Never been one to let the carrier drop

I’ve finally given up on sheer@sheer.us – although I will still be receiving mail there (at least for a while), I won’t be reading it very regularly. Instead, I’ve set up a couple of different email addresses for work and personal corrispondence. A autoresponder at sheer.us will give out those addresses. (If I start publishing them on the web, it will sort of ruin the point of changing addresses, which is simply: I’m being overrun by spam)

In addition, there are special whitelists for friends and work. I don’t think that I missed any of my friends in compiling these whitelists, however if you would like to make sure you’re included in the whitelists (which just mean that emails to sheer@sheer.us will be shuttled over to the appropriate box automagically so you don’t have to update your address book), just send a comment here. Or send me a mail at sheer@sheer.us – if you do not get a autoresponder, you’re already on the whitelist.

I’m guessing probably none of you care. 😉

I finished my taxes today. Well, I’m going to check over the 7(!) forms tomorrow to make sure I didn’t make any excessive errors, but from where I currently stand, they’re done. Tomorrow I get to call the IRS and try to get a payment plan. Wonder how that will go.

S.

For some interesting (and maybe even enlightening in spots) reading, do a google search for ‘The meaning of life’.

We have a number of theories. There’s the perception is reality theory, which seems to be coming up with alarming regularity in my life (certainly I can’t offer much in the way of a counterargument). Then there’s the purpose-of-life-is-to-design-or-father-our-successors theory, which if nothing else, has sheer numbers going for it. (6.something billion the last I looked) A really interesting twist on this is the suggestion that our successors will be intelligent machines. I don’t find this possibility completely unbelievable – especially since we ourselves would appear to be intelligent machines.

A question I’ve been asking many of my friends lately is ‘Do you think you’re more than your physical body’. For the record, I do. Yes, I recognize this is a 100% reversal from my position on this matter as recently as a few months ago. So I changed my mind. Deal. I reserve the right to change it again at some future date when more data becomes apparent, too.

I think I’m doing better.

Woke up and dealt with all email, started in on programming. No longer lying around watching star trek reruns and thinking nihilist thoughts. So yes, I think I’m doing better.

Several have argued that the opposite of entropy is order. I don’t think this is true.. entropy isn’t a state – well, normally, although I suppose one could argue that my house is in a state of extreme entropy.. but order is. Order isn’t really normally thought of as a process, or a continuim (sp?), although I suppose that it is as well.

Anyway, somehow it just ‘feels’ like there should be a better word for a process by which things become more ordered, organized, etc..

I’ve gone through a large part of my life feeling like a outcast.

Now that I know that the one making me a outcast is, by and large, me.. I just have to figure out what to do with this knowledge.

I have to figure out how to let a inverse of me live within me, while juggling between me and inverted-me, in order to continue growing, changing, and adapting. Without turning my back on any of the people that I love.

And I have to stop feeling like I’m so wrong everywhere I go and everything I do.

Tall order.

Well, maybe not. Maybe it just feels that way sometimes.. but sometimes I feel like the whole country has forgotten that whenever possible, you should always leave room for your enemy to become your friend.

I have begun to identify with both democrats and republicans – even though I don’t agree with most of what the republicans say, I think they’re just misguided, not evil or bad.. heck, there are many wonderful people who are republicans. I know this for a fact, having verified it personally.

And every time I think I can divide a group into black and white, and hate one side and love the other, I find out that I’ve just got more growing to do still, and that I’m wrong.

My life has been one long learning experience. What I’m learning lately is I’m extrordinarily lonely, and need more real life interaction with other humans. Apparently, that is to be the lesson from my year without external mind-altering chemicals.

(Yes, for those of you who are excited by such things in my life, Sheer is Drug Free. Voluntarily. Please don’t think less or more of me because of this. It’s just a personal choice that suits my current emotional situation. I have to get back to a nonaltered and balanced state, neurochemically, and figure out what the point of my life is, and where I’m going with it. To be honest, I feel pretty lost. If it weren’t for people like T. and A. and L. and K. and P. (journal names withheld for no particular reason) I think I’d be permanently lost.

Everybody seems to be cheering for me to stand back up, figure out a windmill, and go tilt another round. I’m all in favor. At least computers keep me fed and sleeping indoors while I figure out what my life is about.

I remember once someone talked about one of the large risks of being a hippie / openminded individual was that I would come to believe in everything. She made this sound like a truly awful disease, but in truth, isn’t believing in everything a whole lot better than believing in nothing?

Fighting for peace is impossible. You can’t win. You can’t even break even. All you can do is perpetuate a feedback loop that is older than the human race. Why bother?

Better solution: Create for peace. Love for peace. Work for peace – either with your mind, or with your body, or both.

WHen I write what looks like advice to humanity in these pages, assume that it is meant mostly for me. Yes, I write advice for myself. Do you all mind? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this. I’m surely one of the most broken creatures out there, and I aim to find my way to being whole, whatever it takes.

http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/

DARPA – face of the department of defense, which one presumes is the department responsable for ‘defending’ us against Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”.. is now trying to create life.

Yes, really. They are trying to make self-aware computers. Which they will promptly use to kill more humans. Honestly, people, couldn’t you just stay in the sphere of making cool technologies and leave the whole blowing-people-up thing alone? If we’re short on resources, wouldn’t it suffice to come up with creative solutions that made us better able to use the resources we had, rather than blowing things up?

I don’t even know what I think about DARPA creating life.. other than, wow, we’ve really come full circle now.. First they create the net, which has the possibility, should it spread far enough and have enough creative backup systems, of stopping war by making the results of it impossible to ignore, even for people as talented at forgetting the past as Americans (and, yes, I include myself in this)

Don’t know. Wonder what classes I should be taking. It seems clear that I need to go back to school, because I don’t understand the world at *all*

Honestly, I don’t see how you all do it..

If I were to be inclined to follow every single rule out there, learning them all would probably take about ten years – and they write new ones, new tax code, new business rules, new whatevers.. as fast as I can learn them.

Being a ecologically responsable consumer is just about impossible unless one gives up buying.. I mean, figuring out the recycling plan for PC boards, monitors, canned goods, plastic goods, how to sort the recycling into the right bins, what should be reused..

I can’t even go out for a sushi dinner without worrying about which of these fish are most likely to go extinct.

How do you all manage it? Once you start worrying about the details (i.e. which forms to fill out for what part of your taxes), it turns out there are so many details that you can’t ever stop worrying. This way lies madness.

And yet – I sure don’t want to be responsable for lining up the grand design. Then we add the factor of me thinking about spirituality and spiritual dimensions and, oh, boy, now I’m *really* buried. If I have to think about the cosmic significance of the choices of words my friends make and what secondary and tertiary messages they might be trying to convey and..

it’s enough to make you whimper, I tell you.

All I ever wanted was to not hurt anybody. But yet, it’s likely that just by existing I hurt thousands. I use too much energy. I eat too much. I write too much.. think of all the poor electrons that are being abused because I wrote this journal entry..

Honestly, not only can I not take it, I’m not even sure that I can define what it is that I’m not able to take any more. There appear to be five billion forms filled out in triplicate to define every rule I’m breaking, and I appear to owe money to uncle sam until the day I die. Think you can own land? think again. You’re just paying a slower rate of rent, and we change the name to ‘taxes’.

And, someone granted the bank the right to always win. Why?

What a mess. I think I’ll get back to my nice, simple programming.