Category Archives: Wandering Ways

100th Post!

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This is my 100th post (on this part of my site… there are another 80 images in the visual gallery and half a dozen articles in the written gallery as well). Woo! I actually feel like I’m starting to have a real quantity of content (well, I didn’t say it was thought provoking, witty, or even interesting content).

I have about 5 gigabytes of music on my laptop. 99% of it is rips of my CDs, and the other 1% is freebies downloaded off sites like MP3.com et cetera. (Take that, RIAA! Gestapo Fuckers.) It being autumn, a time I find particularly useful as a period of careful introspection and personal assessment, I’ve been going through my music collection. I’m up to “K.” K as in King Crimson, one of my all time favorite bands. My entire King Crimson collection is on my computer, which means that this particular section is going to take quite some time to complete… not that I mind, not in the least.

The listing starts with Cirkus, a delightful collection of live performances of some of their best songs. It’s broken up into new (neon heat disease) and old (fractured), and is just freakin’ cool. For those who haven’t listened to King Crimson (you poor souls), let me give you a brief summary: King Crimson started back in 1968, and released their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969. While they have certainly grown and evolved musically since then, in many ways In the Court of the Crimson King is still one of their best works. It is certainly indicative of that era of the band (they have gone through several incarnations). After releasing several more albums, and touring extensively, becoming well known as a masterful experimental group (well, well-known to musicians, anyway), they broke up. They re-formed later, in a different configuration, and continued to create excellent music that pushed boundaries as to what people were doing with music. Their style (if you could call it just one) is uniquely their own, exhibiting a diverse range of influences and originality, combined into a kind of music that by its very nature evolves every time you listen to it.
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Residency

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I’m currently listening to the official Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, which is a delightful panoply of stylistic excellent music, music that evokes mood and mentality in a fashion that many other modern works simply and utterly fail to do. This is not a posting about music, mind you (though I could easily make it so), but I wanted to mention it as a segue that represents a certain mode of thought. “Mood music” if you will.

School residency started yesterday. I felt a strange mixture of dread and elation at coming back, feeling unprepared but at the same time eager to pick up a new study. I’ve been getting a lot of compliments and congratulatory comments on my recent marriage and move across the country (something that surprised a good deal of people, and has proven to be a conversation starter since). My hair still has highlights from when it was dyed this past July, which has been the source of most of the compliments (“wow, your hair looks great” and such). I dig the positive attention, but what really does it for me is the relative familiarity I’ve achieved with the other students, a familiarity that largely remains unchanged after not seeing or hearing from any of them for a full six months. At this point, I am an “old hand” at the residency, someone that new students can come to if they want to know how things work.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing this coming semester, which is a change: past semesters have had me coming in with a pretty firm understanding of exactly what I was going to do. This time, I come with a concept and that’s about it. I want to study mysticism, the mystical counterparts to several of the mainstream religions, with a focus on mysticism in the Baha’i Faith, since I have more of a direct interest in that one in particular (I’m a Baha’i, something that I’ve mentioned at least three times before on this site… do a search for “baha’i” to see where). Of course, there is another component to this study: I find myself feeling tapped creatively, and would like to find a way to reenergize and get motivated on really USING my creative resources again. So the other component, if it were to be summed up (and I’m going to have to for the study proposal) is studying the relation between spirtuality and creativity.

And yes, I am in fact writing this blog entry partially to help codify what I’m thinking. I went to my first exploratory meeting today, and found myself rambling a bit, so I want to cut down on that. We’ve got a large group this time (largest its been in several semesters), so the exploratory meetings are a bit more full than usual, leaving time as a bit of a precious commodity.
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Geeking Out

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Well, it only took a few days of being obtuse, but I’ve finally got a reasonably up to date mirror of my site, functioning with a MySQL backend (unlike my actual BerkeleyDB… something I plan to remedy soon), on my local machine. I just barely finished importing all the files necessary and making sure everything works, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll get an opportunity to actually start futzing with stuff a little.

I’m starting to feel drained from this trip. I haven’t been sleeping well, and have been constantly surrounded by people (even though they are my friends). This is quite the change from the hermit-like nature I’d been exhibiting in Seattle, and the change has been a bit more draining than I’d like. I also miss my wife (imagine that!), which is exacerbated because I feel like neither of us are communicating very well lately. Something to work on when I get back, I suppose — just keeping in touch when you’re 3000 miles and 3 time zones apart is tough enough, without trying to work through new stuff.

Anyway, I just wanted to make a quick post to announce that the “geek issue” that’s been absorbing my time and energy the past few days is finally done, so now I’m going to in theory try to post a bit more regularly. (No more excuse of getting absorbed into the localizing problem!)

Back in Vermont

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I’m back in Vermont for the first time since the beginning of August, and likely for the last time until April. It’s interesting to be back… the elation I felt as we touched down certainly reaffirms my firm belief that regardless of where I live or for how long, Vermont will always be Home.

During the days prior to leaving, I spent time with Mickey when I could (she’s been working) and for the rest of the time, I’ve been working on getting a local mirror of this site working on my computer. This took far more effort than I’d expected (or was really necessary), as I decided that it would also be an opportune time to update my versions of Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl on my local machine. After all said and done, I reverted Apache to what it was, MySQL got downgraded from 4 to the latest version of 3, and PHP and Perl actually managed to be updated (though not without trials and tribulations)

I’ve almost got it working, I just need to figure out why my author database isn’t working on the local machine, and how exactly I can fix that. I’m sure given a few hours to root around in the MovableType forums, I’ll find a solution. Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to really start gutting the site and making the more significant changes that I want to do. Of course, my reference books (O’Reilly’s Definitive Guides to MySQL, XHTML, CSS, and PHP, plus the PHP Cookbook) are all at home, so it may have to wait until November. We’ll see. (Well, I’ll see, since all changes will be on localhost until I have it running smoothly, at which point they’ll all get migrated to the website.)

I digress. Mickey’s father showed up the day before I left, travelling the countryside on a photo safari that I’m quite envious of. We all did some wandering, and swung by the local camera store (where Mickey thinks I should work, since I seem to be so good at evangelizing various types of equipment), and in general had a good time. Finally, Mickey dropped me off at the airport for my redeye on JetBlue to Vermont.
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Things I Miss

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I miss my family and my friends. Words cannot begin to describe how much or in what way.

I miss New England Autumn, wandering through a forest aflame with oranges and reds and yellows, on crisp, clear days.

I miss going to Squam every Columbus Day Weekend to see my extended family; to laugh and share and talk and eat good food (and laugh some more).

I miss Wednesdays, getting together with family and friends to eat lots of good chinese food at Panda House.

I miss evenings in Hanover, drinking coffee, meeting random people, having a good time with friends, writing, putting the day in order in that form of meditation that only happens in Third Spaces.
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Site Development

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This is a little overdue. First the things I’ve already done:
1) I’ve changed the link colors to make them stand out more. They continue to be fairly soft, mellow colors (intentionally), however.
2) I’ve reorganized my links list. It is now alphabetical by category (first is friend sites, then webcomics, then projects I’m affiliated with). I also moved the wedding gallery out of the external links section and into the internal links section.

The things I’ve slated for the next few days:
1) I’ve got about two dozen links that I would LIKE to add to my links list, but that would make it an unwieldy list at best. Instead, I’m planning on making an actual links page, with category headers and everything. If I get particularly ambitious, I may even add descriptions of each site.
2) I need to propagate the rest of the changes that I’ve made to the main page that haven’t yet made it into the rest of the site. Such as the wedding gallery link, and the color changes.

Check back in a few days to see if I actually did it.
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Sanity, Work, and Me.

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I did a lot of virtual running today. Money issues have been pressing over the past few days, really made manifest by the current frustrations in collecting the funds for the upcoming semester of school. There were several emails batted back and forth trying to confirm little details and to get the process under way, a process further delayed by the fact that tuition apparently went up this semester, a notice of which I have not yet received, due to the additional time it takes from mail forwarding.

Then came the calls, contacting the bursar, confirming that yes, the tuition DID in fact rise. Then getting back to the Bank to let them know that yes, it did in fact go up (they refused to do any of the running around on this, even after receiving an official bill from the school and then being confused by the information therein). I am not happy with the bank, and I’m less happy with my aunt, who acts as trustee to the account (if you’re reading this, sorry, but it’s the truth: this sort of bullshit pisses me off).

I’ve been contemplating graduate work after getting my Bachelors. Really, the thing that has been holding me back the most is that I’m not sure if I want to have to deal with fighting for every penny out of a fund explicitly created for my education. I do not feel that the intentions of my grandmother when she created the trust are being upheld. Unfortunately, I am unsure what, if anything, I can do to correct that.
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A Panoply of Links

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It’s been a few days since I last posted, and I am in fact planning to remedy that in a fuller fashion than just links. That will be later, however. For now, some links worth noting:

My old English teacher/theatrical director, Alan Haehnel, has a website up at www.alanhaehnel.com. It’s primarily about the various shows he’s had published, serving as a contact point for people who are interested in producing them. His plays are invariably delightful, so I’d highly recommend checking it out.

My friend Adam has a website up and running. www.adamhadlock.com will get you to the primary site. He’s also got a weblog running, and is (as of his post a few hours ago) debating whether he wants to make it the main page or not, so until he decides that here is a link direct to the weblog.

Uri is finally up and running from his move, and has begun posting on his website again, with a vengeance (four new posts in the past two days). I enjoyed his “Create!” post in particular (www.mellowafternoon.com, in case you forgot).

In the realm of photography, I highly recommend checking www.terragalleria.com. Mickey’s father sent her the link, which she in turn passed on to me. It’s the website for QT Luong, who is a rather respected photographer. His National Parks collection is really impressive, and one of the most complete I’ve seen.

And to round out the links, a geek-worthy item from a company called Crumpler. Jason O’Grady raved about this new backpack company. They have some truly remarkable new designs that will hopefully revolutionize the computer bag industry. You can check out their (funky/bizarre/cool) website at: www.crumplernyc.com.

More of a real post later!

New Chapters Up

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I’ve posted chapters 3 and 4 of my essay. You can find them here. Chapters 5 and 6 should be up in a day or two. (It was no accident that I left the topics that largely amount to me rambling for the end… after the past 30-40 pages, my brain is tapioca.)

Please comment on them in this post, if you wish to comment.

More later!

Identity

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I’ve been thinking about the concept of identity a lot lately (with my essay due in two weeks, this isn’t too surprising). I’ve noticed that I’ve been pretty strung out the past few days, frustrated by pretty much everything. (It’s been a viscious cycle: I have to psyche myself up to progress with the convention and make contacts out here… I manage to do it and finally feel comfortable and happy with the process, email in what I’ve done… after reading the responses, I’m back to being frustrated as hell.)

I’ve been spending time on IRC (I leave it open in another window while I write and occasionally glance at it to see if anything interesting is being talked about), and have found myself getting more and more pissed off by it. I’ve kept coming back to IRC intermittently ever since I originally started being online, and invariably I end up getting frustrated and leave. Looks like this will be another one of these occasions. I just can’t seem to help but get irritated when I frequent a channel for more than a week: the mishmash of young teens (and the angst and stupidity that goes with it), college-age elitists, and a thin layer of talented, intelligent, caring people that are generally silent for about 95% of their time online… it’s just frustrating.
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