Chris Angelini

Leaving It Behind

2009-12-07T16:45:13Z

So as the result of a talk I was having with a friend over the weekend, I've started to mull over an idea that I might never get a chance to write, but which I really hope to hit one day.

So you start off with a classic Left Behind scenario: everyone's been raptured, the people left behind are all scared and stuff, people start to remember the Book of Revelations; the whole nine yards. The ultra-cartoony-style anti-Christ of the LB book series shows up and smarms his way to world power while making the poor world believe that he's an awesome guy. Naturally, various groups of people rise up and cite Revelations as a reason to oppose him.

Then the Christ figure shows up and leads them in the typical Left Behind kind of way: like a military power, rushing the battlements of the supposed anti-Christ. Force and fire are used to topple him down so that a new era of peace and love can begin on Earth...

Only it turns out that the person who was presumed to be our AC? Was just this guy who was neither particularly good or evil. He was just a man who wanted to make a difference, and maybe become quite powerful in the doing. The figure calling himself the Christ? Whups... turns out he's the actual anti-Christ.

So what's the real Christ doing? Well, He never actually appears on camera, but after the big reveal, evidence of His works are everywhere. He's been moving quietly through the people, teaching, guiding, helping them learn the sacrifice and fellowship that they're going to need for the coming 'conflict'. And what is that conflict, you may ask? It's not a war between God's Soldiers and Hell's Minions, not in the traditional sense. It's the courage and wisdom to endure what may come... to allow the anti-Christ's power to break itself on the rocks of their passive resistance. It's the quiet spreading of inspiration and hope in a time when rockets and mortars will do little good.

Eh. Maybe one day...

Peace and joy.

C is for Classic (Real Classic)

2009-06-05T15:54:12Z

I visited the computing history museum yesterday as part of the conference that I'm attending. The crazy folks actually built a complete Difference Engine:

Civilization's test of time

2009-05-06T18:20:52Z

   To celebrate the pending release of the Civilization IV Complete Edition which will feature ABSOLUTELY NO DRM!!!, I just felt the urge to share what's been keeping my years-long interest in Civ IV fresh and vibrant. I speak to you of... mods.

   First up is Planetfall, which has reached version eight as of this writing. Planetfall ambitiously attempts to recreate the feel (though not the exact gameplay) of Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri. While it has a ways to go, it's doing a great job thus far. Playing a few rounds of this mod reminds me of the late nights spent warring as the gentle Gaians against the greed of Morgan Industries...
   Oh, as a bonus, if you own the original SMAC disc, you can copy the voices for techs discovered into your Planetfall installation.

   Next up, we have Fall From Heaven 2. This is the mod that I spend the most time playing. It transforms Civ IV into an extremely well realised fantasy world, in which you play a tiny tribe that survived a long diaspora (which is actually recounted in Civ IV: Fall From Heaven - Age of Ice, which comes with the Civ IV expansion pack, Beyond the Sword.) and guide them through the rebuilding of society. FFH2 features alignments; a ton of special powers and conditions for each individual race; makes religions far more crunchy than they are in vanilla Civ; adds spells; new resources; a raft of new wonders; and generally feels like a nearly whole new game.

   Then there's The BTS 3.17 Unofficial Patch. This doesn't make too many visible changes, but under the hood it's fantastic. It tries to rejigger Beyond The Sword into the game that Firaxis wanted to deliver with their final patch but didn't quite get the dev time to make happen. It also incorporates some very necessary fixes to the opponent AI so that it's no longer dumb as a box of hammers.

   Lastly, I've just recently gotten into this Star Trek Mod, which takes a little getting used to, but is well worth the work. The sheer breadth of its scenarios makes it worth a look, but the core gameplay is very nicely polished. It's an outgrowth of the Final Frontier mod that comes with Beyond the Sword.

   All of the above require Beyond the Sword patched up to version 3.17. Everything listed above also works with Civ IV running under Wine on Linux.

Killer Flu

2009-05-05T13:38:52Z

Feel like playing a timely Sim game about global pandemics and the flu? Today's your lucky day! The UK Clinical Virology Network has just released a new browser-based game called, appropriately enough, Killer Flu (Flash required). Though you likely won't learn too much from playing this game, it is at least worth a look... and also, something to send to your friends/co-workers who don't believe in staying home when they're flu-stricken.

In a nice touch, the game simulates random immunity factors and strain mutation. Having played through the game, I do vaguely regret that it isn't deeper. Imagine what the author could do by combining the source to Megalopolis with this...

B is for Boulders

2009-05-03T00:15:34Z

This is just outside of my home (yes, I'm a lucky man). Actually, I didn't know this view existed until a couple years back when the waterfront near to my apartment experienced profit-motivated deforestation.

A is for Acorns

2009-05-01T13:35:44Z

Found this little beauty on a photo walk last weekend.

Shadow Play

2009-04-27T13:23:51Z

I caught this one on my camera phone in a parking garage in Washington D.C. I wish I'd had my full camera with me, but I was at a convention and so I was travelling light.

The Quest Begins!

2009-04-26T22:55:09Z

I guess someone in Wolfeboro is currently on a quest that involves renting an apartment. But it seems that the quest-giver has wandered away for a smoke...

Hiiiii...

2009-04-11T14:43:26Z

So it's been a long time since I've posted here. It's likely been a long time since I've communicated with many of you through any channel at all. I owe people apologies, explainations and finally, communication.

I've been experiencing a cascade failure on my communications. I really hate this, but it's what's been happening and I should find a way to deal with this. It's honestly not easy.

To start with, work has been intense. Not really bad (at least not all the time), but full. I'm one developer trying to do the work of two to three people in maintaining and adding onto a complex educational system, which means that I have to sink a lot of my mental and creative energy into coding and maintenance. This tends to mean that I go home completely drained of creativity and emotional energy. A lot.

This leads to things like writing, both fiction and correspondance, suddenly developing huge costs in mental energy for me. Now this, I could power through, except for the next point.

See, the problem is that I need time to recover. And during that time, my communications responsibilities pile up. Spam comes into my inbox, making it harder to find the signal, despite the best efforts of Spamassassin to weed it out. As a result, I have to devote more mental energy towards finding the signal, lest I lose it. Then I realise that I have a ton of people to whom I owe communications. Then I have side things on which those communications depend (such as doing some writing, or reading something to comment on it, or the like), which increases the cost even more. And then I have some people -- though most folks, and almost everyone who'll be reading this, have been absolutely great at understanding -- loading me up with guilt for not getting back to them, which increases the mental energy required to move on communications.

At some point, it all becomes a monolithic task rather than something that can be broken down and tackled a bit at a time. I may have the mental capital to tackle one piece, but since I don't have enough to deal with everything at once, I feel like I can't start on anything, including just basic divide-and-conquer. And of course on weekends, I try to rebuild my mental capital once again so that I can go in on Monday and continue to kick ass at work, even if I desperately need either a team or nerve-stapling.

Well, I've been fighting my way towards mental clarity this month, as part of Lent. I'm not sure how well I'm doing, but we'll see soon. I'm trying to put into place ways for me to divide-and-conquer the task of communication so that I can stop being such a dickweed about it all. I'm deliberately implementing methods for keeping myself from feeling like I have to Do Everything Now, At Once Or Not At All.

It's going to fail. I'm human. It's going to fail many times. But I'm hoping that I'm going to get it right enough times that it starts to become routine. So that I don't have any more of these six month communication blackouts. Here's hoping.

To everyone affected by this, I'm sorry. I really am. Lawrence, I owe you a ton of writing, and I'm very upset at myself for not having hit that earlier.

Everyone, please wish me luck on this. And please forgive me. This blackout does not reflect on how I feel about anyone.

Peace, joy and cafe racers.

ASTOUNDINGLY GOOD NEWS!!!!

2008-08-31T17:09:55Z

Ahem. Please pardon the caps. And the multiple punctuation. And the contents of this post.

As of Thursday, I have received my Employment Authorization Card! That was the biggest hurdle in my 'be able to work in the States' race! I still have to attain my Residency Card, but as I understand it, if you get the EAC then the odds of not getting the RC are pretty slender!

IT'S ALMOST OVER!!! The long, long, long wait is almost over!

Very happy. Peace and joy.

Tentacles

2008-08-28T14:03:40Z

I keep feeling like there's a way to crop this picture to make it visually stunning, but after trying for some time I can't find that way. So I'm submitting the whole picture here.

Beyond The Shroud

2008-08-28T12:29:27Z

Music Haunts The Halls

2008-08-27T14:14:01Z

Not my best shot, but all I had was my camera phone and fifteen seconds before the halls filled up with Heifitz students.

The one on the bottom left looks like it still awaits prey...

The Actual Vacation

2008-08-27T14:03:20Z

The trip itself, to mention, was fantastic! It was in many regards extremely low-key. I didn't go to see much in the way of the sights; but as it happens, I was more in the market for friends and getting an introduction to Stanford University in all its glory. As it happens, this is exactly what I received, so everybody won! Except perhaps for Stanford, as it had to put up with my odious presence for a day, but I suppose that's why they retain exorcists on-staff.

I got to see palm trees... just growing. There. Wherever you went. That was awesome. It reminded me of the time I first got to New Hampshire and realised that there were... mountains. All around me. The horizon wasn't a flat line broken only by a crumbling shack and a few cows. I looked up in a few palm trees, but I couldn't find any drop bears anywhere. Is it the summer when they migrate to Australia? I can never remember.

I also got to experience the overwhelmery that is Fry's Electronics. It's like someone said 'you know what? Best Buy, Circuit City and Media Play are such gosh-darned under-achievers *pause* And so is Fuddruckers'. Still, it was a lot of fun going there and browsing flat screen TVs with friends.

Stanford University is just... gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. The landscaping and relaxed campus sprawl reminds me very much of what struck me when I first set eyes upon (and decided to attend) the University of Guelph. Most campuses that I've seen (and I've seen a few in my time!) try to convey a feeling of urbanity, business and efficiency. The worst for this, IMO, is the University of Toronto. But both Guelph and Stanford convey this feeling of understated self-contentment. There are wide open spaces and long walks from one building to the next, and the campus planners seem okay with this! There's elegance in landscaping and architecture (Stanford wins out hands-down in the latter category), but it melds in with the humanity of the campus rather than dominating it. Just to be even more confusing about this, it feels like a campus at peace with itself and its occupants. I liked that. A lot.
I got the As Full As Possible In A Day tour, and took lots of pictures. Sadly, I'd put an SD card that was too large for it into my digital camera, so only a few of my pictures got saved (sigh). But despite that mishap, I had a great time. My hosts were wonderful and enthusiastic tour guides; I got to view great works of art by Rodin; I was able to admire some absolutely beautiful landscaping; and we had a wonderful chance encounter with a librarian who was more than happy to transfer some of his enthusiasm for Stanford over to us. The last really tickled me, as it personalized the tour quite well.
If I have one complaint, it's that the cafe we stopped at uses TOO MUCH CILANTRO!!! Grr, cilantro. Turning perfectly good tacos into soap. Luckily, I had the burrito. ;->

Otherwise, as stated, the vacation was fairly (and nicely) low-key. I played Lunar Rails with friends (I lost! Pretty much completely!); played Magic (I lost! Utterly! So badly in fact, that I actually lost games being played up to six kilometers away!); watched a night of Rifftrax Shorts with people (and we seemed to enjoy them a great deal); got to play Rummikub with a set union of the same people and other people; went out to see The Dark Knight (in IMAX!) and Hellboy 2; and gathered around most nights just to shoot the breeze about books, games, friends, movies, television, role-playing... whatever. The talking probably took up most of the time, which was fine by me. It was likely my favourite part of the entire vacation, though the tour was a very close second.
It was also probably the most fun that I've had since Christmas.

Annnd now I'm back in New Hampshire. But I'm already planning my next trip out to California.

Peace and joy.

Another Phobia Down!

2008-08-12T12:38:02Z

I was all set to post this last week. I composed what I would say in my head, a post filled with witty remarks and bon mots and joy and triumph. It would be a post to make the angels above sing. It would make children sing and bitter enemies join hands together in a circle, to dance together in elated fellowship.

Then I got terribly sick! And spent almost all of last week either in bed or wishing I could be in bed. And thus was the world once again denied unity as I kept putting off posting. T'is such a bitter pill to swallow, knowing that because of a virus, the world would not be saved... *dramatic sigh*

Well, here it is in capsule form. I have been to California and back and at no point did I chicken out and walk (hey, it's just a casual stroll from here to there and back again). I do want to apologize to those of you who posted/messaged invitations to visit; I realised as the trip got closer and closer that I needed to keep this trip fairly simple. I have plans to make the West Coast a destination more often, though, so hopefully I can take people up on their kind offers!

So, I get to the airport with my friend Jon, who's graciously helping me by providing a friendly face on this trip to fly the deadly skies. I think he was also packing some drugged milk, just in case it was needed. I had some Powerful Mind-Altering anti-anxiety medication from my doctor, but after much soul (and Wikipedia) searching I decided not to take it, largely because it tended to be an amnesia-inducing medication and the point of this trip was to desensitize myself to my fear. But it was there, just in case I needed to drug myself up in a hurry. The first hurdle is security, which has always been a source of horror stories with which to frighten small children and me. I'm thus astounded at how easily it goes. No suspicious looks. No being locked in a small room for interrogation. No being pulled aside and beaten with mallets until I recant my Catholicism. In fact, I totally bungled the metal detector (in my nervousness, I left a freaking roll of quarters in my pocket) and they still didn't shoot me dead where I stood! Sweet, maybe next time. We pass through security and into the world... beyond, which I have never before seen!

It's pretty damned expensive. I blow $7 for a big bottle of water, since I want to hydrate on the plane and stuff. Also, the high prices help numb my mind against my fear of the stratosphere. We thus settle in to wait for our flight. I pass the time reading Larry Niven's The Draco Tavern and wondering at exactly what altitude the plane is going to explode. Two hours later, we're called for boarding. They go row by row for a minute and then someone gets tired of that game, announcing a general free-for-all. We surge forward with the other lemmings, get funneled onto the giant metal death-bird, sit back and wait for our undoing!

So there I am, in my aisle seat. Jon's next to me, being sympathetic. Our window seat companion is a young lady who's likewise being very sympathetic to my plight. I don't have the heart to tell her that we are all dead humans sitting; best she find out in Valhalla.

Suddenly my worst fears are realised... I look up and THE CABIN IS ON FIRE!!! Only it's not, I'm told by my seat-mates, before I can heroically leap from my seat to bravely flee into the terminal. It's just condensation. Perfectly normal. Sure, I think. Just as normal as that gremlin who's pouring A-1 sauce on the wing of the plane.

I decide it's time to play my ace card and, mustering all my focus, I begin to meditate. Oddly enough, this actually works... my fear doesn't go away, but it goes into a little box that makes for a much more manageable burden. I keep meditating up until the plane begins to taxi down the runway, at which point my fear just spikes my focus, so I switch to breathing exercises.

The airplane rolls... rolls... rolls forward... picking up speed... moving towards the point where, each time I try to visualize taking air transport, my imagination crashes like Windows ME: the takeoff. I have never successfully visualized takeoff, and thus have never been able to try to deal with it. It's like... the notion of leaving the ground and vaulting into the air is just so frighteningly alien to me that I cannot conceive of it. But it seems that the captain can, so with a lurch and a shudder we throw ourselves at the ground, and miss.

I honestly cannot express how terrified I am at this moment. My breathing exercises are just barely keeping me from throwing off my seatbelt and possibly even moving my chair out of the upright, locked position. But somehow... somehow, despite my objections, the airplane soars into the sky, almost as though it does this every day or some such nonsense.

So there we are. Up. In the sky. Flying. A place where I never thought I'd be. And, well, have you seen the preview for Journey To The Center Of The Earth, where the main characters plunge through the Earth's crust, and they're all screaming, and then they run out of air... and one of them finally points out that they're, y'know, still falling? That's kind of me. My mind is slowly running out of air to scream at me, and I'm beginning to feel... well honestly? ... pretty foolish about being scared.

Fear turns to boredom. Boredom turns to playing with the satellite television on the seat in front of me. Playing with the satellite television on the seat in front of me turns to a Mythbusters marathon. Such is the way of the Jedi.

By the end of the six-hour flight, I'm stealing glances out the window and grooving on getting all the way across the country in six freaking hours. Landing is fine. Deplaning is fine. I'll go int details of my time in Palo Alto another post. For now, let's jump forward a week...

Here's how much fear that initial trip killed: I'm willing to take this trip alone. I get a window seat and stare out of it raptly as we lift off. I alternate my attention between a book, a movie I'm carrying with me on my iTouch (A Dog's Breakfast, high recommend), the ground far far below, and Google Maps on the seat in front of me that's showing where I am at any given moment (as well as my altitude and speed relative to the rest of the world). In fact, the hardest part of the return trip is finding my car and learning just how much Logan airport gouges you for long-term parking.

So... uhm... I'm cured. Years of fear were laid to rest by a friend being courageous for me. I'm actually excited about my next plane trip, and I so want to fly JetBlue again. I'm incredibly happy about this, though there's a part of me that's absolutely railing in anger that I didn't do this sooner.

But damn. It keeps hitting me. The whole freaking world is now open to me...

Peace and joy.

This Is Horribly Pornographic In The Cars Universe

2008-06-13T17:43:34Z

As you can see, fun is pretty hard to come by in Wolfeboro...

Sure, this is fun for the whole family. But remember, Caress-A-Car is for the adults.

Peace and vroom!

Season's End

2008-05-20T12:44:57Z

I'll be the first to admit that I have a not-at-all-secret weakness for good television. It's nice to have a stream of data coming in that keeps part of my brain occupied while I'm working on things that occupy the other parts. Lately we've had a great crop of shows on television and while we've lost a few (Journeyman for example) to an early grave, others have continued on fit as fiddles.

Normally I dread the season of the finale; not because of any summer gap (this is why we have DVDs and the USA network), but because writers all too often scramble to trot out the worst cliffhangers they possibly can in the hopes of bringing you back next season... when really, all they have to do is write an intelligent show to pull me back in. This spring, however, it seems that the writers of my favourite shows have decided to curb their worst excesses.

Desperate Housewives - If I gave a darn, I'd call this my 'guilty pleasure' show; but I don't, so I'll call a spade a spade. This is a great show about which I feel no guilt for watching just because it's billed as being for the wimminfolk. Strong characters, intelligent writing and a tangled web of secrets that play out in both dramatic and hysterical ways over the course of a season and sometimes multiple seasons? Yeah, can't see why I'd want that or nothin'...
Anyway, this show's season closer is the one that I usually feel most annoyed with, and this year I enjoyed a decided lack of having sixty minutes of 'OMG! WTF is going to happen next year? STAY TUNED, TRUE BELIEVERS TO FIND OUT!' flash across the screen. Instead, and I'm being as vague as I possibly can be, we get resolutions to almost everything... which was a huge surprise that floored me harder than if they'd had a clown dance onto the set to gun down the cast... and then jumped the plotline forward five years. So next fall, we're going to have our favourite characters in new but logical situations and the tangled web of weird is going to be built from scratch, almost like how cool it was back in season one when everything was starting off on the ground floor? Yeah, you've got me back for another year.
I'm bloody serious, Twin Peaks should have done this (it's actually a show that shares quite a bit of its soul with Desperate Housewives).
Bones - It's hard to believe this is the same show that I laughed away as idiotic some three years ago. The opening of the ep had me on the ropes as I started to adapt to the dynamic of the show changing... only to have that adaptation halted very suddenly (and very amusingly) by a sudden turn of events that showcases what's been right about Bones' writers ever since they realised that holographic skeletons do not an interesting tale make.
The Gormogon killer thread has led to this ep, which made me feel a bit conflicted because my favourite moments this season have centred around everything that hasn't involved Gormogon. The way the thread was shoved into play felt like a return to early season one and its irritating tendencies; I'll also be honest, I'd managed to mostly forget about things like apprentices and secret societies, so having it come back up as a Big Deal took me by surprise.
Fortunately, this ep ain't about Gormogon despite it being entirely about Gormogon. It's about the Jeffersonian institute, the complex tangle of characters that's been emerging over the past couple of seasons, it's about Sweet proving he's a bit sour, it's about Zack's Iraq experiences coalescing to a weird but comprehensible ending and it's about Booth sipping chilled beer out of his beer hat while enjoying a cigar and reading Green Lantern comics in the bathtub. Ultimately, Gormogon was revealed to be exactly what he should have been: nothing (don't worry, that's not a spoiler. The real spoiler would be mentioning who the apprentice is. Insert stupid Donald Trump joke here).

Two shows down and not a stupid cliffhanger in sight! Let's continue...

House - So fresh out of House's Head we plunge into Wilson's Heart. This has been a weird season of House given how much the dynamic of the show's changed. While the basic formula of the series has remained roughly the same (and no, it's not lupus), its character weave has become considerably different. Whereas House and his three young apprentices once formed a dysfunctional but functional clan, this season the clan has moved past Greg's control... and worse, has managed to continue existing whilst excluding him from its ranks. There's been a chasm between House and his crew; amusingly one that's been best bridged by Amber, who isn't actually a part of House's little klatch.
Thus this season has largely been about House and just what makes him him. Bit by bit and with more restraint than I knew television writers could show, we've seen House's insulation stripped away from him. Time and again he's tried desperately to prove to himself that his cynical, logical and unemotional view of the world is the correct and only way to approach life. He's had a measure of success in this, but each little victory this season has rung more and more hollow, as it's become clear that there's only one person to whom he's trying to prove anything.
This ep doesn't technically resolve this situation, any more than ketamine proved the panacea to House's pain, but it does its job in taking Greg's misery out of its tightly locked box and shoving it centre-stage to where it's going to be near impossible to ignore next season (unless the folks who planned out Earth 2's season season got tapped to write for House this fall). It also has House doing something that can be clearly and unambiguously read as unselfish, illogical and just plain uncynical.
Sadly, there's a small cliffhanger at the end of the ep; happily, it's one that could potentially drive a lot of interesting episodes. There are elements of this ep that felt a bit derivative of earlier episodes of House, but by and large I'm pretty happy with how they closed the shop here.
Also, the philosopher Jagger is quoted again in a nice callback to the first ep.
Supernatural - Bang. The Dean Is Going To H. E. Double-Hockey-Sticks plotline reaches its conclusion here. Not a lot to say about it other than feeling like a lot of potential in both Lilith and Ruby got wasted in the third act but that otherwise this ep hit a lot of good notes. Huge cliffhanger at the end, but it's not one I'm going to gripe over, as it was a non-cheap ending and I've come to expect that from this show.
Eli Stone - Abrupt ending, but I guess what the hell else could you have done? Really, this is the trap you fall into with eponymous shows; surgeries are likely going to not kill the main character (though I suppose next season it could've become Eli Stone's Family and finally The Weathersbyes). Otherwise, this is exactly the kind of show I want to see on TV. Can't wait to see where it's going next year... I'm told that the earthquake is meant to act as a catalyst for Eli's influence spreading. No real cliffhangers here, and thank Grud for that.
CSI - For Gedda, oi vedda. This show's just really not what it used to be. Pass.

Ah well. That ends our roundup for today. Haven't caught up with a few other shows (still got Boston Legal, Medium and Large to go, as well as others that are ending now which I just don't recall. Also also got to watch Stargate: The Ark of Truth to see how that particular series ends), but we'll see where things go!

Peace and joy, Farnsworth, you magnificent bastard!

Budget Cuts on the Road to Oz

2008-05-19T17:28:45Z

Follow, follow, follow, follow...

His Divine Shadow

2008-05-16T13:07:39Z

I've been nailed hard by a new game: Penumbra: Overture (and there's a sequel, Penumbra: Black Plague, along with an epilogue to come). The short description is that it's a First-Person Oh My God What Was That?er. The longer description is that it's a rather well realised game based on Lovecraftian Mythos which gets the Silent Hill feeling of being all Alone In The Dark just right. Best aspect is that you manipulate objects using a relatively decent physics model (which sadly does fail the mimesis check in a place or two), using the focal point of your vision (and a small hand icon) as your character's in-game hand. So dragging barrels or turning valves does really feel natural (save when mimesis is sinned against). The game also focuses more on puzzles and hiding than it does on violence; there's so far been no situation where Run and Gun does anything but get you killed and rather horribly, too.

It's available natively for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Demos are available for both games.

Peace and strange jars that murmur...

More Good OZS News

2008-05-16T13:00:50Z

It has been said that we are our own worst enemies. Fortunately, occasionally we are able to come to internal détente.

One of my biggest problems at work has been a creeping sense of lack of consequence. It's not that I've felt my contributions to the school were unneeded so much as this horrible sense of having consequence only within the private scope of my office. Inputs would come in and I would send back outputs, but the rest of the school couldn't see into my context, nor could I really know anything outside of it.

Well, as it turns out, sometimes the best way to get past a problem at work is to just blurt out to your boss that this is frustrating and then have a good, long talk about it afterwards. Yeah, I know, this technique only works if your immediate boss is pretty cool, like mine. I also don't suggest letting frustration do all your talking for you, but if you're like me, you may occasionally find that a little blurting every so often helps you assert yourself after being The Reasonable One has failed.

So now I've got my wish; I'm involved in a good deal of the decision-making that goes on within the immediate halo of my job, as well as having input into what goes on a valance or two beyond that. At this school, where we have limited staff and even more limited expertise, I feel that this is a good and healthy thing (whereas if this were a larger place where we had management who could serve as technology coordinators and decision makers, I'd not expect to consult on the areas of my expertise so directly).

Turns out that sometimes when you get what you want, it actually is what you want and not some horrible, monkey's paw-esque kind of curse. My stress from being isolated in a tiny cube (Cube 3: Chris' Office. Coming DTV this fall) has dropped a tad. Further, I have tangible evidence that this is working out. I've already been able to take several staff/faculty wishes and place them into a roadmap for near-future work; whereas before, these wishes would have either vanished into the aether or worse, built up as frustrations until they fell across my desk as emergencies.

I still have my stress problems. Ultimately, I'm in an isolated area with very few (though not no) social outlets, for the biggie. But as no brave horse is going to ride in on a white knight to save me, I'm just glad that there are ways in which I can make my environment better. It non-trivially increases the quality of my life.

Peace and joy.

I Guess It's Back To Arthur 'No-Sheds' Jackson

2008-05-16T12:39:10Z

This is right outside my apartment. A part of me's been waiting for this...

I Guess I Have A Really Good Graphics Card...

2008-05-14T13:11:10Z

Operation Zero Stress Continues! With Stress.

2008-05-14T12:56:17Z

So this summer, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do something I thought I'd never do.

I'm going to take me a trip on one of them newfangled aero-planes.

I've never been sure if my fear of flying was somehow related to my acrophobia or if I just somehow got lucky and nailed two 'above the earth' phobias, but to this date I've never voluntarily boarded an air-going vehicle (and the only time I did it involuntarily was when I was three, and too young to know worse). For long trips, I've driven, taken the train, taken the bus or done without. Well, unless I chicken the hell out, that changes this summer.

See, a few months after I started on my anti-anxiety meds, I started to realise that a lot of my fears were... not exactly gone, but had become malleable. They no longer could control me the way that they once could. Introspection on this phenomenon made me realise that a lot of the stress in my life came from fear. This realisation led me to start watching myself for times when fear would create an avoidance loop in my head and then (the hard part) push past it rather than giving into the fear.

To say that this has been good for me would be an understatement. Now I think I know the difference between being polite (which never goes out of style) and being afraid to speak up (usually out of fear, not for my own humiliation, but instead of making another person feel upset... even when that person is being a rude prick and deserves being taken down a peg or two); and better still, I now act to ignore the latter case. I know how to tell the difference between feeling socially exhausted and socially nervous and can make informed decisions about both. In short, it's led to small but fulfilling changes in my life.

This is not to say that all my fears are gone or under control. This war is far from over. It's going to be a lifelong war, but it's also one that's worth waging. I've been able to break down a lot of the insecurity that's ruled me simply by attacking the underlying fear which causes it. In turn, this lets me stop with the drama... because in the end, drama (or particularly love of drama) usually comes from a need to feel that one's life is bigger than it really is, as otherwise, one may not be as important as one wishes to be.

Well, it's time to amp this to the next level (no pun intended). The next phase of my life may well require me to be able to go further than ground transportation can easily take me, and so with the help of a dear friend who's willing to hold my hand on my first trip, I'm going to face down my second greatest fear. After this, well, the sky's the limit (again, no pun intended). If I feel like travelling? I can travel. Or not! But it's my choice. If I decide in a few years to take a job on another coast? I can. Or not! But again, it's my choice and not my fear that dictate my decisions.

Wish me luck. I'm going to need it. I've been doing a lot of visualizing to try to get myself past the worst part of the fear... which is the moment the plane rises from the tarmac and into the sky. I'm not sure why, but my mind fixates on that single moment as the point of crisis and stress. So I've been mentally putting myself in that position and forcing myself to stay there until the craft has lifted off. I think that because of this, I will only cry like a simpering half-grown manchild when the actual liftoff takes place.

Wishing you peace and joy.

Inside OLPC

2008-05-14T12:39:18Z

Ivan Krstic, nee of the One Laptop Per Child Program, weighs in with his thoughts on the OLPC program.

My thoughts (not that you asked)... I admit, I was one of the idiots who had a knee-jerk response to hearing that the OLPC program was going to shift to Windows. Reading through this article made me realize that, as is far too often the case, I was focusing on advocacy rather than, um, children learning.

I'm also really sad to hear how the program lost its focus (or maybe never had it from the beginning). I know all the arguments ('the children need x first!'), but providing some means of upwards technical mobility has always struck me as needful for developing countries. I mean Hell, being cynical for a moment, since the Western world can't be bothered to do anything meaningful to solve some of these problems, why not provide a means by which folks who are actually affected by them get a chance to develop the tools that we have and never bother to use for anything beyond creating new electronic toys?

Yeah, I know the above is rife with idealism and short on practicality. I'm venting my spleen out of frustration with the state of the world. Despite how unrealistic the OLPC program seemed, I was really rooting for it to overcome the odds and somehow succeed in giving developing nations the tools they need to start tapping into the knowledge base we've created.

Corriander? I hardly know 'er.

2008-05-08T14:31:28Z

Cilantro -- Threat or Menace?