Author: cheerfulchaotic

severe trimming of default view complete. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up with half the posts in my subscriptions and still get something done with the rest of my life.

I borrowed a couple of compilations of transmetropolitan from Simon for my ride to Mountainview to visit . Good stuff, though I’m starting to get at least as interested in the personal story of spider jerusalem (main character of transmet for all y’all that ain’t read it yet 😉 more than the political scenery that he writes about. Spider is a journalist, and he specializes in inflammatory truth, in reporting the injustices of the world in as vulgar a fashion as possible. The world of transmetropolitan is probably at least as full of those injustices as our real world. He has a following. He needs the following, and hates it at the same time. He despises those who march in lockstep behind anyone, including himself. But he makes his living because people read his stuff. Anyway, as I was getting down off the top floor of the train, somebody on the opposite side not-quite-yelled at me “Spider Jerusalem Lives!”. I replied with “It’s a great comic.”

Awhile ago I noticed that there weren’t as many livejournalers in some urban areas: the bay area, nyc, whatever. It’s probably not literally true, but I think that there’s a kernel of truth to it. The explanation that seemed pretty intuitive to me is that there are alot of people doing lj mostly as a social outlet, for a particular niche. And in these cities, you can get that face-to-face.

Of late, I’ve totally fallen behind on my lj subscriptions (“friends” list, if you must). I wish I could keep up with everyone, but I totally would not exchange that for what I’ve had in its place. 40-mile bike ride, party in the castro, crowd-surfing at the castro on halloween (glad I did it once. Never, ever again), checking out food not bombs, having a job, albeit half-time, that pays the bills. Game party at my place. A cause that I’ve committed to. Go. Munching at Herbivore. Reading “American Gods”. All good things. None involving a computer in the actual doing. (also some playing of wc3, but not amazing amounts).

But I still wanna keep up with people. So, I’m trimming off more bits of my friends list, adding a couple of people to give them permission, and putting like half of the people on my friends least out of my default view. Not because I don’t love you all, but because I like having a life.

Working full time temp job totally threw off my rhythyms. Even when I was unemployed, I developed a set of habits. Like freely pondering the important ideas (such as self-organizing entities) that wandered through my brain. And now that I have a (modestly unstructured) job, I’m falling in to new habits. Must steer clear of resentment of the job, which is, after all, paying my rent.

But this reading back 200+ posts every monday/tuesday to catch up from my weekend is really grinding. And pretty annoying at the second week in a row. Want to keep up with and maintain connections to the people I’ve put in my default view. Don’t have time to do that and live my own life. Hmm. Bleh.

Anyway, my weekend

cool work stuff

Autism and my many intelligences

I also changed my cell # on sunday morning. For those of you who had my old one, and want my new one, just send me some email, and I’ll let you know. Yay for a local area code.

Friday was another happy fun gmhc training. I think that was the gonnorhea, chlamydia, and NSU training. I was there for the class, but I feel like my information retention went to crap. Especially regarding the dispensation of treatment. Fortunately, I won’t be doing that on my own any time soon.

For the minutiae of my life. BIKING! GMHC! WARCRAFT III! ETHIOPIAN! GO! GAY FRATERNITY! WORK! RMS! DYING LAPTOP! 3 PAIRS OF PANTS! INDIAN! FREE SOFTWARE! COPYRIGHT LAW!

Re: Washington, DC

Mainly, though, I loved being a dollar and change away from any place I wanted to go in one of the weirdest, most exciting, and historically rich cities in the world, and never needing to worry about getting stuck in traffic.

Yeah, Washington is pretty Wacky, but Washington is one of the most ‘historically rich’ cities in the world? My ass. Even in the “new world”, it doesn’t compare for age to boston, philly, or new york. There was hot shit going on there before the United States even existed. If we expand it to the western world, what about Rome? Paris? London? Berlin? Moscow? Athens? Constantinople? Not to mention, oh, the rest [ie, the majority] of the planet, like Jerusalem, Beijing, Cairo, Alexandria, Delhi, and Bombay? to cover but the tiniest slice. I only wish I knew more.

Where’s a non-euro-centric history text when I need one?

A friend of mine pointed this out to me, (something a subscriber of his wrote in a long, gee-aren’t-I-a-cool-little-coder post) and requested that I dispense with some enlightening tidbits, and I ask you, my friends, to reply with your thoughts as well, as I am far less computer saavy, particularly computer security saavy, than some of you.. I knew this would be long, which is another part of why it’s here.

The other half of that equation is that I wanted something that was actually secure. I read an interesting article about recent security concerns and I was appalled at the responses of so many so called “professionals” who insisted that Unix and Linux were more secure operating systems. It doesn’t take much of a brain to figure out that if you hang the source code out there like a surrender flag – it would be easy for anyone to hack the security of these systems. So why aren’t they targeted with more viruses? Virus writers seek to disable the broadest range of systems where they attract the most attention, and that is simply the Windows platform. I won’t disagree with the response that if you find a security hole in Unix or Linux that you can fix it yourself, which is certainly a plus (but can’t you usually do that in Windows too?). However, since there is no such thing as absolute security (meaning that even when holes are identified and patched, there is always another way to exploit the same flaw), making the source code available increases the risk for security breaches. In the end, no one choice in an OS platform is more secure than any other, so they are at least on level ground.

And now with the clue-by-four

I didn’t resist. They did find other things for me to do. I’m actually waiting for email with the stuff I need to do.

I will not fall asleep at this desk. I will not fall asleep at this desk. I will not … zzzzzzz….

Apparently, I also got another site added to the firewall ban list: www.gamefaqs.com. Available yesterday, and not today.