Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

I think I picked a near perfect title for my blog. It truly is random traffic through my brain. Without the context around some of my thoughts, things may seem a bit disjoint. But when I re-read my entries, I realize that this is what I want… the contexts change, the thoughts are… well… not quite eternal… but they are what are important to me.

At some point, I need to come to terms with the fact that, spiritually, I am not Christian. Traditionally, I am, as is my family.

Social dynamics is fascinating. I’d order a book on it, except that I fear I’d get less enjoyment out of it.

Onto the next level, the social dynamics of planning the social dynamics of gatherings is now something that I think of. Mmm. Meta. Interesting.

The fascination with social dynamics has added benefits… e.g.

I’m in a social situation where I’m unhappy. I can step back, figure out why I’m unhappy. Once I’ve stepped back from myself, I can focus on other interesting things going on in the social situation (i.e. watch the social dynamics of others, and even myself interacting with others)… The situation usually becomes tolerable at this point…

Last night was particularly fun… slightly tipsy, watching other people analyze interacting with me… Mmm. Meta.

I’m a bit frustrated at the pictures I’ve been taking lately. I’d like to blame my tool. My camera has been temperamental lately. However, I fear this is only part of the problem. I still don’t quite understand light. My composition is quite good. Light, sucky.

I jotted down that last paragraph without publishing it yesterday. Today, while out for lunch, the camera I wanted was on sale. Guess who now has a new camera.

Some of my best thinking occurs in the shower. The quality of thought and epiphanies actually goes up if I read a bit just before entering said shower. I’m slowly learning to ignore all the idiot driversother on the road and make my daily commute thinking time… especially the drive home. Thinking is both fun and peaceful. Or… to paraphrase Jim, being able to think is really convenient at times.

Aside realization: Maybe some things / people that are broken don’t need / want to be fixed.

Not going to get an interview for the consulting job. Didn’t think I would.

IM conversations are producing interesting insights into my budding… no budding is the wrong word… into my verbalization of my spiritual beliefs…

As for dying… well… though my ‘soul’ / spiritual part may persist, my memories / mind will/may not… it’s near imperative to live the current life ‘properly’ / ‘fully’ / ‘to completion’ before embarking on the next one.

Also, some insights into my marriage:

[Dina] lives by her interpretation of my rules… I live by my interpretation of her rules…

I don’t know what Dina really feels… communication through words, or any medium, is but a shadow of what goes on inside.

Been a while. Been busy. Been thinking… and I think the conclusion that I’ve come to is that I think about some things too much… a subject that I’ll ponder later.

I’m just too fucking psyched about square dancing… besides being giddy on Tuesdays, now it affects me day to day… I hear the lyrics “You watch the world exploding every single night”. I somehow see parts of the world forming a wave, explodingSo I mishear ‘exploding’ as ‘explode and’, and then trying to puzzle out how to do an “every single night”

At this point, the Iron Maiden fans are going “WTF? Square Dancing?” The Tech Squarsians are going “Iron Maiden? Huh?” and the near-invisible portion of the Venn Diagram that overlaps is nodding.

I’m under too much work pressure. I had horrible nightmares / dreams last night. Every time I woke up, about every hour, on the hour, my mind was still churning about the automated build. Haven’t had a night like that in ages and ages. They suck.

Next paragraph possibly TMI. You were warned.

Was sick yesterday. Went home ’round 2, worked ’til 3, napped ’til 5, then worked ’til 1AM. Sitting in bed, back up, using the laptop. After an hour or more, this position starts giving you a wedgie… So I decided, if other telecommuters can brag about coding in their underwear, I can brag about coding bottomless. What can I say… I’m a geek… if there’s a problem, I solve it.

After how many years? I finally figured out that the stoner on “That 70′s Show” is Tommy Chong, of Cheech and Chong fame.

Plot line of Enterprise, this season:

Weird race attacks the Earth with some ray beam, killing millions of people in Florida. Enterprise tries to trace down the attackers. Race uses weird, spidery writing. They are inventing some doomsday device to destroy the Earth before Earth destroys them 400 years in the future. Enterprise plays galactic detective and tries to find this supposed weapon of mass destruction to save the Earth before it is too late.

Familiar?

Saw Anna of the Tropics while in NYC. It incorporates Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. From chapter 7, the following quote is read:

I think… if there are as many minds as there are heads, then surely there must be as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

I disagree with this one. Assuming that love is a thing between the person who loves, and the target of that love, then there are as many kinds of love as at least hearts squared.

Lots of other thoughts swirling around. None good / simple / easy enough to put on paper… None currently ready for ephemeral yet strangely long lived bits…

Last, something more concrete, but vague none the less… got email yesterday for a job interview. I was cold-emailed based on my online résumé… Job involves working as a consultant for a big company, as part of their consultant tiger team… Low to decent salaryScary what my definition of this is these days compared to 10 years ago., good benefits, scant vacation.

But the work! 60%-75% travel. Some travel international. 4 days on the road. Friday at home. Fourth week of the month working from home, administrivia, and writing papers. Work would consist of going to company’s big clients, solving their hard computer problems for a week or two, then out of there. Also architecture, design, teaching. All fun.

Five or more years ago, this would have been my dream job. Now that much travel sounds like a PITA :-(

Keeping my mind open… maybe this is what I need to perturb my life…

I’m not getting my hopes up though… Besides, I think I can really start to like my current job if they start scheduling me properly.

Wow I’m a moron. They asked me about consulting experience. I said none since ’97. I completely blanked about NerveWire. Consulting to a Fortune 25 company. Wow.

Was watching “The Next Joe Millionaire” a few weeks back. On one of his dates, “Joe” takes a picture of said date with his TMobile camera phone. He sends the picture to his butler. They paused to long on the phone shots, otherwise it would have been perfect product placement.

TiVo, the reason these types of are becoming necessary, has the perfect product placement opportunity in “The West Wing”.

Leo, the chief of staff is talking to his secretary. Something is playing on the TV in the background. Leo, asks “Hostages? Did they say hostages?”

What didn’t happen, but what should have, is Leo grabs his remote, boo-deep, hits the 8 second back button, and gets to hear the news for himself.

Been having problems saying no lately. For example, yesterday, at Tech Squares, I got roped into the review session despite really not wanting to. I need to watch some of the patterns in order to learn. Doing is sometimes a negative, because I’m re-enforcing bad habits, or uncertainty. As a result, I didn’t have much fun yesterday. This despite having partners that I really enjoy dancing with for most every tip. Mind you, I didn’t get to dance with the broom… no offence to my actual partner.

Another club dancer was mentioning how they enjoy dancing with cute people. In thinking about this, I realize that I enjoy dancing with good / fun dancers. Then, I thought… hey, they’re all cute after all. More thinking… they’re not cute by my normal preferences… I’ve just classified them into cute because they are fun to dance with. Interesting the way the / my mind works.

While we’re on the topic, this article about Geek Social Fallacies is pretty interesting. I think my inability to say no is a facet / contributing factor to my having some of the traits mentioned.

I think that my mild OCD cleaning may be an adverse reaction to how materialistic / cluttered my life has become.

Though not religious, I wouldn’t necessarily shirk away from the label spiritual. I’ve always leaned towards reincarnation as my afterdeath opiate. Lately, that tendency has been solidifying. Among other things, I’ve had the following thoughts / feelings:

• For every spider I kill, I am going to have to relive it’s life, literally or metaphorically, until I atone.
• I don’t have a whole life ahead of me to do things, I have a plethora.

Finally thought of an idea that I like for a sci-fi short story. It might be a good enough basis for something longer, but considering I haven’t written anything before, I’ll wait a bit before attempting something like that. Any bets on how long it takes me to actually write something?

I’ve been planning a quiet weekend at home for a long time now. This was supposed to be said quiet weekend.

Already, plans are messed up.

I guess the struggle for the rest of the weekend is to avoid being grumpy despite the setback.

If not, I’ll re-schedule for next week. One has to have one’s priorities.

Got an email from my dad, who is newly online. The gist:

	Saw your website , interesting.

Given some of the content of my site, I’m not sure what to make of that.

01:00 + 2 cups of coffee + caffeine sensitivity = wired awake ’til 05:30.

park on odd side of street + street cleaning, odd side of street = wake up 06:50.

above + friend needs PS2 back + noon patch + buggy code + 2 PM meeting= really bad day

Had a meeting at work today to talk about changing our web site to use consistent styles.

Apparently, your humble narrator, an avowed desktop developer, at some point in his short career, learned zootloads about HTML and CSS. I even thought I had intelligent things to say about cross browser compatibility and JavaScript. Quite scary.

Got some bulk mail from Great Expectations. The outside of the envelope is interesting.

Did you know more than 30% of visitors to internet dating sites are already married?

This gives me pause, and raises some questions:

• Who exactly is that statement supposed to appeal to?
• How do they gather their statistics. After all, visitors and registrants are quite different.

Well, it worked on me. I’m now curious enough to open the envelope.

Inside is a form to fill out, with a letter addressed to singles. The letter emphasizes singles repeatedly. It also lists a bunch of Great Expectation Centers…

Aha! This is not an internet based site. They are bashing internet dating services.

Though it made me open the envelope, I don’t quite get the tactic. In general, I find myself less and less able to comprehend advertising these days. I’m slipping away from being their target audience.

As Dina and I become more secure in our relationship, we are becoming less possessive and protective of each other. The downside of this is that, if someoneusually female tries to tickle me, Dina no longer attempts to stop them.

<grumble />

Where’s my cake?

I’m feeling under the weather yet again. The longer things go on, the more I think it is the flu. Going to go home after a work meeting. Meanwhile, this brings up some questions.

Am I out sick at work more often because I’m sick so much, or because I have a low level for sickness / discomfort?

Maybe, I just need a Ring Of Constitution. +4 or +5 should do. Anyone know where I can get one? And no, I haven’t been RPGing too much, mainly because there is no such thing as too much RPGing.

Alternately, can I lower some of my other scores? I’ll trade Wisdom and Charisma, which I don’t use that much, and already have decently low scores in, for a little Constitution. The fact that I don’t use them much begs the question, where does the vicious circle start? Do I not use them much because they are low, or are they low because I don’t use them much?

I also tend to think that the linear Charisma scale is horribly flawed. Some people that others find charismatic, I find smarmy. Slick can be interpreted as greasy. Also, despite the fact that I dislike interacting with most people, and don’t do well at it, I still have friends… one could argue that said friends have fatal flaws that force them to choose from the bottom of the pile, but I think my friends are quite nice, so I’m going to toss out that theory. I think that what really is going on is that, like Intelligence, Charisma is really an n-dimensional construct.

Old Bumper Sticker / Slogan: Think Globally, Act Locally.

One would think that the advent of the internet, one can both think and act globally with much less effort than before.

At times, I feel like my life is stuck at a local maxima, and that the only way to perturb the equation is deathAccidental. Deliberate = Bad For Karma..