Never been one to let the carrier drop

I’m trying to document positive things that I’m doing, mostly just to give me some hope that the future is going to look brighter than the past

1) Psychologist
2) Psychiatrist
3) Cleaning house
4) Installed and using calandering system on Gateway
5) Couples counselling
6) Oxygen
7) Filing system and organizers for office (though still much to do in that realm)

Right now I’m feeling really sad and broken and things with Kayti are not feeling like they’re going well..

brassrat.net is fixed. It wasn’t nearly as painful as I thought it would be – I faxed them my license last night, today they emailed me with my username and password, and me and enyc made a few changes here and there and we’re back on the net. Happy happy.

S.

We tear each other up, wanting each other to be something different or to do something different or to become someone different or to be new and improved in this or that or the other way.

Why can’t we love each other just the way we are?

I forsee much running around in circles tomorrow.

Hammernode, who have been doing primary DNS for brassrat.net for just about forever, have folded up shop. I don’t remember the username and password that the account is registered under, and I have to change the authoritive nameservers because right now, they point to localhost. (Ha. ha. ha. ha.). Oh, and the email address that I would use to get new information from them – currently registered @ brassrat.net. WHo’s bright idea was that? Oh, right, mine..

I have a dns server set up on sheer.us, so creating the zone isn’t that difficult, but I have to fax a photo ID before they’ll send me my username and password.

Amazingly, while normally this would be leaving me feeling crushed and depressed and stressed out, right now I find that I’m just not that worried about it. So the domain will be down for a day. It won’t be the end of the world.

I think I’m finally recovering from dot com madness.

Now, to figure out how to like myself.

(occasionally I wonder if I should transfer brassrat.net to Phoebe, since she’s the one who’s family was the origins of the name. THe problem is that I’m not sure she’s got a authorative nameserver to park it at, a webserver to host it on, or a mail server to deal with traffic on it. Or all that much interest in dealing with any of these things. But, at this point I have to concede that if she’s ready to deal with the technical challenges involved with the name and she wants it, it’s really more hers than mine)

I’ll have to come up with a new name for my consulting business at that point, though.

I had a interesting dream last night – I was flying with my boss in a 8-seater overwing of some sort – we were flying over a bridge, although not a suspension bridge, and waves were crashing over the road surface of it – we were flying barely 500 feet up, and I kept feeling as if a wave was going to grab us at any time. Then one did, crashed over us and we were being pulled to the side and into a spin, and then my boss was trying to pull us out of the spin and was pulling like a 4G turn, and I kept yelling about how a overwing wasn’t going to handle a 4G turn and then the tail broke off (not the whole tail. I think the rudder was still there – but the li’l bits that stick out with the elevators were gone. I don’t think this is a very realistic failure mode for a overwing pulling too many Gs but it was a dream, what do you want?)

The next sequence was a remarkably realistic crash landing near a airport in which the plane ended underwater but still intact, my boss finding the black box (yah, I know, a 8 seater with a black box..) and the emergancy radio and then a skip to me in a airport trying to find a commercial flight somewhere and all was bedlam and no flights were going anywhere and I ended up on a bus to somewhere in europe.

And things kept getting weirder from there although not, thankfully, scarier.

The thing is, I am wondering if this dream means I have a subconcious fear of flying – I don’t think I’m afraid of flying – I’ve been thinking of buying a little two-seater ultralight if I ever get out of debt.. (fully enclosed and with instrumentation, but a top speed of about 120 and a operational ceiling of < 8k feet - apparently the license test for them isn't much harder than a driver's license test and they're easier to land than a hang glider). Now I'm wondering if I secretly fear flying - or else fear it in small aircraft - and just don't know about it. I've been up several times with my boss in a little Cessna trainer, and it seemed quite fun at the time. Ah, the inner workings of the subconcious mind, always interesting to get a glimpse at.

The bootloader I published does not include the header files, and includes code for setting the internal osc against a 32khz crystal. If you don’t need the latter, be sure to strip it out. If you do need the former, email me at sheer dash panic at sheer dot us

Could one of you please explain why my ‘saying’ was ‘I am not god’?

Also, does anyone remember what OMCN’s was?

S.

I’m currently in South Orange County, CA..

Perhaps, since the youngest voters have to deal with the consequences of any actions taken for the longest, we should have a weighting system for voting, set up so the longer you were going to be on the planet after your vote, the more it counted for. I realize this runs contrary to the conventional wisdom that the older voting public are wiser. However, I think it’s possible they’re also more cynical, more bitter, or more corrupted.

Just a thought.

I have a whole list of thoughts I had in the middle of the night the other night concerning how to make a open source, verifiable, trustworthy voting network. I’ll post them sometime later.

Recently a talk-radio personality on a certain radio show that will remain nameless asked, ‘Where do rights come from?’. After very careful consideration, I’ve determined that they generally come from might.

That isn’t a particularly desirable situation, but it does seem to be how things are.

For example, what gives God the right to send me to hell, presuming that (a) there’s a God and (b) He/She/It* does such things? The ability to do so, is pretty much the only answer that I can come up with. What gives the legislature of the state of Utah the right to imprison a girl for having sex? Again, being armed with superior firepower is pretty much the only answer I can come up with.

I’m pretty disguisted with the universe right now. Yes, it’s got lots of beautiful little bits but people keep doing things to other people against their wills for no reasonable reason all over the place.

Another question one might ask is why is any of this any of my business? You could certainly make the case that Sheer isn’t affected by the war in Iraq – after all, I’m not that likely to be killed (my friend Chief Smoke could be, but after all he did choose to be in the Army and that is kind of a occupational hazard).

I guess the only answer I can come up with is that every time someone (like that aforementioned 13 year old who’s in jail for having sex) is wrongfully imprisoned, everytime someone innocent is killed, every time someone is treated unfairly, it makes us all a little less free, a little bit more in a position to huddle in fear inside our locked houses, more inclined to hide things, more inclined to trust our fellow man less.

In other words, I care because by being within a few thousand miles of the people who are wrongfully imprisoning that girl, I’m made less free. My soul is somehow vaugely tainted by her unhappiness.

I’ll be the first to support cops and other government figures when they’re stopping someone from stealing someone else’s belongings, or stopping someone from hurting someone else. But they should keep their laws off my morality. Let me state this as clearly as possible: it is not moral to legislate morality. It is not moral to enforce your morals on other people, and it is not clear that anything is morally ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ because I, you, or anyone else says it is. And even if something is immoral, well, imprisoning someone is immoral too. Do two wrongs make a right? Apparently in modern thinking they do..

I accept that I’m powerless. I accept that I can change nothing. I accept that all I can do is sit here and stare at the brokenness and wonder how on earth it got so broken. I accept that I’m probably a part of the brokenness – that by existing, I probably make things worse.

* = I’m leaning towards he, but only because it’s the majority opinion.