Circadian

I’m trying to remember now, just what it was that made me think of it in the first place, but I spent a chunk of my evening watching, by way of YouTube, the 1977 classic animated film, Wizards.

I was introduce to the movie as a boy, ironically enough, by my now-fundamentalist brother. He had seen it somewhere and procured a copy for to play on the first VCR that we ever owned. He would be terribly embarrassed to be reminded of that, today, I’m sure.

It really isn’t all that great a movie, but I enjoyed it even in this late showing. The things that I definitely remembered from my first time seeing it, all those years ago, were the fairy princess with the just-barely-there outfit, and the two wizards referenced in the title. And the positively twisted wizard duel that serves as the climax of the movie. I think it would make a fantastic property for a remake. Oh, sure, it’s a little ham-fisted with the allegories and nobody in this day and age would be quite so profligate with the nazi imagery in anything short of a period piece, but it would still rock if it could be done with more competent artists and some computers.

Some days, I feel like that guy from the old DSL commercial, who, when his wife says “I thought you were surfing the Internet”, he responds “I’m done…”

More often than not anymore, I find that my craving for new content outstrips those who create the content. I’m spoiled by the fact that most of the blogs that I like to read are updated at least once a day, and usually multiple times throughout the day. But things tend to slow down on weekends, and all of a sudden I find myself without an external source of stimulation. It’s a bit boring being online in those periods, usually, though occasionally I’ll find something new and dive into it with both feet, and just immerse myself in getting caught up.

It’s like that with web applications, too. I see why so many people want little applications for their smart phones – who wouldn’t want an app that takes you right to what you’re looking for with no fuss and no intermediary steps. It’s what desktop applications have done for years and years now, before the advent of ubiquitous web applications.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see the allure of web apps – they’re almost entirely cross-platform by nature, necessitating little in the way of tweaking to work on Macs and Linux just as well as they do on Windows. And yet…

There must be plenty of others like me out there, who don’t mind lugging our own laptop around, who crave an application that will do exactly what we’re looking for, without the intermediary of a web browser. Why else would there be such an excellent variety of applications for Twitter, and Word Press, and slowly but surely Facebook?

It must drive those folks crazy, though. Facebook is first, last and always an application designed to put advertisements in your face. So a program that lets you just do what you wanted to do, like seeing the updates that people have put on their pages, must make them utterly crazy.

Anyway, that’s my take on things. I think that I’ll be happiest when, like the iPhone ads claim, there really is “an app for that” for everything I find of interest in my life.

I’m sure we’d all get paid less, but I am really jealous of the laid-back, 32-hour week, take-August-off attitudes one finds in Europe. Because I could really use another day off.

Yesterday, I got some work done on the front yard. Today I built a headboard for our bed and primed some moulding for the bedroom. And both days, I was high as a kite on antihistamines, and sneezing my fool head off.

I could use a day just to relax and recover from the aftereffects. But tomorrow is another day and we’re stuck with this crazy 40 hour work week…

Immersed myself in Woodstock today. Watched the two hour long documentary on looking back at Woodstock after 40 years (while tripping on Benadryl), and then listened to classic rock all afternoon.

The really wonderful things that happened there – the Hog Farm feeding everyone, Abbie Hoffman taking charge and making sure that the medical center was running well, the Bad Trip tent where people were taken care of while they were in a bad space and then put in charge of helping others in the same state – make me wish I could have been there. And yet, I’m not entirely sure I would have been, had I even been alive at the time. Had my parents not been 34 and 39 at the time, I could have been conceived there, but not really attended.

I do also wish that we could ever experience something similar today. And yet, it was so spontaneous that if you try (*cough*Woodstock 1999*cough*) today, you’d just get people taking advantage of everyone instead of being cool to one another.

As Wavy Gravy said – “This must be heaven” – and we’ll never see the like on earth again.

I guess it’s not impacting every mobile Apple user, but it’s sure got me down…

I updated to version 10.5.8 of OS X the day it became available, and now I wish I hadn’t. I’m almost ready to reinstall my OS and just patch up to 10.5.7. The problem is with the wireless. When I’m not plugged into power, my speed drops. Drastically. Our cable modem gives us typically between 4600 and 5100 kbps. When I’m not powered up, I’m getting between 150 and 250 kbps.

It’s ridiculously slow, and the ping times are roughly comparable.

It’s enough to make a guy want to install Linux on the darned computer and see if it doesn’t behave better – at least until 10.5.9 comes out…

Like most issues, when the Right can’t come up with any reasonable reasons against something, they go with their old standby – shouting lies loudly enough and often enough that some critical mass of people comes to believe that they’re true.

Healthcare is one of those issues. When you get right down to it, the reasons that the Right are against any sort of change to the current system of health insurance and little coverage for the average guy comes down to money. The insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are making money hand over fist, with enough in the coffers to line the pockets of every politician in Washington. If reform happens, they might have to make a few hundred billion fewer dollars a year from the businesses who choose to maintain the health of their employees.

Add to that the prospect of a public option – a government run competetor for the insurance companies and they really start to howl. Saturday, they were howling outside of the King Soopers grocery store where I shop. Our congressman, Ed Perlmutter, was having a confab there, and the loonies came out of the woodwork to picket and shout and generally make civilized discourse impossible to have. I know this because, foolishly, I tried to shop there an hour after the even started, and the crowd of picketers were still milling about outside.

Insult to injury, no lesser pinhead than Sarah Palin is promulgating the blatant falsehood that the reformed system would set up some sort of committee to enforce policies of forced euthanasia, claiming that she would have had to go before one of these committees to determine whether or not her special needs child would be given any sort of medical attention. Puh-leez. How can you go on about us “Bleeding Heart” liberals, and then imply that we would have anything but support for a woman and her special needs child?

I just thank the powers that be that Howard Dean is around – you know Howard, head of the DNC, physician, former presidential candidate? – to smack her down, on national television, for her rampant stupidity.

It’s time for us to fix this broken health-care system, come hell, high water, or the selfish/ignorant wings of the Republican party.

I realized, as I went to write this entry, that I will never, ever let any of you see what I have to write, before it’s ready to be read. I will definitely not be posting the snippets of ideas that I have, nor will I be posting even chapters or short stories before they’re utterly and completely perfect.

So, I’m going to call today a wash, but in general will still try to post every day.

I took a chance at work the other day.

I sent out an email – a personalized email – to every director, executive director, and supervisor that I work with directly. In it I spoke of the impending start of the school year, and inquired as to whether I had forgotten to do anything for them that I’d promised to do, or if there were any other issues under my control that were keeping them from having the best, most streamlined start to the year that they could have.

The others in my office would, I’m pretty sure, never take a risk like that. Heaven forbid that they be reminded of all the things that people are still expecting them to do. Don’t get me wrong, I worried about it too, but realized that the benefits of having asked would outweigh the work that was generated from it. In fact, our transportation department had two minor issues – issues that I invested about an hour in solving, total – and our HR department had a couple issues that I was either able to fix, or was able to get a software vendor to fix.

And, most importantly, our Executive Director of Student Achievement declared it the nicest, most solicitous email she’d received in a long while.

I don’t understand why the rest of my team have such issues with these sorts of things. I mean, yes, we’re in IT, and IT is notorious for having really terrible people-skills. I’m an exception rather than a rule, I understand that. But these aren’t all your typical tech geeks, either. They come from varied backgrounds, and some of them even from the classroom. And yet, I feel like I’m the only one who has the sort of relationships to be able to do this successfully.

Add that to having just completed a day where I felt less like a total fraud than usual – like I really knew what the hell I was doing, and had all the answers – and I’m feeling pretty good about the results of the summer.

In a previous post I mentioned something about going pure command line under Linux. One of the things that you can do from the command line is to post to your blog. And that is what I did to get this posted. And I did it from the Mac command line, to boot

You know, I think I just might be an addict.

Not of anything terrible, no. In fact, I’m addicted to something good for me, and it’s an addiction that more men could probably benefit from sharing. I’m addicted to my wife.

Not just in the usual way, either. Sure, I miss her when she’s not around, but this goes way beyond that. In year’s passed, she would go on weekend-long jaunts to other cities to present at educational conferences, or to attend craft conventions. And invariably, I would get sick. Not life-threateningly ill, mind, but a head cold, or a stomach bug, or the flu.

This time, it was a short time away. I saw her at lunchtime yesterday, and then again briefly in the evening for dinner. And then I went home and was utterly unable to sleep. Overwarm bedroom, uncomfortable couch, sure, those are good reasons, but I think part of it was empty bed. I finally gave in at 3:30 in the morning and went back upstairs to try again. And was back up again by 7:30 to go to work.

So yes, I think I might have a literal physical addiction to my wife. There are worse fates!