Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

Please welcome Alessandro Niccolo Varacalli. Born 13:39, June 20, 2006. 6lbs 8oz. 18½”. Mother and Alex are doing great.

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l8r.

When there is news, you’ll know without much delay, either via the blog or in email (either directly or through mailing lists).

For the next sixty seconds, Nick will conduct a test of the Emergency Posting System. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have received actual information. This concludes this test of the Emergency Posting System.

Apparently, some of Google’s GMail servers are blacklisted on some RBLs (Real-time Blackhole Lists). Since we use GMail to send mail to each other, this is a royal PITA. Unfortunately, when I signed up with my web host, I wasn’t aware that they used RBLs.

Spam was already starting to tick me off. Now, anti-spam tactics are starting to tick me off too. Yes, I could blame this on spammers. But it still doesn’t excuse overzealous anti-spam measures.

A quick and dirty guide to Italian pronunciation.

Italian Pronunciation Is Easy

Italian spelling has been standardized.
If you see an Italian word, there are usually simple rules for pronouncing it.

Stress

Stress the penultimate syllable.
If there is an accent, such as città, stress the syllable with the accent.

Vowels

• a: Like hah.
• e: Two possible sounds:
  • English short e as in bed or
  • Like chaos.
• i: English long e as in beep.
• o: Two possible sounds. Difficult to describe in English.
  • Like awe or
  • Like go, chopping the vowel sound as quickly as possible.
• u: English oo as in boot.

Successive Vowels

Pronounce each one individually.

Consonants

Pronounce as you would in English.
Exceptions follow.

Soft & Hard: C & G

This is the biggest problem when English speakers pronounce Italian.

• ca, co, cu, ga, go, gu: Hard c as in cat or g as in go.
• ce, ci, ge, gi: Soft c as is chest or g as in gel.

H After C & G Makes Them Hard

• che, chi, ghe, ghi: Hard c or g.

S Before C

• sci, sce: Soft, like the sh in ship.
• schi, sche: Hard, like the sk in ski.

Other Consonants

• r: Trill it a bit.
• d, t: Not as hard as in English.
• s: As in mouse or frozen.
• z: As in pizza or lads.
• gn: Close to canyon or nyah-nyah-nyah.
• gl: Close to million or ly where the y is a consonant.
• Double consonants: Hold the consonant sound for a bit longer in your mouth than if it were a single consonant.

Notes & Disclaimers

• The Italian alphabet has 21 letters; it’s missing J, K, W, X, and Y.
• The rules above are general and approximate.
• Regional dialects abound, so natives may pronounce things slightly differently, but at least they’ll understand you.

src="http://www.varacalli.com/pictures/egypt-2005-09/Egypt-Roll-29-of-33-Picture-13-of-36-Luxor-Old-Winter-Palace-sunset_small.jpg"
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style="margin: 0 0 2px 7px; display: inline; border: 2px solid black; float: right; width : 150px; height : 99px;"
alt="Photograph: Old Winter Palace sunset, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli."
title="Old Winter Palace sunset, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli." />It’s that time of year again when a young Nick’s mind turns to self-improvement and setting goals for the next year of my life.

My goals for this year, be healthy, be thoughtful, and be self-confident and self-content, went decently well. I’ll review those in a bit, and I’m assuming that my goals for this year will contain some leftovers and ongoing things.

So far my possible goals for next year include:

• Be a good role model. Before acting, think… would I like my kid(s) to learn from this example? [N]
• Work on our entertaining skills… want to do more than just hang out and veg. Not sure how well this’ll work with Alex around. [EVD]
• Figure out how to split the bill equitably at restaurants. How to not run up the bill for others, and not be perceived as running up the bill for others. [DCE]
• Arm twist people less. [DE]
• Be more aware of ACLs for information and conversations. [DE].

That said, I’m open to suggestions for goals. Anything goes. Comment, anonymously if you want. Use a proxy server if you don’t want my web-server seeing your IP address.

I’m especially interested in goals relating to “What I don’t hear”. Things that I need to work on but am a bit blind to, either because I’m not there when people say things about me, or because when I am told these things, I choose not to hear or ponder them.

src="http://www.varacalli.com/pictures/egypt-2005-09/Egypt-Roll-29-of-33-Picture-12-of-36-Luxor-Old-Winter-Palace-sunset_small.jpg"
class="alignright"
style="margin: 0 0 2px 7px; display: inline; border: 2px solid black; float: right; width : 150px; height : 100px;"
alt="Photograph: Old Winter Palace sunset, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli."
title="Old Winter Palace sunset, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli." />We’re looking for a middle name for Alex.

Keeping in character, I’d prefer he not have one. If he does have one, I’d prefer it to be some variation of Null or Nothing. “Niente”, “Nevyn”, “Nil”, “Nothingtoseehere”, {}, “Nusquam”, “Noname” etc. Alternately, I’d prefer something indicating some sort of version. “1″, “1.0″, “A”, “Number1″, “Version 1.0″, etc.

Dina, also keeping in character, would prefer a strong, traditional, meaningful name. Also keeping in character, she’s suggesting “Nicolo” which has shades of my name, and both our grandfathers’ names.

Any suggestions?

funny

We’d planned a yard sale last weekend. Didn’t happen due to the rain.

The idea that we should have set up shop in the rain and sell only our waterproof junk kills me for some reason.

cool

Ubuntu Dapper Drake is out. It installs from a live CD. Which means I can browse the web at the same time the OS installs. Neat. AIM, web browsing, wireless, reading Windows partitions all up and running quite quickly. If I can get Windows running under VMWare, I may actually be able to switch to Linux full time.

sad

Opened some packages that arrived on Saturday. Maternity bras. Great. Now they have a purpose other than recreation. <sigh />

morbid

One of the good things about being me is that I get a lot of ideas… most bad, some good, some excellent. Useful for problem solving, Mystery Hunts, and my job. Usually, the bad ideas are winnowed out pretty quickly… sometimes I verbalize them. Every so often, a bad one sticks in my head… like this one. I know the answer… but the question just sticks in my head.

[Un]fortunately for y’all, Dina and my conscience agree that this one is just too morbid to post.

src="http://www.varacalli.com/pictures/egypt-2005-09/Egypt-Roll-28-of-33-Picture-29-of-36-Luxor-Ramses-III-memorial-temple-Erin-offering-carving-Green-Shoe_small.jpg"
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style="margin: 0 0 2px 7px; display: inline; border: 2px solid black; float: right; width : 99px; height : 150px;"
alt="Photograph: Ramses III memorial temple, Erin, offering carving, Green Shoe, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli."
title="Ramses III memorial temple, Erin, offering carving, Green Shoe, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli." />Follow up on the Sharing post.

This has been taking up some brain space over the last few days. Thankfully, it’s more of my problem-solving background thinking, as opposed to consistent fretting or broodingly obsessing as I am sometimes prone to.

This one isn’t as dark or heavy as the previous one. Examining some practical and philosophical issues about the problem and then replying to the comments from the last post.

Volunteering

The fact that I got told to call back, twice, has stuck with me. That seems very sad and wrong to me. The fact that it still bothers me in this nagging little way bothers me. My brain is attuned to it. I’ve noticed a bunch of Samaritan billboards with phone numbers urging people to call if they need help, and, in smaller print at the bottom, urging people to volunteer.

I’m thinking I’ll look into that once things settle down with Alex. Maybe the right answer is to look into it now… OK… found their volunteer web page… sent them email requesting more information.

Outing Pete

Was discussing this with Dina on the way home on Wednesday. Pete is telling me a lot of this stuff in confidence. I decided to post it on my blog since:

• I’m not using his real name.
• He doesn’t read my blog.
• Few, if any, of our mutual friends from high school read my blog.
• I left out any identifying statements that he made.

Should I tell his other friends / acquaintances / relatives outright? Should I hint at them? Should I just not be careful about keeping confidence? Should I be very careful about keeping this private?

I think it should be kept private. It was told to me in confidence. I should respect that. From a practical point of view, if Pete gets mad at me for outing him, he may not have anyone to talk to. I have, should, and will lie, deceive, and deflect to protect his privacy. Unlike many other things that I’m conflicted about, I don’t feel an ounce of guilt about doing or feeling this. (For those I’ve not been completely honest with, apologies… but you’re not reading this anyway.)

Dina thinks it’s the same as, say, a drug addiction. People should be told, and an intervention can / should be staged. I’m still not sure I believe this point of view.

Maybe I think this because I don’t think the danger of suicide is proximate. I believe him when he says he’s planning for the future. Part of me is still unconvinced he’ll go through with it. Part of me hopes that, even if he would go through with it in his current mood, somehow said mood will improve before the future gets here.

Opinions welcome.

Replying To Comments

I want to answer some of the comments received in the original post here. Thank you to everyone for the support. It helped a lot. Surprisingly more than I would have thought. Guess that’s why I blog, eh?

For those of you going through something like this, you can talk to me if you want. Might help at least one of us. Also, calling the Samaritans was actually very helpful for me. Try it.

I’m working on getting Pete to get professional or volunteer help.
The suggestions are ignored, or don’t go over well… as if it’s insulting to suggest that there might be something wrong with them.

Thank you Katie for the article… the article itself was useful, and it reminded me that the Internet is there as a resource. Sometimes for people-problems I tend to want to communicate directly with other people instead of reading up on the problem. Thank you for taking off my blinders.

Andy, yes, there are people that he cares about… but he doesn’t feel (rightly or wrongly, I’m not judging) that they care for him. Think, for example, of young nieces or nephews. Pete doesn’t think they’d miss him were he gone. Also, I think that there’s a slight martyr complex going on that colours this issue. For example, “My siblings care, but they don’t show it… so I’ll punish them by being generous while dieing”. Also, from my own thoughts, caring about people can be unfortunately asymmetric.

The meds logic is a good idea. I think I know what the person will say… something along the lines of not wanting to be f’d up in the meantime… but I’m going to try that one next time I have the chance.

These are arguments that would carry some weight with a rational person. The problem is that Pete isn’t a rational person; he’s someone suffering from serious depression. This means his brain isn’t working properly, so he can’t make good decisions.

You hit the nail on the head.

The frame of mind you’d have to be in to think [of suicide] is so alien to me as to be incomprehensible. It’s hard to figure out what to say to someone in that extreme a frame of mind.

That’s another thing I find difficult… with ‘rational’ friends, I already have problems putting myself in their shoes and empathizing with them (I sometimes tell Pete that he got the short straw when he got me as a friend to listen to him). With him… I’m frequently at a loss.

If Pete would find it useful to talk to someone who used to be suicidal, and is better now, my friend would be happy to talk to him. Or more accurately, if you could persuade Pete to try talking to a friend of a friend who has gone through something like what he’s going through.

Your hammer is getting darn accurate. I’ll float the idea when I get the chance… selling the idea… as you note, that’s the difficult part.

Hi Anon. Did you know that’s the most common name in the world (based on a search of the Internet)? Anyway… I’ve noticed the dichotomy of wanting things on their ‘record’ and caring about people. I haven’t figured out how to bring it up. I think part of it is that he’s afraid to die. Pete tends to be a contrarian… I’m worried that if I push him too much, I’ll end up backing him into a place where he justifies away all his fears and actually gets on with killing himself. Very worried in fact. Partly because… well… I’m worried about that… partly because that would make it my fault.

Crammer, see what I said to Anon about the record. Also, look at it this way. If getting help works, then he’ll want to be alive, but there’ll be a smirch on his record. Even from my point of view, this makes some twisted sense. I like the challenging him to challenge the shrinks… that sounds like fun… funnily, something I feel like I’d want to try (challenging the shrinks, not suicide) were I rich and bored. Taxes? He’s of the I-don’t-get-money-or-personal-finance mindset. Pointing out taxes or other government gouging will elicit a shrug, not get his blood boiling.

Exit Interview

src="http://www.varacalli.com/pictures/egypt-2005-09/Egypt-Roll-28-of-33-Picture-12-of-36-Luxor-Ramses-III-memorial-temple-deep-carvings_small.jpg"
class="alignright"
style="margin: 0 0 2px 7px; display: inline; border: 2px solid black; float: right; width : 150px; height : 99px;"
alt="Photograph: Ramses III memorial temple, deep carvings, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli."
title="Ramses III memorial temple, deep carvings, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli." />My exit interview at work will be coming up soon. I’m wondering what to say my reasons for quitting are. Obviously I’m doing it to be a stay-at-home parent. But why? And, on a less serious note, what humourous / snide / pointed comments can I make? Things that have come to mind:

• Dina and I played rock/paper/scissors to see who stayed home and I won/lost.
• I’m allergic to the carpet / the head of foo department / companies with vowels in their name.
• Dina likes her job better than I do.
• The truth. As in, the whole truth. Not sure I want to leave that piece of my mind behind though.

Stay At Home Feelings

I’m a bit conflicted about this staying at home thing. Not that I don’t want to do it, nor the mechanics and sacrifices that requires. But the fact that I view this as temporary. Not temporary as in “once the kids are all in school I’ll go back to work”. But temporary as in “I’ll see what I want to do after a year.” I feel that I’m not as dedicated to this idea as I could be. I feel like this may be unfair to kid#2 if I don’t stay home with them also.

I guess I just need to realize that there are no rules about this. I should not only do what feels right, but not fret that what feels right might be the wrong thing.

Sexism

src="http://www.varacalli.com/pictures/egypt-2005-09/Egypt-Roll-28-of-33-Picture-08-of-36-Luxor-Ramses-III-memorial-temple-deep-carvings_small.jpg"
class="alignright"
style="margin: 0 0 2px 7px; display: inline; border: 2px solid black; float: right; width : 99px; height : 150px;"
alt="Photograph: Ramses III memorial temple, deep carvings, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli."
title="Ramses III memorial temple, deep carvings, Luxor, 2005-10-04, © Nick Varacalli." />In Dina’s OB office there’s a poster for a “New Moms Group”. The poster also notes that they have groups for gay and lesbian parents.

Glass ceiling for women. No “New Dads Group”. Chicken or egg?

On the good side, I learned that M is staying home with his newborn. He lives close enough that we have the start of our own daddy group. Mind you, I can picture starting a group, attracting mostly gay dads, and being asked, “How long have you and M been together? It’s brave of you to adopt fraternal twins.”

Surely We’re Not Unique

I hung out with the normal array of geeks in university from the computer department. We called ourselves the “Riot Nrrds” (a take-off on Riot Grrls). Years later I wonder how many other geeks out there came up with the same idea… lots.

Allergies Update

Was out on the Cape this weekend with good friends. No to do lists. No errands. Just a well needed, relaxing weekend. Downside? The pollen was out in force. I had to pop 4 allergy pills. My first of the season. Bad in that I’d hoped to go all season without taking any meds. Good in that, by this time last year, I’d popped about 120.

Injury

While on the Cape, I gashed my right middle finger. In retrospect, I’m happy that’s all I injured (modulo a cut under my left big toe from a mussel). It amazes me that such a little injury can cause such inconvenience.

Inconsequential

I’ve been loathe to post of late because all the random traffic through my brain and life seem inconsequential when compared to other people’s issues.