wouldn’t even say cautious, although I’m probably the oldest of all my cousins that’s unmarried. As both my mother and Julie have coined recently, it’s oft labeled as being the “black sheep”, which simply amounts to not really being like your peers, whoever they may be at that moment of consideration, on face value.

I had meant this post to be a couple sentences as I have some work to get done this morning, part of going to bed early and coming in early, but it appears to be a train of thought on the move. Looking back I’ve always considered life as not having started until I dropped out of high school. That it hasn’t been ten years yet is somewhat amazing. I’ll probably feel differently twenty years from now, but life since high school feels like an eternity looking back. Everything has changed, even without using switching coasts as a yard stick.

Did “trauma” of my childhood act as a catalyst for being “born again” upon dropping out? I have no idea. That’s subject for psychological debates, and I’ve always believed such things were subjective. Perhaps my soul would see better days if I took to another belief and enrolled myself in hypnotherapy to relive those days but I’ve never had any desire to go down such a path. I would not say I hold my past more or less responsible for who I am today, nor do I hold myself a martyr for having survived it. It just was, and on a daily basis I find myself only concerned about where I am now rather than what life was like twenty years ago.

Spinning down here on the ranting and warming up for work, so I’ll leave you, wizard people, dear reader, with this quote:

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

[synergy was failing me copying that quote from linux to windows, opening up the page on the windows machine to copy it to the clipboard crashed firefox, which failed to save the form data. thank wordpress for having saved the draft. ramen.]

it’s a year of moves.

moving the loftninjas.org site to ninjr.org, which includes the rants and the blog, which is being converted to wordpress as well. Stay tuned as I try to find time to redo the artsy fartsy css.

A couple interesting websites: you know when you google for a UPS or Fedex tracking number, Google offers you a link to the correct place to track? If not, try it sometime. I found today that if you google for a UPC Code, it takes you to this open UPC database project. I also met someone at a party that works at Bag, Borrow or Steal, a netflix model that rents designer hand bags instead of movies. The tubes sure have improved our lives!

I’ve been doing errands and house chores all day and I’m still somehow feeling behind. Oh well, I’m slowly getting better at turning down helping people and other opportunities; time management, yuck.  I’m sitting down now and picking up the High Fidelity book. If you’ve seen the movie, you may recognize this:

That probably sounds crueler than it is meant to, but the fact is that we’re too old to make each other miserable, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing, so don’t take your failure to make the list personally. Those days are gone, and good fucking riddance to them; unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it’s just a drag, like a cold or having no money. If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.

I’ve made many attempts since my accident to try to describe feeling old. Most recently was last night, as I was explaining to a friend of Julie’s why I moved out of the SS Awful Shark, and the explanation started with, “I’m feeling old”. I’m often unsure how deep to explain things. With something technical, it’s fairly easy enough to poke around someones head and see what their experience is, such that you can then choose the right level on which to speak. With matters of the soul though, I don’t feel that there’s an “experienced” and “unexperienced” scale, except perhaps that of lacking it altogether such as in youthful ignorance. So when I start explaining feeling old, I get all over the place, but that quote kind of struck me, because it has little to do with age, but rather something deeper and less finite. I usually go on to talk about patience, which never feels right, because I don’t feel like I’m an impatient person, although that may be changing as I find myself more and more uncomfortable when time is spent wasted (such as meetings where we talk about what we’re going to do, rather than do it. a whole other story there.) But like when talking to Speakeasy technical support recently and they were trying to explain to me the reasons that could have caused my problem, none of which I could do anything about, I was getting rather impatient and trying to make the tech stop talking and simply arrange whatever was required to move forward. I really don’t care -why- it didn’t work out, because there’s nothing I could do about it.

As I continue to explore my emotions and realize how they’ve modified over the past few years I find myself thinking more about what’s important to me to spend my time on. As I’ve chipped away drama inducing situations, which required energy to maintain but produced little more than the drama itself, I’ve found more desire to spend time with people that on a whole produce more happiness than effort goes in to the relationship, as I’m a believer in the sums can be greater than the whole theories.

Another long week begins tomorrow however, so I’m going to read, do some laundry and get some shut eye. Hopefully I’ll get in to work and get some work done before anyone really notices how far behind I am.

I’ve been drinking drip in the office for a couple months now. It seemed like a good idea at the time, cheaper than going downstairs to the Starbucks and easier. Unfortunately that means a couple cups of coffee a day has turned into 5+ and I’m pretty sure it’s having a lasting effect on me these days as I’ve been coming home tired for a good week. While soda is less caffeinated, it doesn’t seem like a great tradeoff. I guess I’m going to need to get a couple cases of Vitamin Water and keep them in office.

But here I am, up again after a short nap because while I feel tired, I can’t seem to find the thread in the dark betwixt feeling tired and actually sleeping. That’s alright, I haven’t written a good bit in some time doing to being busy and behind in projects. Bus rides, bar conversations and adventures have left initial sparks of rants in the back of my mind, shimmering now and then but never at the right time to find their way to paper.

Apparently one of our neighbors read my introductory post to the Georgetown neighborhood mailing list and comment to Ken about how I was a blogger. I didn’t realize the two were so intertwined. They aren’t really, blow over from my sarcastic attempts at taking over the name Bryan McLellan on the intartubes.

Eric Bixler came by the office today and it looks like we’ll be hiring part time for Help Desk / IT Support. I’m excited because he’s good people and I could definitely use the help. He’s cleaned up since my memories of Exchange 2003 class at Strategy with him, back in 2005 or so.

I had a great time hanging out with Julie on Sunday. After stomping around the woods near Gold Greek, I-90 West was still messed up from an earlier avalanche so we cruised up around through Leavenworth and back on US-2 giving us lots of time to chat about all sorts of subjects. She commented on hoping that was the first of many adventures and I’m not able to put it any better myself. I’m fortunate [through lots of hard work] to have reached where I am on a day to day basis but I still long for less repetitiveness and more adventure.

For Seattle having so much outdoor wonder to offer, I’m still a little surprised by how many seem to take advantage of it. Hiking isn’t any sort of a regular hobby for most and while I can’t claim that I have been on a regular basis before this dark winter I’ve felt like getting people to the mountains has been a hassle, enough to make me comment on my okcupid profile that “I tend to marry people who take me canoe camping, or live in a van-ing, or whatever.”

I’ve had a couple friends I’ve managed to drag along to places the last year, and with recent nostalgia regarding crazy wanderings in a past life, that’s been positive in the same way. All the same, I’m excited to hang out with Julie again and feel like adventure isn’t half convincing folks that it will be fun followed by cliches like “I bet the top is just over that next hill.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been a dramatic person. I’m unsure if I’ve always felt as easy going as I do now, but I know I’m more conscience of drama and despite my efforts to shrug it off, it’s tolls on me. I wonder if the drama at the Awful Shark was more intense than that at The Loft. It seems impossible, because we were all so much older, yet I know that alone means little. When I think of adults being more calm and reasonable, I start imagining boring nine to fivers who spend their evenings arguing over stuff white people like. Which I pretty much think is fully a waste of oxygen. Even before living in HipsterLand (known as Seattle elsewhere) I never picked up on people’s excitement about new music. It’s definitely an art thing, but I’ve always felt like much of it comes from an ego battle, a desire to be cool. I’ve commented recently on preferring a blue collar mechanic to the hipster elite any day and I stand by that.

I try to question myself and maintain a little objectivity and I find myself wondering what bits in the world I’m an elitist over? I’d tend to jump to computers, as that feels like where my greatest experience lies and I’d figure of arrogance would come anywhere it would be where I had toiled the most. I think all of the opinions I have in that land have experiences that have formed some degree of wisdom, albeit twisted with a bit of sarcasm and opinion. The usual Windows / Linux argument, outside of my sarcasm lacks enough hot air to be found in my persona. I use both on a regular basis and have use for both, any complaints generally come from frustration in trying to get either to do what I want, which applies more to all tools than either side of the operating system wars. I realize I’ve met many who have prejudices against software for it being too complicated but in the majority of these circumstances it was a lack of ‘big picture’ understanding on the part of the user rather than a major failure of the software, and less often the case of a user simply realizing it was easier to walk around that mountain than try to surmount it.

Anyhow, drama. It’s been a topic of conversation and thought as of late as to why people seem to generate so much of it. I’ve simply walked away from a number of situations over the last six months where I felt people were deliberately causing unneeded drama, knowingly or not, and whatever I was getting from being there wasn’t worth it. That is, I know enough good people that my time is better spent, and happier, spent with others. I feel like when that choice is made without any or little angst or ill-will sourced where I’m coming from, as fuel for going the other way; that it’s a healthy, positive choice that needs to be more active than passive in my life.

It’s quite interesting actually. I’ve often wondered in amazement how we can be so full of ourselves as individuals in a world with so many people in it, yet we do somehow, with the exceptions most often being when we have esteem problems. Not that everyone simply thinks they’re either awesome or worthless, but somehow the middle seems to be a barren place reserved for monks that the ‘spiritual but not religious’ folks aim to align themselves with. Similar thoughts can be traced back through I think I can do that.

I feel like I’ve written recently about confidence and arrogance, but all I can find quickly is a rant after watching Into the wild, and some okcupid inspired bits about being surprised at the number of of power hungry people out there in search of fast cars and fast [wo]men.

There was this situation a while back that I was a third party two where there were three folk talking about each other “behind each others back” in triangular form. The bonds or links weren’t equal, but were lines of communication at the very least. Because of the weakness of these bonds though, much of the communication was shallow, and became passive aggressive which was a brutal catalyst for near pure emotional aggressiveness. The question in my mind that come out of it was “what exactly do you hope to get out this?” We’re not talking about people that were likely to change, and the way it all came out certainly wasn’t conducive to being constructive. Another angle is interesting, which is, “what do you have to lose?” If the risk is little, and you’re still following through with your actions, what you’re hoping to gain almost certainly is your own selfish sense of self satisfaction from “putting someone in their place” by way of venting.

After that particular event, Andy and I were talking about it and he mentioned how odd it was that I seem to have so many dramatic people in my life. I have to consider if I thrive on it somehow, as others I know seem to, but I feel that I’ve been too passive in the past where a majority would explode and there’d be enough friction to end friendships, I mostly look the other way.

In a sort of medical surgery, attempting to separate past feelings with reality, I’ve been thinking about this whole sort of disaster lately. There’s some interesting bits in Nicomachean Ethics about choosing our companions based on entertainment value or morality. Two traits stick in my mind as having been held by friends: one is a lack of conscience and guilt being held retroactively under the guise of some sort of regret, and the other is a sort of extremist self-esteem that I’ve had more trouble looking at objectively.

The reality is that every situation I can ponder, someone righteously expressing how much they’ve done for, given up for, or catered to me is pretty solid evidence that it never was for me at all.

Took Hannah and Wendell to Squid and Ink today. It’s great living basically next door to that place. The ‘chicken fried steak’ was today’s breakfast and was just wonderful. I’ve had one door off the back of the truck for 24 hours since I pulled it to replace the hinge pins and had run out of drill bits trying to drill the old pins yesterday. I went to Home Depot and got more bits and finished the job today. Followed by some lunch at Georgetown Liquor Company with Tori and her mom who had gone shopping for house-prettying-things. When I got home I changed the oil and then hung some curtain and towel rods for Tori.

This house makes me feel old, and I’m okay with that. Tori and I started a BBBS Bowl for Kids Sake Team called Team Pancake and my mom sent a photo along of an old BFKS. I talked to Abner and Kristina briefly about old times. Nostalgia’s an interesting beast. I don’t have the words tonight I don’t think to describe how comfortable I am with how things life has progressed and happy with who I am. It’s important, because it’s been a long time coming, but it’s happened by way of many trials and much tribulation.

Anthony made a drunken comment recently that’s stuck in my mind about how “Bryan does whatever he wants”. I ponder how much of being laid back should be described as laid back, or disaffected, or something else. Sometimes I describe myself as being disconnected, but it’s not the best word because looking back upon time and events it’s been a choice. I can recall events where I have purposely chosen to not get involved in drama that brings me no benefits.

I’ve thought about this drama business off and on the last few weeks, prompting a house move, making effort to make less efforts towards hanging out with people who frankly bring more stress ( + drama) than return. Reminds me of Niccomacean Ethics. I should probably pick up reading that again. Lots of things still aren’t settled though, there’s work to be done, house chores, and I gotta get out of the house now that the suns out. Thankfully Julie and I are going snowshoeing tomorrow.

Long day, days, at the office. I feel responsible for not working on things that I’ve placed as high priority/important because I get caught up in other projects and want to do a good job.

Like my clipboard has been dieing more and more on my XP desktop, and when trying to test an SSL Cert I realized I needed to do it externally, and figured, install ubuntu, run firefox remotely over an ssh tunnel!

A few hours later I had things sorted out (compiz-fusion doesn’t like xinerama for dualhead. Use twinview. Coredumps make not for good error messages, this is why we hate binary drivers). All in all, having a linux desktop again has made things so much easier. I can once again keep track of ssh connections, since I have compiz cube running again it’s easy to keep each project on a set of virtual desktops. Plus I can still run synergy and use my windows laptop. Today I set up the rt command line utilities as well, which I think will be more useful than the mail TakeAction stuff.

I know much more has been on my mind than computers, but it’s mostly fading thoughts in dreams and musing on the bus to and from downtown. Moving is coming up quick and the room is all clean.

After ranting about dimdim the other day, the CMO emailed me and called me to talk about it. Swell guy, he said the CTO was going to call, but he never did. Oh well. Maybe I’ll look at the state of dimdim again in a week or two and see if they’ve changed or it was just fluff. Works to be done in the interim.

At about 3pm today I realized I had no idea if I had eaten lunch or not. I just had no idea if I had posted about my grandparents being in town either, but that’s a little more believable. I think that I’ve been smelling unchicken soup everywhere that it’s a sign that there’s some wacky and medically wrong with me. Well… We know the wacky part is right.

Went to the Twilight for dinner the other day and Ken B. was there with Kirsten’s sister Reese. Apparently she’s a CS major AND had heard of Why the lucky stiff‘s poignant guide to Ruby. World’s a crazy place, like I said, it feels normalish though. Times sure do change…. gettin’ old.

More soup and sleep for me I think. Gotta build up some reserves for this weekend and I’ve still got a couple puppet recipes to write this week. Perhaps having a personal rule about not installing software anymore without writing a recipe was a bad idea.

Good times were had today with the grandparents. I met them down at their hotel in Seatac and after canceling their other hotel plans we met Tori and Ken at Linda’s so I could have some breakfast. They really enjoyed meeting them and the waiter was super nice to them, with gram leaving super satisfied at how easy it was to get a good cup of black tea. A stop by Metrix so they could print boarding passes and we drove around, ending up at Widemile so I could show them the office. I showed Grampie the data center and he reminisced about showing his father the training aids he had made back when he was a flight instructor and it all just leaving his dad confused.

We bailed on downtown as police were showing up on the streets for some Saint Patty’s day event and we drove around SODO and Georgetown. Then off to West Seattle to take some photos, and I saw Jim Mercure on Alki taking photos so we stopped to chat with him. Back to Georgetown to GLC for food where they were again super satisfied with the service, food and tea. These being my meat and potatoes grandparents, enjoying some split pea and vegan ham soup. Of course they had to ask what vegan ham was. Not what was in it, what it was.

Taking it easy, I drove out to Redmond, through Carnation and Fall City. I called Liz and she was around so we stopped by her place in North Bend to chat and have some coffee. Then back to town to meet Grampie’s cousin Ann at Araya’s for dinner. Ah, the real test. This was only the second time in their entire lives they had Thai food, let alone vegan thai food. They seemed happy and wanted to know what that good stuff was called. Oh that? That’s tofu.

I just dropped them back off to Seatac, they’re flying off to Spokane tomorrow and getting a ride to Montana.

I’ve been really busy with work. I’ll let everyone know what I’m up to soon, but it’s all good stuff. And Moving! Gotta move at the end of the month, don’t know where I’ll find the time.

I’m convinced that writing an okc profile is one of the best exercises in self-evaluation I’ve done, or that one could do. I think about it a lot, and more than once have sat down wanting to re-write it elsewhere, solely for the such purposes.

Another night on the hill leaves me thinking about the past, ex-girlfriends, and mostly overshadowed by perception. God damn that perception seems to have a rigid hold on so many things, but I give it a lot of credit because I get a lot of credit where I don’t put effort because I’m so … disconnected.. that I come off as cool and relaxed I suppose? I don’t know how to interpret the subtle actions of others that don’t communicate verbally, and combined with recent reminiscing about recent and past arguments that seem outright foolish, I’m leaning more and more on side that it doesn’t really matter. People need to chill out.

I need to evaluate hobbies a little bit, and how people get tied up in scenes. We do, and normally I dislike scenesters, but I have to consider how much of one I probably am.

So I’m moving to Georgetown with Tori and Ken Caruso. We’ll be moving in 4/1 and finishing off the month in our current houses. Somehow the Awful Shark became the Loft again. Life’s no fun if you have to assign tasks to people like buying toilet paper and doing dishes, but it’s also pretty terrible when such things don’t get done. When you wake up the day after cleaning the kitchen and it’s trashed again overnight, and realize you’ve been here before, you sort of have to kick yourself in the ass for falling into the same ruts again. It’s been a long time coming though, I’ve just been keeping my head down through the gun play (true story) and everything else, mostly because it’s been such a hard winter for me dealing with all the post accident crap.

We’re pretty excited to explore a new area though. Anthony mentioned recently how bizarre it is that each Seattle neighborhood is sort of like it’s own town and it’s true. Plus the house has a nice basement which will basically end up being the lounge/computer/movie area, which we have high hopes for.

Anyhow, I’m waking up now (up late doing some work) so I should get to work.

Little tidbit from mom:

My usual weather update: sleet and freezing rain. Another winter like this one and you will definitely be having your mother as a neighbor! The chickens were funny this morning. Went running out of the coop when I opened the door and went skating. Falling over and sliding into each other. Needed a good laugh. Thank the Gods of Kobol for chicken.