Lair of the Wolf

Have you ever sat done and thought about what it meant to be able to speak? Just for a moment. Considered what we take for granted every day of our lives, the ability to communicate. Whether it's just having a conversation with a close friend, or speaking in front of a crowded room. Our voices make a difference in this world, when we use them. I'll start with a simple example we'd rather not think about... talking a friend out of suicide. Alot of us have considered it, maybe not seriously, but at some point, things probably got down and it seemed like a viable idea, for a moment.. When those close to us have these thoughts, for longer than a moment, we have a voice to tell them, that they shouldn't, not because we can give them a good reason. There's alot of not-so-good ones, that we hold to though. Sometimes we use religion as a reason not to. Truth is, we just know that the person needs somebody to be there, so they don't feel so alone anymore, and maybe just maybe, they'll come around. Though, the power of a voice, can also drive somebody to action... it's called, inciting a riot, if it's a large group... If it's between two people, it could be causing a fight, on the negaitve side... On the postitive side, you can give encouragement, that yes, somebody can do something.. that the goal they set for themselves is reachable. If it's a group, then it's probably to promote a common cause. to raise awareness of something wrong in the world. We know there's so many things wrong with the world... each of us notices some of them, some of us notice more than others. I feel like I notice more than the people around me. Sometimes it's difficult for me to even look outside, and face a world that seems so cold and harsh most of the time. We do though. I do and you do.. at least I hope you do.
People sometimes waste their voice, by using it to cause harm, singling out a person in a group, to pick on for being different, whether it's because they're smart, dumb, their race, sex, or sexual desires, or maybe it's because of a ethical or religous view. Intolerance is one of the biggest problems that plague our soceity today. Some may call it fear, fear of something different, fear of no longer having the status quo. That they may lose their person who's different, and not have somebody to compare to, to say "I'm better than you because i'm ___________" (you fill in the blank). Others just say, to change in this way or that way is wrong. Wrong because they don't agree? To disagree does not make it wrong. It makes it, not your opinion.
In our soceity, we're bombarded daily with voices... so many voices... Whether it's a TV anchor telling you the horrors and joys of your local hometown. A commerical for the latest product you probably don't really need to make your life better, but just should want it, because the people on TV say so. (or maybe because somebody fed their family or themselves by working on making it. They never mention that? How often do you pick up something and think, I wonder who made it, and what were they like? ) If you listen to the radio, you're probably hearing voices, and melodies.. Whether it's a song, or the DJ who might be in your town or in New York or Los Angeles telling you about your local shops and what's gonna be played next. It all starts to lose it's character. It becomes, life... It's not personal, it's... just there, sterile, and feelingless. Sometimes monotonous. We have the technology to connect us in ways we never before imagined, to share our voice with others... Cell Phones, Computers, the interenet, even older technologies like the TV and the Radio... Some of these things it's obvious to see how they can connect you.. others, it may not be so easy.
The Cell Phone enables us to speak to a friend or somebody we know whereever we happen to be, it;s like a lifeline of communication, some people never go anywhere without it. We take them to an extreme though, to the point that a good thing becomes a bad, they're talked on while driving, endangering others lives on the road, they ring in restraunts and movie theaters, when you ask youself, why can't that person llive without it for a little while? If they're alone, you can understand, but when they're with somebody, you must wonder, if they value that person, and if they do, have they taken them for granted, that they'll always be there when they get done with whatever they happen to be doing.
Computers and the Internet, enable interconnection in a seemingly cold way. Though, it connects us with people that you otherwise would never meet. There are those people out there who say that the internet is bad, that all it is, is a porn ridden wasteland of filth. I believe you get what you look for out of it. If you're looking for filth, for whatever reason you're going to find it. If you're looking for friends, you'll find them. There's boundaries, things we should not look for, but do.. and are shocked they're there. but, would they be there, if people didn't look for them?
TV... so many places to go with it... it's a breading ground for ideas, a way to communicate feelings, through artistry, or a way to transmit mediocrity to the masses... with things like Reality TV which are so far from real reality, that it's a joke that nobody laughs at. At the same time, there are shows and movies that can inspire or enrage you, and bring you to action. Recently it's been higlighted that people arent prepared for the unexpected, with events like the recent Superbowl halftime show and the resulting chaos. (You know what i'm talking about). So many people were shocked... that something like that could occur, it broke their delusions that it was a safe haven. and now they turn to government to save them from that broken delusion. To restore the falsity of an enviroment where the few control what's seen. That they can hide from the world, and say, this is the world. just these parts.. and not that, that, that , or this. These people ignore things until it bites them on the ass.. Then they claim to be shocked... Are they shocked because of what happened? Yes, but it's deeper than that, they're shocked because they never knew it could, or didn't want to know.. they didn't want to know that things had changed. These are half-voices, voices who speak, but do not always know the whole thing.
The last piece of technology on my list.. the long and forgotten radio. There was a time, when people paid attention to what happened there. Now it's turned, rapidly, into a glut of the same, no matter where you go. The art of music thrives there, but it doesn't thrive as well as it used to. Stations are owned by fewer and fewer individuals. Stations are no longer programmed locally, where the culture and opinion of the local listener, make or break a song on that station, instead it's national charts, and industry executives, record companies, payola schemes, under promoted new artists and over hyped lifestyles of the popular. but it's all the same.... The radio yearns for something new and different, before it dies of boredom. The better stations are the stations that are different, they attract the attention. Instead, it's more of the same, where stations are marketed as advertising tools.. and the art of music dies with them.

The underheard voices...
Have you ever felt like there was no platform to get how you feel out there? In our soceity we're faced with a challenge. The underheard voices... Those of minorities who're never noticed.. and the youth. who're ignored, like they're uninfluential, who're marketed to, but not listened to. How often do you truly listen or hear a young person speak their mind on the trouble facing them? Whether it's trouble in school, violence, or anything. There's no outlet.
What if? You could get the youth, and a community involved, in something. local, and live.. So those views and issues get out. and get heard... It may surprise you to think, that there is a platform for this.. and it isn't the internet... try low-power radio or low-power TV.... These stations were created in the US by the FCC to provide more localised focusing channels on the air. In theory, anybody could own one, even somebody as low-budget as a school.

Then the reality happened. Lobbyists and other corporate interest groups, afraid of the falling of their bottom line. Successfully Campaigned the FCC to alter the LPFM and LPTV service, instead of it being affordable to obtain a license for anybody, only larger non-profit organizations can even afford such a station. and to make matters worse, commericial radio stations are so heavily protected, from intereference from anything, that these little brother stations, are very restricted from using frequencies near them.
So, what could've been a useful service, is now, yet another unrealized ideal. Voices still unheard, still look for a way.... to be heard, to get attention, and the question remains, how long, before somebody does something drastic again to be heard?

Death.
In daily life, as a society we don't like to think about death. It surrounds us plucking people consistantly from the planet and away from us, but we think if we ignore it, it'll go away or won't affect us. It simply doesn't happen.
Back in May, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer (that had already spread) and promptly was put into a program of radiation and chemotherapy treatments, the treatment had no noticeable effect, and he spent the next 2 1/2 months slowly deteriorating at home in bed. Until he died the morning of July 27th at the age of 52.
Its not as difficult as you might think, watching someone die. It more or less handles itself. Leaving you with little or nothing to do, not that you don't feel anything, you feel every moment and at times the only thing you feel like doing is screaming. Mind you, scream all you want, it won't make the person better. After awhile, if you're the praying kind, or even if you're not, you find yourself praying, or just wishing that they die. So they're no longer in pain, and unhappy. I don't understand what the reason is people die in pain, whether it's lying in bed slowly decaying and getting thiner, or getting multiple body parts blown off in combat, and I doubt I ever will. Living in pain is one of the worst situations you can be in, during your life. There's different kinds of pain though, you have physical, and emotional, the latter can be actually worse, since it wont directly ever kill you. In situations like this, strangely enough, we're still pulled towards trying to survive, prolonging the situation, which isn't a bad thing if you have a chance that's larger than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000. But when there's no hope, there's no reason to hang on. and no harm in just "letting go".
Death is difficult no matter what though. For us who remain alive. Sudden death is more shocking than terminal disease. With the latter you can prepare yourself, and you know, the morning you go into the room and see the person, that they're gone. You don't always burst into tears, and that doesn't make you an awful person. Knowing they're better off dead than they were alive, is a pretty good reason not to be upset that they're gone. You do miss them though, and I have no idea how long that goes on, I figure its for life.

On the morning of August 4th, my grandfather died of a heart-attack, at home on his farm. Unexpectedly. He had gone out to do his morning routine and tend to the animals and it just happened. Sudden death is more of a shock, always. No time to prepare for what you know is going to happen.

Two deaths in 8 days is not an easy thing to handle. I'm not sure i'm doing it well either. When you're already in shock and adapting to the 1st one, and the 2nd comes along, its difficult to judge how you're doing. Plus the constant-stress of 2 months of terminal illness around you. Once it's all over, the feelings that were kept back, while things get dealt with that just have to be done, that you don't wanna do, Flood back.

Life.
You re-evaluate your life while you're thinking through this kinda stuff. and sometimes, like in my case, you realize, you don't like what you see. You see yourself as 20 and never having really lived. having no contribution to the world, or more importantly, to yourself. You realize you're mostly alone. and you realize...
You don't know what to do about any of it.

It's difficult to think, cause if you try to focus and do one thing, you end up just back where you started, visualize a wagon-wheel if you will, with many different paths leading out from the center, you're in the center and every where you go, you end up just circling around and landing back there. How do I break free? How do I resume my life? I think to myself. but theres a problem. I don't want to resume my life, I want to come out of this happy, and somebody new, to have a rebirth and leave behind the baggage of life.

That's what I look for. how to find my way to the person I want to be, and leave behind who I was. I just don't know how I'm going to do it.

I just, don't know.

So, the last two blog posts have been kinda an easy-way out. Its simple to just copy/paste lyrics to a song and call it a post. That's not to say it lacks meaning, particularly when the lyrics aren't just picked at random. I've spent most of the last week sitting in my bedroom listening to music, just me and a CD player. While I work on various things, most notably update.mozilla.org's upcoming update-beta. and this site, psychoticwolf.net. This room, while it's been mine for roughly two years, (as of October 1st, 2004 it will be anyway) lacks alot of my personality. The walls are eggshell white. The only thing that hangs up in here is a calendar (Wolves, go figure). That's not to say I lack personality and am not capable of having the room express it. I've simply not spent much time in here and haven't been particularly motivated to decorate. The room is all function. Bed and an entertainment stand. (where the beforementioned CD Player, Stereo, VCR, TV, etc. sit. and the laptop when it's not in use.) Everything else is in the closet. (you don't wanna go in there. trust me.) When you spend enough time in a room, you start to bond with it. I'm starting to think enough time has passed with the unmotivated me controlling things. Sooner or later, in order to live life, you *must* be motivated to do so.
As for the song lyrics, the first one, "I Don't Believe in Love" just seemed to fit my mood at the time, it comes from Operation: Mindcrime by Queensryche. I doubt anybody reading this has ever heard of them before, but, that's ok. I don't mind. Consider yourself informed of their existance. :-) Check 'em out.
The second one, "Believe It or Not", comes from Nickelback's The Long Road. I got that CD as a Christmas gift, and listened to it like once. I didn't remember being particularly impressed. After my Father's memorial service back in July (the 30th), the family kinda vanished, w/o the typical decent on the home behavior, (you know, somebody's dead, let's eat alot of food you don't need). This left me with an afternoon to myself. Feeling a little, strung out, and caged. I tried playing music and just relaxing, but it didn't work. So, I grabbed the CD I was playing (which happened to be The Long Road) and my portable CD Player. (behold the power of the discman. ;-) ) and went outside just to get out. I ended up walking down towards the river, along the banks at the edge of the woods. That song caught my attention when it played (its like track 4 so say 12 minutes or so into the journey), its easier to pick out stuff when you're listening on headphones than just playing something on home or even car audio, despite what you might think, given today's technologies. I can't pick out a part of the song I like most, or what caught my attention, whether its the music or the words, they both feel just perfect. Particularly the acoustic guitar verse, there's something very real and personal about nothing but a guitar and a voice.

" Most of us have nothing to complain about
Most of us have things we could live without
Everyone need advice on how to get along

You don't, we won't
Until we figure out"

As I write this post, I've been trying to pick out a verse or something to give meaning, to express what it is that I like about it. I've picked several different parts and deleted them again, because they weren't long enough, so, all of it. heh. Just read the previous post. It has all of it in it.

It's been two months now, since my father passed away. I haven't quite figured out how to deal with stuff yet. But, nonetheless, i'm still here, working through it all, every minute of every hour of every day.

"I've seen it a lot every time the world turns upside down
Believe it or not most of us feel like we're losing ground
Believe it or not everyone hate admitting fear
Believe it or not most of us wanna know why we're here"

That's me.

How do you forgive yourself? For things you have or haven't done in the past. When you feel like you've fucked up your life by doing it.

Oh, and Happy 21st birthday to me.

We all have those personality traits we'd rather not have. For some of us, they're more major than others, perhaps its because that person has more than just a couple, maybe it's more like 15-20, which is basically, a whole part of themself that they'd rather just go away.

Somethings like that, are too much of a part of you to just banish though. Unfortunately, we can't treat our personality like its amish and shun the parts we don't like, that have commited some sort of crime or sin, in the view of the rest of self. We have to live with it, quietly scold it and say to ourselves "I'll never do that again". but what happens when you find yourself saying it over and over and over again? The definition of insanity, as defined in the movie "28 Days" is "repeating the same thing over and over again expected a different result." So isn't saying to yourself you'll never do something again, only to keep doing things the exact same way, a bit, insane?

When something happens that you blame on a certain part of you, you get angry at it, then wish that part would just go away. (anger, avoidance). Avoiding it, won't make it go away though, in fact, it's not even dealing with a situation or issue at hand. Its just easier not to work through the issues and expect things to magically change, a solution to a better you to fall from the sky perhaps, but things don't work quite that easily. Sure, pieces of the solution are likely to present themselves to you fairly easily in everyday life, but only as long as you're making an effort to achieve a goal. Sitting around wishing things would change, isn't going to help. Things don't change on their own in a positive way. (and just wishing for change, tends to arrive at the fates and get a bit twisted, and next thing you know, something breaks or dies. It *was* change, but not exactly what you meant when you thought it. Was your thought responsible for what happened? No. You didn't actually kill them. Something else apart from us entirel is responsible for that, whatever that may be. In our lives, we don't tend to think about what exists that we don't encounter every day. We prefer not to, perhaps because the unknown is quite scary to us. But if that unknown is affecting our lives already, it's not really unknown, we know what it is, to some extent.

Its alot of work, mainly mental effort, to force yourself to break old habits and patterns that make you unhappy. The status quo is so much easier to deal with than the thought of making it change and just ending up in a worse situation. (Which is ignoring the part where it's likely any change at all, will end up being for the better, because it *is* a change.) At least, that's for changes in life that we control and pick, changing jobs, getting a job, learning to drive, getting out and meeting people, bettering yourself through learning something you didn't know, replacing that wardrobe that looks like it should've died in 1991. Some of them are pretty small things, but they're things that make us feel better about ourselves. They're things we have complete control over.
Sure, there's baggage, over time we pick up lots of baggage, going shopping is likely to remind you of every bad fashion choice you've ever made in your entire life, so you spend more time analyzing what "looks right for you" than you do just browsing. If you were merely shopping for your current self. Then most likely, what you're looking for, is hanging in your closet. Its a repeating pattern, you're looking for something like you already have. When attempting to do something different, you can't think about the present or, most importantly, the past. That'll just cloud your judgement of what you're trying to do, you'll be convinced the right thing, is wrong, because it's too different. Instead of just letting go and being yourself. The self you yearn deeply to be. Not a clone of everybody else, because even in a world of fashion, where everybody's similar, we all are unique, to quote Lewis Black, "we're all like snowflakes". What works for one, doesn't for another, and what looks one way on somebody else, will look different on you, because you're unique. You have to be comfortable that how your own self is presented to the world, is how you want it, to be confident in that even, and just relax about it, pulling the energy from your confidence.

There's a big exclusion from changes that're beneficial though, one I'm all too familar with at this point, death. Particularly, the death of people you were close to, be it a parent, or somebody you were deeply in love with, and cared about more than you care about youself. The pain of losss, and the loneliness of the absense of that person in the world, makes the world seem, empty, like there's nothing to hang around for. How do you push ahead, and make the changes you need to make to get through what you've gotta get through, when you can't think of a reason to? When you never put yourself first and are now being asked to do so by life, and you just don't know how? I suppose the answer is you can't do it alone, you'd need the support of anybody who's available. Its a very tender and easily hurtable and vulnerable feeling. You just have to have faith and believe that things will get better.

"They say they built the train tracks over the Alps between Vienna and Venice before there was a train that could make the trip. They built it anyway. They knew one day a train would come." -- Under the Tuscan Sun

What do you do when you realize for the first time in along time, you don't have anything at all you want to do, and nothing you have to do?

Sitting and staring into space doesnt' seem like a good option.

Oh yeah, Happy Holidays . :-)

Whether we like it or not, life tends to jump up and bite us on the ass, usually repeatedly. We get reminded of things we'd rather not, or pushed into doing things we think are bad at the time, things that are hard and we don't want to deal with. Though, usually these things are done for the better. I hide my past, I find thinking about what I did and didn't do back there, hurts a lot. Because what happens in the past, affects you in the here and now, or in my case, what doesn't happen. At some point, I quit living. I became content to live on the sidelines and watch from distance at other people living. I was too young to make this kind of assessment of what happened, of course, but looking back on it now, that is exactly what happened. I didn't push myself to get involved and nobody did it for me, to reach out to people and try to make friends, or to encourage and strengthen those friendships that had formed, though they didn't dissolve till much later, they certainly didn't make me very happy. My life for all intents and purposes, was just me. I thought I could do it on my own, that I didn't need anybody else, and after awhile, I felt like people didn't want me around, so I didn't have anybody else, and the situation wasn't going to change. I had no idea about anything, and the little I did know, I used in the quiet business of becoming depressed. Of course, being the little boy that wasn't involved with anything and nobody cared about, brought with it its share of insults and comments at my expense. I became angry on the inside, but you'd never know it from looking at me at the time. On the outside, I taught myself to function normally, to do what I was supposed to do and attract as little attention to myself as possible. Figuring if nobody noticed me, they'd leave me alone and I'd be ok, but, as human nature often conflicts, at the same time, wishing I would be noticed, and be, liked. To have friends who would notice if I was there or wasn't and would want me around. To be back in a social circle where I'd actually learn what was and wasn't popular and what was going on around me. It didn't happen. Not because people didn't try, not at first, of course, but later, but because I didn't change. I seemed disinterested, and people just kinda went away. I was scared to try to re-enter the world, it only took a year or so, and I'd completely failed to develop, and didn't know how to dive in anymore, and nobody was aware to help.
Time attempted to heal, after 3 years, and entering high-school, things were different, the immature picking and issues vanished as suddenly those same people were introduced into a new food-chain. I, on the other hand, was used to the sidelines, and was content (I hate that word now, content sucks.) to continue as-is. Occasionally, during high school, I hit stages where I had a desire to get involved, but, I didn't feel supported to try to get involved in anything, there felt like there was always some hurdle, somebody who would be inconvenienced and me, not wanting to cause trouble, just quietly accepted that I can't do this or that, that the hurdles were too hard to be overcome by my small amount of ambition to change. Good things did happen of course, things that I could do that didn't get overshadowed by the logistics of it. Of course, those things were temporary, as I didn't ever maintain involvement, something would end, or somebody would be less around in my life, because of various reasons, and I'd be right back where I started. As a result, I expect anything good that begins to end, way before I'm ready for it to. My biggest logistical problem in my life, since I was 15, has always been, driving. I don't drive. I'm scared of it, because it's an unknown. I didn't feel like I had a reason to need to for the longest time, nothing to do, nowhere to be, so, don't need to drive to get there. My fear of driving led to me avoiding signing up for driver's ed. (Though I finally did a year and a half or 2 years late.) But for all the time, despite mentioning of me driving by my parents, particularly my father, I don't remember ever being encouraged or the offer of help to do it. Just comments like "I should drive." Or "we should get you driving" where we is really me, and until I actually do most of it myself, I'd get no offers of help. Now, I'm not blaming other people for my stupidity, if I had had a larger desire to actually do it, that could've overcame my fear of it, which is probably a perfectly normal fear. Then I'd have been able to do it myself and I wouldn't be writing this now.
It's still just me who will be the one doing it, and I'm going to have to build up the motivation and confidence to do it, but it isn't easy, not for me.
The things that did come easy have shaped my life though, in one way or another, but I haven't pursued them fully. I finally figured out I was accepted in my class in senior year. It was something as simple as not having to tell somebody your name to pick up a schedule, which made me realize, I wasn't the boy that nobody knew existed. Unfortunately, I found that out too late. As seems to be my life story, always late. I figured out there were things I wanted to do, too late to do them. If I had just tried to get out there and do them, I could've done it, if I had just pushed myself. I hate myself for being that little boy who didn't do anything, and let it all fly by, and let the regrets stack up. I suppose I've been rebuilding myself since Senior year, I've learned more about pop-culture in that time, from my huge interest in music, of all types, (my collection contains songs from about 1961 to present now. ) I learned that I liked a lot of the same music as people I watched in middle and high-school did, and there was no reason that I should've seen myself as that different from other people. I learned that I really like being in environments where there's a lot of human interaction, and I would really like to get into broadcasting, and be on radio, not for glamour of being famous, but just because I like playing music for other people and getting feedback. I'm more comfortable with myself and my developing hobbies and interests, though I still don't aid them and push myself enough to actually go through with things, I'm trying though. I still have to learn how to maintain and put enough energy into friendships so I'm not alone and unhappy all the time. I have to learn who I am, and express it every day, because it's my personality that needs to show, it is what was lost, so many years ago, when I vanished to the sidelines. I need time to do that, to put time into myself and not into things for other people. I can't control the amount of time that events of life and fate are going to take, but I can control what I choose to put time into for the time left over, and those things, are going to be for me. I am a person, with thoughts, feelings and desires, and the sooner I stop pretending that that's not the case, and that I don't have things I want out of life, the better off I'll be.

So, this, is my life, my journey into finding myself, the self I lost so long ago. Myself, the person the world calls, Chris.

Well, today I can't think straight, and if I try to force it I just get tired and wanna go back to sleep. This isn't particularly good.

Current Mood: Restless and Confused

Music: Shinedown - All I Ever Wanted

I don't think I've been doing all that well lately, though you'd probably not be able to tell by looking at me. I seem pretty normal on the outside, just a little more detached than normal..

Sometimes, its the simple things that are the hardest... Being wrong ranks up there at the top. I'm not perfect. I'm human, was born that way and can't really help it. I try to do the best I can, particularly when people expect alot of me. I try not to let people down whenever possible, unless its simply unavoidable.

Problem is, its hard to admit it when you're in over your head and you need help. I've never been good at working in groups, I don't really balance workload well, i'm a bit of a perfectionist, and its just easier to do stuff alone, even when i'm not the leader of the group. I hadn't learned how to lead a project for sure, to bring in people and then actually trust them to do what you expect. I'm not that good at explaining how something should work to delegate and get something good back. These are things you won't learn about yourself unless your in a situation where they're required qualities, and you don't have them.

Communication is key in the world, in order to keep everybody on the same page. Its not enough to just have people who think alike and let them all do their own thing. Its nice, and certainly can be a good if not a very good thing to have, but when it comes time to expand outside of that circle, to ask for help if you need it, you've gotta communicate. I've learned that as a project leader, I wasn't good at communicating at all, and I can see this flaw in others too.

In my last blog post I laid the blame of what happened with Mozilla Update on poor communications... I still feel that was the case. I failed to communicate well with the Mozilla Foundation, as I didn't actually know anybody to communicate with aside from Ben Goodger, who was exceptionally busy. I didn't know the organizational structure well enough, having only been following the community for a few months. I didn't attempt to search out that person either. For their part, based on what I've been told, I don't believe that the people needing to know about Update at MF learned from Ben either, for whatever reason. So, this was a mutual failure.

What should've happened and what did was two different things, I should've gotten more attention from MF on UMO months before 1.0, perferably sometime in July/August, which is when attention on the project really fell to non-existant levels. This would've allowed enough time to devote and get resources going, as well as allow people to learn the infrastructure and make dramatic changes if needed, before 1.0, as well as get the security people involved in a more pro-active way than they were. (Just finding bugs doesn't always help when you don't have time to get them fixed in a timely fashion.)
I didn't do that, probably because at the end of July, my father died. So I really didn't know what I was doing. Between the stress of that, and the load Update had become, making good decisions was beyond my ability, though I didn't know it, and there was no safety net to catch it either. I believe I probably should've stepped down as project leader then. Though I have no idea how UMO would've faired in the run up to 1.0, perhaps it was better that I didnt, i'm unsure. I don't know if somebody could've taken over in the build up to 1.0 and gotten it done on time.

I blog about this tonight, because it needs to be said, plainly to be read by all. Yes, I had responsibilities with UMO that I didn't keep up with. I apologize for that, I did the best I was capable of, until I could do it no more, as i'm human. I reached burnout on the Update project, which should've been avoided, but wasn't because of other factors in life that couldn't be predicted when I started out.

The responsibility that I was accused of not handling well was UMO's security. Guilty. I had little experience with security of a webapp project that size, particularly with terms and concepts. There were many times on many bugs I struggled to deal with them. CSRF being the hardest. I wish, those who were concerned with UMOs security at that time had contributed more to the project, but it didn't happen. I fault them for staying silent too, as much as I fault myself for not asking for more help. Either action could've helped.

Mostly, I write this, because, by moving on and learning from mistakes, it puts me in a better position to deal with the fact I made them, so people who bluntly point out where I went wrong, and try to discredit what I'm capable of based on past mistakes. I can just ignore them, because its in the past, and I know I did the best I could, and know how to do better in the future.

Well, I suppose I've been gone for awhile from blogging and really being active online.

I haven't had much to say, but I hope to be changing that soon.

I don't blog much, as a few people have noticed. In fact, the last post here was so old that it actually rolled off the frontpage and left it blank when somebody trackbacked it and it was refreshed, doh.

I tend to be a quiet person, part because I tend to keep alot of stuff about my life private, perhaps needlessly, and sometimes I don't blog because I feel like there's absolutely nothing going on in my life to warrant a blog post. Basically, when you feel like you do nothing most days that matters, why blog about it for the world to read?

So, I'll try to post more often, if I have something to say, but I make no promises about posting with any sense of regularity but we'll find out.

Sometimes, I think I get so caught up in the bs of life, that I forget the simple things in life, like looking up at the night sky, and just being amazed by it. A couple of weeks ago, I got a chance to play with a telescope in person for the first time in my life, which was fun. It was an Orion Spaceprobe 130mm, which a friend of mine just got that day. Though it was a full moon night, and too close to city lights to get a good look at much, though I hope to get a chance to use it again when its good and dark and just relax and explore what's up there.
Strangely enough, with a little luck, I managed to get a few good photos of the full Moon.

I'm surprised they turned out as good as they did, since it was my first time really using either the camera or the telescope, and they were done just holding the camera's lense to the telescope's viewer. The camera I used was a Nikon Coolpix 7900, which is also my friend's and fairly new. My digicam is a couple years old, so playing with a 7.1MP cam with optical zoom and many scene modes, that's like, tiny, compared to what I'm used to was interesting. The original images are 3072x2304, though for posting I've resized them down to 1600x1200.

The first image I like the best, as it sits off-center and I think it looks really cool as a desktop wallpaper. The second one has the full impact that the Moon gives off though, frozen in time. I can't quite put into words the feeling I get when looking at it. I've always just stared at the moon, even when I was a kid, riding in the back of the car on a long trip, just looking out the window at it. Its calm and peaceful presence looking down at me, till I fell asleep.

Not much has been going on in my world, or so it feels.. but so much has gone on around me, that I want to say something about here. Let's see.. in my life, the biggest event relate to fun things like hardware death (in the server that runs this website.) First it was its power supply (the fan to be exact), which has been replaced, and now its the video card fan, doh. Nothing like waking up to the smell of hot electrics to make your morning. *sigh*

Katrina. Say the name and now you instantly visualize death and destruction. A week ago, you might have had no thought at all, (or perhaps, think of "Katrina and the Waves" the 80s band with the song "Walking on Sunshine", oh, the irony.) I'm not sure what I was shocked more at, the level of damage that the storm did, and the stories and pictures of the suffering of all those people. Or the outpouring of support on a personal-level from people. For me, the latter hit me before the former.

Following the storm monday morning, the Ace and TJ show, which airs on a local radio station here in Charlotte, and has several affliate stations around the southeast, stayed on the air in an effort to start collecting donations and goods to send down to those who were affected along the gulf coast. They started with a single semi-truck trailer, to fill with water and supplies, by the end of the first day, one, became two, and by the end of Wednesday, 15 loaded semi-trucks along with $250,000+ were sent off on their journey to those in need.

It was the stories that made listening to it so meaningful to me, and the way people just came out in support. Starting their own unrelated efforts, groups of people all over the area started working to collect goods to send, and the stations parking lot filled with supplies and trucks.

The most memorable stories from the people calling in and e-mailing were..
An e-mail from a solider in Iraq, who heard about what was going on from his mother, who donated his entire months pay of $6,000.
A mother calling in, after her and her two year old daughter saw footage on TV of somebodys house flooded and with a tree through it, and her daughter asks her, Can we give them a new house?
Countless stories of children giving money, from things like the tooth-fairy or a planned trip to disneyworld.

I blog these stories here, even though i'm not particularly good conveying the impact (or in some cases, remembering in enough detail to get the words right, etc.) because I believe that the good does outway the bad, and despite all the awful stories of whats going on down there, we will move forward and rebuld.

Don't lose sight of the people, for the politics. Its the people who need our help.

Dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, The men and women of the military fighting overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to anyone suffering around the world. You're not alone.

Ever noticed just how hard it is to actually reach a person? Even with all these gadgets and gizmos we carry around supposedly to make ourselves more reachable. So let's see now you can be unavialable via more ways..

E-Mail (if you're lucky, you get a reply, maybe within a week. You could write a letter and wait just as fast)

IM (Quick, simple, and you know within 5 minutes that the person has no intention of being at their desk)

Cell Phone (Yay, if the connection doesn't suck, they don't have it off, or muted, you might get a low-quality call. At least, till the next passer by makes them go "look at the kitty")

Voice Mail (Ooh, so they didn't answer. Which is all too common with these things. Leave a message. If they ever check it. You might get a reply. The winner is when you can't even do that. "The mailbox is full, Goodbye")

Text Message (Yeah, so they're going to see the phone when they didn't bother to answer it, yeah right.)

Office/Home Phone.. (Well, you're pretty sure they're not at their desk, so that leaves out office. and of course, you might not be trying if its a busines call if they're at home. That still assumes they're not outside or ignoring the call there too. Besides, there you have family and TV and fun distractions like that.)

Wow. so, by the time you waste all of those options, you've spent more time that you probably had. and came back with 0. When all you really probably needed was 3 minutes to ask a question, "are you free for lunch?", "want to come over later?" that kind of thing.

So, where did I put those smoke signals?

"I don't know" isn't a good answer when you ask somebody for constructive criticism (or just praise) on a creation.

It doesn't help that I only really function with some sort of feedback and in the absense of it, I just want to quit. :-/

I have a hard time getting the ideas in my head, onto paper, or even better, actually done. I have unrealisitic goals, where I have this constant need to impress and if I don't feel like it reaches out and grabs then its absolute garbage. Its a very black and white view of things that are an art, and its because I rest their value on what other people think, and not how I feel about them. I'm never happy with anything I do. Its always, not good enough. Eventually, this is like a poison. It needs to die. Though, I really don't know how to kill it. How do you go from hating everything, to having a realistic self-image and being able to see not only what does suck, but also, and perhaps more importantly, what doesn't. Sure, everything can be improved upon, after awhile. That doesn't mean if it doesn't come out in its first revision as flawless it should be scrapped. It just means things change, skills improve, style changes, etc.

Maybe I'm just trying *too* hard and completely missing the point. I just don't know.

Ugh...

I never really thought about the Blogs and Friends section alone being symbolic of change. Though, now I've thought about it, as tonight, I remove a guy who I'd been kinda friends with for the past few months. Friendships don't work out too well when the "friend" is pretty much so self-centered and isolationist that the rest of the world outside his immediate area ceases to exist. Nor do they work out well when their idea of friendship includes completely disregarding the emotions and thoughts two other people are having that have nothing to do with him, and procedes to completely and totally act like they don't matter and that its just an annoyance to them.

So all in all, no big loss of a friend here.

Serious title, isn't it? Its not meant to be dramtic though, only truthful. I spend alot of my time alone, now more than before. Alone has more meanings than you'd think on the surface. You can be alone in a room with somebody else. Its one of the hardest things to handle too. (but not The Hardest.) To realize you're in a room with that person and can't think of a single thing to say or even, at times, why you're there at all.

How'd it get to this point? I used to be ok with being alone, and I'd be in a reasonably good mood and be doing my own thing that I enjoyed doing. Alot of times, it was just me and music, sometimes from mp3s, other times a CD or even (yes, gasp) the radio. I've gotten alot done alone. I've designed whole websites by just being up in the middle of the night and listening to something and just relaxing and coding away. I didn't constantly need other peoples feedback for every little thing then. My own opinion of what I was doing was the only one that mattered, and I trusted it. Usually cause its the most harsh, I'm very hard on myself, particularly when the mental image I have in my head isn't coming out on the screen or in life.

Now, I don't trust myself to do whats in my best interest. I don't admit to myself problems that exist until they're too late, if even then. So I turn to the feedback of others, which can be a scary place, particularly with people you hardly know. They're quick to give negative feedback, because what they see isn't what they want. Listening to the feedback from them too long, and you become a circus monkey, performing for the prevailing current at the time, and being no happier or better off for it. Just drained. So, obviously, the better move is to turn to friends and maybe, family, if you're fortunate enough to have them around for you, people whom you probably trust. They have their own self-interests too. Its more like dealing in politics, everybody lobbying for what they want and nobody besides you, really cares about what you want, and whats in your best interest, but since I can't trust myself, I'm dependent on these people, and constantly trying to get the right feedback from them, more times than not its just lacking completely rather than being intentionally wrong or different. Attention Whore. Is what this last behavior has gotten me branded, and its right. I have very few close friends, probably 1 or maybe 0, and maybe only 2-3 friends besides that that i might be able to talk about anything with, besides the weather. So I quietly need alot out of the close friends, since I don't provide it for myself. In this, is the problem. I don't trust myself, and there's nobody to reinforce that i'm right, or that they even care that i'm around at all. Yes, that last phrase there is a leap, from a logical standpoint, but not from an emotional one, if you're not there for me, you don't care about me, and since there's so few people who seem to really care about me, each time that happens, it hurts badly, and being hurt brings up the next layer of defensive tactics, and surely I must be doing something wrong to get hurt, and the best way to avoid hurt is to be alone...

There's my paradox. I just feel so empty and alone, and it hurts too much to not be. Repeat.

The post that used to be in this space, was removed, because it made no sense to anybody but me.

Though, for what its worth, the post itself was based on feeling left out of a friend's visit, when that isn't the case. Communication issues suck.

Mood Music Post Follows...

No long post about the right answer here. I've encountered two different answers and neither qualify as particularly nice or friendly. I don't think it really can be done and be nice about it.

(1) Just ignore them like they aren't there.
(2) Come up with a lame-sounding rationale, (it's X's house, not yours (even though you've lived there just as long, I guess the only way this one's defeated is to move out and then remind them how much it hurts by telling them to butt out of your business.)

Why do people not look at themselves before throwing hatred at others?
Its easy to see your own problems in other people, harder to admit you have those issues yourself.
And particularly, easy to attack people who will, of course, believe your venom blindly because you know, they think little of themselves.

Must make you feel better about yourself to do that, or does it?

If you had the preceeding two songs in your dreams, would you worry? ;-) (Particularly, since the latter of the two, (but first since the blog reverses them...(aka Judas Priest) was really loud in an empty art studio...)

Things... Big events... Little events.. One liners, even.. Haunt me, weeks, months, even years later... Even if I wasn't wrong. and much more if I was.
I catch myself thinking about them, when I'm not doing anything else, or just laying down and thinking. I try to put them to rest, and let things go, but when it comes down to it, they don't go away. If I get angry or hurt or depressed they reappear.
Currently, i'm feeling pretty bitter. I don't know exactly why. I feel like I made a fair contribution back there, but get no credit whatsoever for it now. I was taught not to ask for credit and just expect it to be given if its deserved. Am I supposed to take it if I deserve it and not wait around for somebody else to do it? Because at the moment, two of my best accomplishments to date, which I won't name, (which I guess continues the cycle, doesn't it?), don't feel like I had anything at all to do with them, and I don't feel like anybody around me really wants to reach out and say anything. With one of them, this makes sense, its been taken over by other people, who've continued the growth I had a large part in starting. The other, its just been taken over, and ransacked like a town without a government.
I don't think I'm better than other people at all, I'm not more mature, I do have a different point of view and a very hard time reaching out and being social with other people, since I'm quite afraid of them. I'm not good at standing up for myself, except angrily. I just want people to see me as an individual who they want to talk to, to be with, and maybe even be friends with. :-/
Bah...

Simple list...
(1) When cleaning up and moving, dust or wear a mask...
(2) Don't stay up for 45 hours straight, including at least 2 hours in-transit
(3) All meals are mandatory, even if you can't see straight, eat.

Failure to follow these simple steps... results in..
sickness.. ugh.