I’m a huge fan of community. I think it’s what life is about, and I love that many technologies and software products are communities. I never got into Rails, mostly because I don’t even consider myself a developer, but Zed Shaw’s Rails is a Ghetto rant is awesome. I love this:

I swear if someone says they’re starting a social network I’m gonna beat them with the heel of my shoe.

I feel the same way. How do I know so many people that are creating the next myspace/facebook/google right now? Anyways

If they have a blog, speak at conferences, publish papers, 
or write books then they are public figures just like me.

This means that thanks to Larry Flynt I can stab them in the ear verbally, insult them, question their sexual orientation, and say anything that’s true and they just have to take it. Their only recourse is to write their pathetic little rebuttals in their stupid little blogs.

This ties in interestingly to recent posts about being public online and other shiz about internet communities.

I was thinking on the bus this morning about the saying “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. Regularly riding the bus to work, I’ve picked up a habit of judging people by their shoes. I’ve always though any sort of sharp heels are really stupid. I know there’s a “taller / nice butt” argument, but that’s pretty shallow and in exchange you can’t run from zombies/etc without removing your shoes which is just plain lacking foresight and dangerous. I think I was talking to Maria about pointy shoes the other day, which I didn’t get either. I have to assume it’s not designed as a weapon. I think Maria said pointy shoes make you look “slimmer” or something. What the fuck people, go climb a mountain or learn to live with your weight.

Anyways, enough about shoes. I definitely judge people by their clothing, so I was thinking about the implied badness of doing this. The whole book cover thing is silly, because a books personality doesn’t choose it’s cover, some random person does. Beit the author, good, be it some random person in the publishing company, who knows. But people choose their shoes, and most everything else, except maybe kids.

So I’m a big fan of reasonable shoes and other utilitarian choices when judging peoples clothes like sneakers/boots, or messenger bags over fancy purses or whatnot . I guess I’m just a hippie or something.

Mom says sometimes I should watch myself. Pa has slowly gotten to the point of accepting he’s an alcoholic. I think it’s taken him a couple decades. Much like society likes calling herpes cold sores, my dad’s family likes calling alcoholism “joe’s bar”. Whatever, I guess growing up around it desensitizes you a bit. I forget exactly what the criteria for such things are, but I know I fit the bill of “binge drinker” or something. We call it partying, but like I already point out, it really doesn’t matter what name you call it.

After two nights of drinking, I walked down to the store tonight to clear my mind and take a walk. Somehow I came back with a 24 of PBR and I feel like I shouldn’t trust myself to say/write anything. People often talk about alcohol being a depressant. I’m pretty confidant when I say I can’t think of when I’ve ever felt sadder after drinking that before. I hate to link to some crappy webspam like about.com but there’s a bit here that touches on this. “but the evidence suggests that in men alcohol use preceded the depression”. I don’t know, doesn’t make sense in my head.

I’ve spent a couple hours here trying to convince myself to distract myself until it’s late enough to go to bed. Rather than risk writing something totally irresponsible. Oops. Don’t forget that posting on the internet is like yelling something out loud in public.

On the other hand, I’ve totally forgotten all the personal stuff I was going to write about. Is that a good thing?

I’ve ranted in the paste about women on dating sites making comments about just looking for good honest guys and laughed about how it’s kind of unbelievable. The best part of the “dating” adventure, recent conversations, and ramblings is that I’ve come out of it all with a pretty good idea of what I want/need from a relationship and while I don’t think it’s that complicated I’m pretty convinced it’s not going to be easy to come by.

When people’s standards are things like “honest” I can’t help but feel like these standards are a little broad and not really considered. As I’ve said, nobody ever says they really want to date a liar, but of course the reality is that it comes down to priorities. How high of a priority is honesty to something like looks/money/power/number of toes/etc. I guess that’s the point really, but I like pretending I’m slow because the first conclusion is more amusing to me.

Of course I often rant about people being “religious” about things, or a zealot, or perhaps a better, less religion focused word. When people are all “omg. THIS!” I have to shake my head and turn off, because they reek of unreasonableness. I see this most often in religion, but often elsewhere, even “hippie” bits like in vegetarians or vegans. It’s not so much a convincing argument but a statement of how it’s going to be. And come on, it’s not like they’re Chuck Norris or anything and can tell the world how it’s going to be.

Staying away from stereotypes like saying that you want “to be treated right” or “respected” in a relationship is a good thing, as these bits are often super duper specific to each of us. I’ve spent a bit of time parsing out my feelings as part of my okcupid profile over the last few months but to add a little bit on to where I ended earlier…

When I really care I get pretty vulnerable. I feel like that’s something that kept me from caring or getting excited about things in years past as it was too easy to get hurt when it didn’t work out the way I wanted. I wonder that now that I’m more willing to let myself be vulnerable if it’s the sort of thing I’ll grow more of skin for, or gain more vision/wisdom, or just ruin myself ;). On second thought I’m not sure I really knew how to care, otherwise avoiding it was somehow subconscious. Interesting.

Like the lack of specifics in the summarization of “honest”, I feel like saying that I want to find someone that cares about me as being some sort of a trap. As people care in different ways, that’s obviously something specific to me. As I try to bury old feelings for people while not having any new ones to replace them with, I’m just left feeling lonely. I know I have friends and family that care, but it’s not the same. I don’t know if it’s simply the physical contact of holding someone close, but I often even feel lonely around people.

I really need an outlet right now and I don’t feel like I have a personal one. In the style of my rants of years past, only fucking coherent for a change, here’s a bunch of ramblings that really shouldn’t be read. There way too much history about what I’m really like for most people in the world to get this anyways.

Rob, of getting hit by power lines fame, once made a comment years ago about how the 80s were better than the 90s (not that we actually knew) because you could play someone a song to let them know how you feel rather than having to find the words yourself. I wonder how true that was/is. As usual we had lots of 80s music playing at the house party and I always get a personal chuckle out of it because back east most everyone listened to 90s music instead of 80s music and in the Awful Shark it’s been the other way around for me.

Back in the day, REO Speedwagon’s Can’t Fight This Feeling was a personal favorite. I find a closer connection to 80s music as in general I can relate to the lyrics while 90s music was generally filled with lots of mystic metaphors or symbolism that sparked a bunch of websites where people can argue over what the artist really meant.

Overly personal story to follow… My online journals been through a few incarnations and originally started as just an html page that I edited by hand. I always kept an offline journal though, as when other people started to get involved in situations I didn’t feel it appropriate to be so public about their lives just because they were a part of mine. High school socially was pretty awesome failure for me and when I finally dropped out, after some depression recovery time, I made an earnest effort to build social skills outside of work (I started working pretty young and got along with adults in the small talk ways pretty well). I’m happy with how that’s worked out, but that’s a different story. Around then I liked a couple of girls and started hanging out with a third. I’m not entirely sure how to communicate that sentence in a better way, I know there is a better way but I don’t give a fuck right now. I started debating with myself at the time if I just liked girls that talked to me and were nice to me, or what.

In retrospect, I have to laugh at my foresight. I had more understanding of my emotions than I could have realized at the time, but in this neat emotionally immature way. I figured out at the time that I really liked this third girl a lot. So much so that I figured it’d be best to not talk to anyone but my closest friends (I think only one person got this whole story at the time) and definitely try not to put anything in writing such that twenty years later having had an “old flame” or something might hurt whoever I ended up with, as I never expected anything to happen in that relationship.

For the most part I put the feelings behind me, only years later to actually date this person much to my surprise. I didn’t start dating until probably when I was 20 and just didn’t take personal relationships to that kind of an emotional level until around that time. Boy have things changed as I feel like so much of life has been steered by emotions since and I’ve still come out of it not feeling burnt and still feeling like a romantic. Things didn’t work out in the relationship, but it was a huge catalyst for lots of things in my life that while I feel are a burden at this moment, I believe are good for me. I’ve been struggling a bit lately and had a conversation with my mother on the phone early this morning about to what degree distracting myself is okay rather than tackling my emotions. I can’t help but feel like there’s some sort of resolution that should be found to “fix myself” but when I put it that way I know it’s bullshit.

I thought a bit through out the day of talking about this, but couldn’t get the spark until my Bonnie Tyler playlist hit It’s a Heartache a while ago. I forget exactly what I said to my mother this morning but there was a bit that amounted to feeling bad about being so openly emotional these days as opposed to those of the past as I end up feeling hurt a lot more, which I generally summarize as being “a softie” and knowingly falsely assume people know what I mean by that, such that I don’t go into a rant with companion stories such as this and talk for hours.

I don’t consider myself a particularly fickle creature. Over the years my feelings for this girl stuck with me throughout while her mutual feelings waned to the point where she’s expressed how odd it is to not have feelings for someone who likes her so much. I’m not entirely sure where to take that, except back to the familiar place that worked for me in the past, the pigeonhole of sort. It’s a joke to me to talk about “moving on” because my feelings aren’t motivated by anything that I feel is malleable that I can manipulate in a way that could turn them around. Of course the trouble with tribbles, or feelings, is that it’s a two way street. As sweet and nice as you can be, you can’t make anyone like you, only possibly feel silly for not liking you? In that thought has always come the realization or reaffirmation that it’s best to look forward from situations where feelings aren’t mutual rather than letting oneself get stuck in them. Totally fucking easier said than done, but you gotta have goals, you know? I certainly can’t blame her because the fancy thing about feelings is that it’s how you feel, not what you think, and I generally feel that one is much more adjustable than the other.

I used to think about how we acted while drunk was a particularly interesting comment about our natural character. Violent drunks have anger problems, dramatic drunks have emotional problems, etc. I still have some stock in this, as I still pay attention to what people say and do while drinking, and this practice has definitely provided training for putting on a good show myself, which is pretty much what being social amounts to for me these days.

I keep getting distracted mentally and on to another train of though… common for me. I call myself a romantic but the “one person out there for me” and “true love” stuff is total bullshit to me. I’m not a scientific pheromones explanation touter either though. I don’t really like many people though. I like a lot of people that is, but I don’t feel a connection with very many of them. So when I get a connection with someone, it’s pretty special and emotional for me. While pondering how people feel after spending a decade together and having problems, the thought of throwing away that decade of companionship and having to start over is completely terrifying to me emotionally. I lived through my parents divorce but I was pretty young and it was in my pre-emotionally aware years, so I can’t even imagine but the thought makes me feel a physical tearing feeling inside.

I consider myself a pretty reasonable fella. I wouldn’t go so far as to say stable though, as I feel like all this feeling certainly leaves me up in the air a lot, but I like to consider it a positive personality trait rather than a hindrance. These nights feeling physically alone though remind me of how much I need to feel cared about and special to someone.

Nothing but a fool’s game
Standing in the cold rain

Feeling like a clown.

A definite quality I want to find moving forward is someone who’ll just show up at my house when I’m upset without me having to ask knowing that life’s too short to spend those times alone. I’m of the “treat others how you’d want to be treated” mentality for judging values/right/wrong, and I don’t feel like I’ve ever had that.

My parents had shelves of “self-help” books when I was growing up before they divorced. Obviously they didn’t help, haha. I read a bunch of them though. It’s been a while, so I forget the names but looking around the net now I remember a bunch of them were M. Scott Peck books like The Road Less Traveled. It’s funny remembering my dad being so fond of them because he admitted at some point that he was addicted to smoking and/or drinking and somehow I think that made Dad feel like it was okay. It’s been a while since I read The Road Less Traveled,  I think I have a copy here somewhere, I should pick it up for nostalgia’s sake. I know going back and reading Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance last year (as in 2006, as I think it’s 12:04 right now) was a good thing as I picked up on a lot more than when I was younger. I still consider myself a bit of simpleton, so as I’ve looked a bit about the discussions about the psychology online I don’t get any of it, but that’s fine.

In the end though, I don’t put a lot of stock in the books. I don’t thinking googling for “dealing with emotions” gets me anywhere either. Generally my tactic is to go see a movie or something and lose myself in whatever is going in that. Over the years I’ve gone to counseling a few times, mostly due to my parents taking me for “traumatic events” like the house fire/divorce/dropping out of school. A lot of the times it makes me feel really alone in the journey, as I don’t really feel like I relate to many people. I put on a pretty big show, so very few people know me and what goes through my head (my rambling stories at bars that don’t go anywhere don’t really count). It’s tougher too as the person that knows me best is an ex-girlfriend and it’s pretty impossible to separate emotions from that to get any sort of “counseling” experience out of. My most recent counseling experience was actually pretty great, but it’s on hold for various reasons right now which is probably poor timing as I decided to tackle some old baggage that’s pretty messy recently and it’s leaving me pretty torn apart without a viable outlet at times.

I went and met an accountant today to try to sort out some back tax mess. He asked me some stock questions, one of which was about if I had bought a house since I moved here. I didn’t laugh out loud or anything, and of course he doesn’t know me so he doesn’t know how absurd that seems. Generally I feel trapped in a world where everyone’s looking forward to what they’re going to spend money on next and I just don’t feel like I fit in. I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up wandering around the world, distracted by the next adventure rather than dealing with any of this, as there just aren’t people in my life with the time, inclination, desire, and open mind (not oversimplifying everything to “thats how life goes” or whatever bullshit.)

Anyways, I really need to suck it up and get back to the party I think. I totally cut back on the drinking tonight, which I’m thinking was a mistake. Blacking out certainly isn’t a textbook way of avoiding your problems, but I feel like it would have been the easiest tonight.

I was pretty surprised by a bunch of this:

“On Dec. 16, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released the results of a study, “Digital Footprints,” showing that 60 percent of Internet users surveyed are not worried about how much information is available about them online.”

“The day may come when nothing that is said online will be treated as embarrassing because we will have become accustomed to everyone disclosing everything. “

I am. I never suspected everyone else was getting there. “No more secrets”? Where’s Robert Redford.

Headed back to the west coast tomorrow morning. It’s been nice seeing everyone but as holiday vacation always goes most of the time was spent driving around trying to see everyone. We had a good party at Dave’s house on Wednesday and got to see a bunch of the old kids, at least the ones that don’t currently hate each other, sheesh. Notably Rob managed to not die on Halloween when a power line fell on his head due to a car accident. Electricity came out his arm requiring a bunch of reconstructive work. Such that everyone was used to arm injuries and I don’t think I showed anyone my laceration. Weird how you lose touch with shit though. Turns out Dustin’s mom died a year ago and some how many of us didn’t know. Silly social bullshit I guess.

Good times ahead though I think.

Looking forward to seeing the friends again and getting back on a horse or two. Been hanging out with Maria again which is just wonderful, hopefully that lasts. Lots of plans, including trips to PDX and back to SFO soon. Gotta fix the truck and get in some snowboarding too. I did a little work on Grampie McLellan’s glass cockpit on his kitplane, trying to work out the calibration on the sensors for the EFIS One system. Amusingly I can’t help but think about EFIS One without thinking about Aegis One. Hopefully that’s not a sign of any kind.

It’s wholly frustrating that it seems like the more I figure out about myself, and the more I figure out about other people, how useless it seems to be. Old school get together in Maine was fun. I did my best to avoid all the stories of who was mad with over this guy or that girl and who isn’t making the effort in friendships anymore. Definiately the more I feel like I’m acting against my inhibitions on my feelings, the more I find myself feeling outside on these situations looking in, like I’m somehow destined to always been an observer.

I know I can just move on. I’ve left plenty behind in the past that seemed worthwhile at the time to start over. I suppose it just may come to that again, as I’m constantly stuck in this zone of being felt sorry for. It’s probably that time again, it’s just sad, and in the interim, makes it hard to sleep.

I actually created a task called “Write about worry, obliviousness and being a jerk, distraction” to remind myself to write something this morning so I wouldn’t forget my ponderings. I did this from my phone, where typing, especially with a large drip in one hand is, lets  just say, inconvenient.

I’ve had a number of things worrying me for a while, or perhaps, stressing me out. Some of you may be aware of some, such as the reenacted ‘reckless driving’ foolishness, taxes, injury lawsuits, etc.

My counselor as been unavailable for a bit due to an illness and I’ve being going it alone, feeling that since I bailed from Strategy, life has been returning to ‘normal’ and I’ve got an okay grip on what’s reasonable and what isn’t, which is a topic of great debate between me, and well, myself. The last 18 months have been on my mind due to all of this, and since I’ve been working at Widemile things have certainly been better, so I’ve been wondering how much of that is accountable to being distracted and busy.

I was thinking this morning about a friend from Maine, Steve, who used to work in NYC decades ago and moved to Maine to  take it slow and easy. I wonder what it would be like to take things slow and easy. Would I be stressed out? Is my most capable way of dealing with stress by being distracted, be it working, drinking (hah), movies, video games, trips or whatever? How much is being distracted or disconnected a coping mechanism? I’ve taken care of a few things the last couple of days, and I’m starting to take care of a couple bits that have stressed me for a while but I’ve ignored, recently throwing in the towel.

I wish I could remember the quote, but a friend once joked about me saying “Is she crazy, or am I a jerk?”. I was stuck thinking about that this morning, as I come to grips with having opinions. Which is a huge deal for me, if you didn’t notice you may not be able to appreciate how life changing it really is.

hanging out at work waiting on some server updates and downloads. December is going to be busy, Tori, Kirsten and I are going to SFO next weekend for fun. After that, I’m headed home to Maine for a week.

Awesomely, the city decided to refile charges against me in the whole motorcycle accident thing. I’m still amazed a this process, and it’s lack of sanity. Primarily, that nobody from the prosecutors office or the police department has ever spoken with me, they must seem pretty sure of whatever the hell they intend on arguing, since nobodys taken the time to even communicate that to me yet. Somehow, the new pre-trial hearing is on 12/24. Sigh. What placement. I’m trying to get the lawyer to get it moved. I’d make some regular sarcastic comment here about killing everyone, but with bloggers getting prosecuted more and more these says, I probably shouldn’t.

But yeah. I’m going to fucking kill someone. I don’t know who, and not for anything related to the last paragraph, but you all better watch your backs! ALL OF YOU, YOU …. Yeah. Jerks.  I’m just going to call you jerks, doesn’t involve me having to stand, and well… jail time.

New job is so broad I’m throwing myself at one absurdly deep problem after another. If you’ve been watching the tech blog at all I’m sure you’ve seen it. Shmoocon’s coming up early this year, in February. I’ve gotta start planning for that. In DC, as usual.