12.22.05
Posted in Career, Design, Life, Media
at 7 pm
Over at Design Observer: writings about design & culture: Dmitri Siegel: Bartelby™
In his essay “Free Time,†philosopher Theodor Adorno explains how our time away from work has gradually been filled with economically productive activities masquerading as leisure. He further explains how we become habituated to this functionalization, so that when we have free time we don’t feel relaxed, but instead feel an anxiety to function, commonly known as boredom.
The article prompted me to see if I should add Bartelby to my Amazon wishlist… which I could but then realized that Melville’s work is almost all available through Project Gutenburn’s Archive.
Both the essay by Dmitri Siegel and the short story by Melville made for some great reading. However I’d like to learn more about Adorno’s work as that “Free Time” essay sounds like a major problem in my life at times.
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09.10.05
Posted in Apple, Career, General, Life, Media, Tech, Transport, Web
at 9 am
For the first post of September, we’ll be covering August and the last few weeks with QuickNotes™…
1) I’ve got a new laptop: 15″ PowerBook. Woo Hoo! It’s teh hot! Seriously, switching from the plastic-cased iBook to the aluminium wraped 15″ PB has given me a new appreciation for thermodynamics. (But still the PB is FAST! So much faster than the iBook.)
2) Tiger is okay, but little to write home about. The UI inconsistencies in OS X from the system and iApps perspective is becoming more obvious. But I could be just railing against the fact that part of iChat crashes on a regular basis, just after I switched back to using it instead of Adium because iChat can now do multiple accounts including Jabber accounts.
3) General instability is the call of the day. Some things are craping out way too easily. I’m letting Steve use my iBook while he’s out in Astoria for school, and I’ll be putting Panther on it.
4) Went and saw part of the Woodburn NEDRA electric drag races. Took some video and put together some movies for John Wwayland over at plasmaboy racing.
5) The new iTunes interface is an unecessary change unless it’s carried out to the rest of the iApps. The name for it seems to be “Polished Metal” as opposed to the older (and reviled) “Brushed Metal”. The iPod Nano looks cool but it took me days to find out it was solid-state flash and not hard drive-based. The ROKR iPhone is for SUKRs. Totally crippled and nothing new hardware-wise. Apple can’t build the whole widget, so the widget is a total compromise.
6) Our living rooom television died. Would like to replace it with a flat LCD, but they’re still more money than I want to invest in Home Entertainment. If anyone’s got a recommendation for a $200 to $300 television with *LOTS* of input and output jacks, let me know.
7) I’ve got a freelance project launching in the next could of days. I’ll point to it once it’s got a bit of burn-in time.
8) I’ve been seeing a new testing probe-bot that’s crawling around Contact forms. It’s already hit LazerQuick where we’ve patched it and just last nite it hit my feedback form on OrderSomewhereChaos. Nasty little bugger made me dive back into Perl code that I’ve not touched in 6 or 7 years. The mail is being sent to the (probably compromised) AOL account of “jrubin3456@aol.com”. They’re looking to find tons of spamming reflectors. I’m sure they’ll find *LOTS* of them.
9) Amy and I are off to see the final regular-season game for the Timbers! Mighty Mighty Timbers!
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04.18.03
Posted in Dreams, Life
at 8 am
Very strange dream this morning. The main crux of it was that my cat Simone had been ‘possesed’ by a demon and was all red, and racing around a house (and then my parents’ kitchen) and I had to corner her.
That’s what I get for watching Buffy *and* a Satan episode of South Park in the same night I suppose…
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03.11.01
Posted in Life, Media, Meta, People, Tech
at 1 pm
Original Posting: 3/9/2001 10:00:05 AM:
If we make networks that can self repair, then loose the ability to shut all network nodes down, then the smallest portion of the backups/self-maintenece/self-repair portions of software become more robust, would we have created a system that could out live us as a race? What would distinguish this from being another race altogether?
I found a new Weblog/Journaling perl script called Greymatter, via Camworld that looks very promising. I could get rid of Blogger (not to ‘dis’ blogger, but I can’t truly customize it) and set up my archives again. If I do this soon I won’t have too many archives to transfer over. After all, Dwelling is coming up on it’s 3 year birthday…
I’ve decided that blowing air at people will be my way of admonishing them. It will be a particularly harsh punishment in the morning. I’m going to be a great parent. “Don’t make me come over there and blow air in your face!”
NP in my head: Brian Eno’s latest release, “It’s a Beautiful Day”
Now biting my hand: Simone.
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01.07.00
Posted in Life
at 12 pm
It’s great. I’m better rested than I have been in months. It’s amazing what a new bed can do for you.
The bed that Amy and I have had was a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law’s grandfather. It was in the guest room of the place he lived, and must be close to 20 years old if not older. The boxspring was a joke and the mattress itself was lumpy… like sleeping on coconuts.
<http://www.monk.com/placestogo/portland/pdxtom/wake.up.html>
But after short visit with a local celebrity we have a new bed by Englander <http://www.englandersleep.com/> that is the cat’s pajamas.
Speaking of cats, one of the nice things about the new bed is that Simone no longer leaps up into the bed simply to roll around and nap. It’s difficult for her get her 17 lbs. up to the top of the new bed, so she only launches that effort when I’m sleeping there for the night. (She’s very attached to me and seems to love sleeping right next to my ankles.) Amy and I are already noticing the smaller amount of cat hair that’s in our clothes, hair, etc.
Now if I can just reduce the recently elevated stress level at work. Then I’ll get a good night’s sleep and not have such a great reason for not getting out of bed.
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06.18.99
Posted in Life, Meta, People
at 6 pm
I may not remember to write about all these things but I at least wanted to gloss them over before the week’s end.
Amy got an award for her volunteer work. Had she been at the international conference, she would have received it in front of the entire conference. I’m so proud of her!
On the way home from work yesterday, there was a little border collie loose on the southbound I-5 near the Rose Quarter. I helped calm it down and catch it along with three other concerned drivers. I hope it’s found its home by now.
This morning I was sent an e-mail from a German television station, asking me to appear on their Game show!?!?!?! This was not a mistake. I’ll have to get the full translation to figure out what they really want, but it’s just bizarre any way you slice it…
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03.17.98
Posted in Career, Life, People
at 11 am
Much to do today: Call Karen about the peeling wall in the shower, Call WM about an IRA rollover. I want to add a better looking list of OMSI’s web offerings on the Online Activities page. Note to Amy: I found the original PSD files for Air Travelers.
Still need to call my parents and e-mail Teeg today. It looks like my friend Maurice will be visiting from The Netherlands in April. That should be fun!
<->
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03.16.98
Posted in Life
at 12 pm
Chronic Destiny
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03.14.98
Posted in Career, Life, Media, People
at 12 pm
Ah… Saturday Morning. Running laundry downstairs and trying to keep Simone off the top of the entertainment center.
Amy and I went out for a drive last night. We ended up in Longview, Washington. She gave me the grand tour of the town, which seemed more like a deserted movie set than a place where people live. It seems everyone goes to bed there at 11:00 pm on Friday nights.
Amy showed me the houses she used to live in and all three of the public schools she went to. She said it’s strange to think of other people living in the same house that she grew up in. I imagine it would be pretty weird, since it’s never happened to me. My parents still live in the same house they’ve always been in, since I can remember.
I decided a new project I’d like to tackle is building a Quake level of OMSI. I’ve been looking for utilities that I could work with. It looks like they’re all Wintel based, so I’m going to try to hijack some CPU cycles from a machine at work.
In addition to having a really cool layout for a QuakeWorld, I think I may be able to use it as a navigation aid for visitors. I’ll have to look into it. If you have any tips that would help me out, please let me know!
<[]>
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03.13.98
Posted in Apple, Life, Media, People
at 6 pm
Friday morning/Afternoon, and I’ve finally gotten caught up on my e-mail, somewhat. At least it’s down to under a screen full in my general in-box. My Nick Cave stuff is still pretty heavy though.
It’s been nice expect for the construction work outside. I’m planning on spending the day with Amy, trying to relax. Yesterday was pretty busy, so when I got home, I debriefed Amy on it for nearly an hour straight. I’m not usually talkative, but I just wanted to get it all out of my system. I’m glad she’s so patient with me.
On my “I Believe” pages for Apple I added a few desktop patterns for people without web pages. They’re pretty garish as desktop patterns go, but some people like them. <http://www.zephyr.net/rosso/believe/>
<^>
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