There's the need for cleaning up. Too much junk lying around. Begs the question of what to do with it. Sort, trash some, organize the rest. That and getting rid of old stuff that just piles around.

I've fallen asleep and I don't want to move. I want to move on, yet finish whatever I'm doing, knowing that in the end it's useless anyway.

That doesn't sound like it will end very well.

I'm not sure what happened. Too fast.

Crying. She might have slipped on the wet boards. I pick her up. She becomes all floppy. Unexpected. I lie her on the floor. Playing? Unconscious? Seconds pass. 2? 5? She's back online now. I comfort her. Basics tests pass.

She's all fine now. I'm not. I was dead scared on the spot.

It dried. Eventually it stopped completely.

That's OK, it will come back later. It is coming back. Slowly.

The music never stopped. It was actually louder, which is why you could not hear it.

I'd like to say it won't happen anymore. Unfortunately I know it will. Because there are things I cannot cope with. There are events that I simply fear. I cannot cope with loss. Yet it is bound to happen, for all beings are mortal.

I wrote about it in 1993, yet nobody could understand. Me neither. They thought it was poetic when it was a cry for help. Luckily deep wasn't that deep. Sink in 1993. Sink in 1994. Sink in 1995. Sink and bounce. Analyze and reinvent yourself. 2000 arrived. It was the sunny tomorrow I was looking for.

But this is different. 1995 was personal. My universe was changing. Everything else was stable, which helped.

The next crisis will be dramatic. It's not about me anymore.

What will I do? I don't know. How will I react? Externally I won't react. External watchers will not understand -- they never do.

Maybe Tigger would know. I sure don't.

Right now I'm more feeling in the "down" part of the tide.

Too much clutter. On my desk, in my mind. Need to clean it. Annoying but nothing new.

I'll reuse plan A. Worked the last N-1 times: Make a list. Bullet points. Draw a line. Everything below the line is trashed. Act on the rest. Get some exercise, some sleep and reboot. Restart cycle every two years.

There's a plan B too. For serious and drastic times. I used it in '95 and it was painful. Let's not do it again.

Different doesn't mean bad.

Years from now I'll look at this and though it was a great time -- which it has been. There are always ups and downs and you can't always get all you want, it's all about compromises I guess.

But yeah, that was radically different and unexpected -- or maybe not totally, we knew it wouldn't be as before. After all it's not all about me anymore, nor even the two of us: now it's about the four of us and it takes a different kind of thinking and getting things done.

All in all we all had a good time, 612 pictures were taken and we're back to packing luggage again...

Pretty odd math isn't it? Well that just means that whenever I read ASOT 200, I somehow end up listening ASOT 170 back again. That's been going on for months and I see no end to it right now.

A while ago I started a list of ASOT episodes I like best and which time codes. So I got so far as 170, 171 XXL part 2 & 3, 186, 187, 188, later 198 and of course 195 and 200 XXL part 1 & 2 (first half). I stopped after 188 since the exercise was rather pointless -- it's not the mix that is spectacular in itself as much as the tune. And since some tunes are outstanding, whichever episode happens to contains them is a better episode.

So fine, I could make a list of tunes I find my favorites, right? Sure I could but it would be rather long and mostly pointless. It's not really the tune itself that matters as much as the pattern it embeds. And if you read the quote here, you can quickly take a guess at why the patterns work and by that I mean they don't only work for me.

I see trance exactly like what the word means or at least implies. The music is inconsequential, what matters is the harmony that it generates. If you happen to be receptive to this harmony, then it works, otherwise it won't.

Usability is broken.

I need to find some books on fixing that kind of stuff. I had one lying around a while ago but it's been a while and amusingly I didn't need it back then -- reading technical manuals can be entertainment per se, your mileage may vary :-)

Anyhow I got the feedback. Geez, 3 months is kinda excessive. The usual great but in fact who cares? Priorities keep dancing and I don't play that dance.

I guess reading it today I can't take it seriously. Overall it's good yet it's still pretty sad. The cons get pretty pathetic overall where the pros are over-the-top. Yet as usual it's the same song... the usual great but in fact who cares?. One day all is white and it's all cool and the next day is more grayish and the priorities have changed.

The bottom line is that they just don't get it. Eventually it doesn't matter. I just let them do their part and I do mine. It's their job to decide where it goes, I don't know why they would want me to decide that for them. I just make it go there. That's what I do. And that's what works best overall.

Did I just quit today? Ah no, that was a decade ago.

Somewhere else in time and space, so far away it seems almost foreign now, there were these two cats that I adored very much. Eventually they got old and whatever goes with age happened, which is not always wisdom, yet I still adored them a lot. One day one was gone. She was there and suddenly she wasn't anymore, and I was not there to witness it. I still think I really lost something. On one hand I really didn't want to be there, yet I feel like I should have been there and cope with it, and overall I feel this emptiness; if I could I'd go back and do one more last thing to help, as if there was such a thing. One last nice gesture. One last call for some kind of closure.

A very long time ago, in another millennium and on another continent, someone told me I was cold and emotionless. That was as far from the truth as one can be. Yes it may look like this most of time, and it may sound like that too. But what's one to do when being totally overwhelmed? I could never find an adequate answer to that and a long time ago I decided nothing was the best choice of the worse cases. Cap your emotions and bury them in this void that you feel. Later maybe you'll know how to deal with them, unless they submerge you first. Or they may show up from time to time, back from their grave, under the form of anger, frustration or fear. The other option is to let them out first, yet I can't really allow that to happen -- I've done that once and quite frankly it didn't help, nor did people understood any better what the storm was about. It was rather devastating, and for all participants.

Another easy way to cap emotions is to rationalize them. It is as fake as hiding them under the carpet and eventually there's only so much you can rationalize.

Back to that first event there, I still feel this lack of closure. I could just burst in tears; maybe I'll do some day. But in between I can rationalize it out and just think that, relatively speaking, things could get much worse -- there are a number of people that gravitate around me that I value above almost anything, and life being what it is, I know sooner or later things will have to change, and quite frankly I'm not ready. Not now, not before and probably never will be.

And I don't think I'll be able to hold that one.

So anyway, beside the fun work, there's the non-fun at work too. I'm fighting to keep my little project going. There's still tons of stuff to do and few help to get. Besides help doesn't always come in the way I want -- meaning the web app is non standard in its architecture and the way it operates and I want to keep that intact.

Outside of work, babies are being fantastic, with even a couple of cry-free nights, and definitely I'm having a blast playing with them.

Yesterday I recently realized there was a tech talk about Second Life a while ago and the video is actually available here: The Virtual World of Second Life. My opinion of Second Life was rather low (i.e. pointless and graphics suck) and since the creators of course say it doesn't suck and I thought, hey let's try. Accounts are free so trying it out is just a download away.

For some reason trying to connect to their web site, create an account and download the client took forever. I mean literally web pages would take dozens of minutes to load. I finally found a mention in their blog that they had a server maintenance going on. I tried again the next morning and it was all fast again.

So after trying it, I'd say it confirms my opinion, and least it's not for me. As far as I am concerned it is pointless. However the client is nice and the whole thing is rather responsive for something that happens all server-side.

One thing I immediately liked compared to Wow is that I'm not "stuck" in the game. Wow is designed to extend game play and things take time to accomplish. It takes time to travel anywhere in the world and it takes time to complete quests. Login out has a timeout and you have to wait a bit and your character can get killed if it's not in an inn (meaning generally you plan for your time play because you'll want to go back to the inn before leaving.) It's by design, and although some people complain it gets nerfed all the time it's still the main design strategy. So yes Wow literally sucks time out of the player. I guess you can spend timeless hours exploring SL too but you don't have too. Login in is pretty fast and login out is almost instantaneous.

But SL is not a game in the sense that no quests are offered to you with in-game rewards (although I'm sure that happens somewhere in the world.) You just go there and it's up to you to find what you want to be doing.

It's also obvious there's an emphasis on the monetary side of it.

When I was playing I was thinking of my old [Netdroids|Dev/NetDroidsNotes] idea and that where I realized such a thing could not work on such a scale. I bet SL main motivation is monetary. It's not the same public.

Jumping subjects, the week-ends ended up at MM's place to "help" him with all the food he came back with. And as always that was a nice evening, even nicer because I hadn't done this in a while.

"Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. There's never a letup, It's relentless. Every day it piles up more and more, but the more you get out, the more it keeps coming. And then the bar code reader breaks. And then it's Publisher's Clearinghouse day." -- Newman in Seinfield.

Bonnee année et bonne santé pour 2007 :-)

Babies are dancing and it's a bright sunny morning...

It's as simple as that :-)

No lame resolutions that nobody's going to follow here. Keep it simple and let the source err the force be with you!

And so I wait.
Sleepless.
Incomplete.

I see them gadgets. "The tools will save you" they do say. I don't think so. They seem to be happy about it. I'm not.

Is that envy I feel? Could be. Or not. I tried the gadgets and I feel nothing. I don't understand what they see in them. I feel pity for all this hype.

I am definitely lost. I don't know what I want anymore. I have nothing. I have it all. I have what I wanted. And a lot more. It used to be simple. When did that change?

Luckily she was there. She knows. She's strong. I don't. I'm not.