the bits

So, rob just got back from some meetings in town with various folks, and things are looking *very* good for us. We basically have the double-thumbs-up, green-light, holy-shit-you-guys-rock go ahead at this point… just waiting for a few more formalities to get finished up… I suspect we’ll order our containers soon, as well… god damn, can’t wait for that :)

“January 1, ’02, we’re gonna rock the shit out of this place”, rob, 4:35 p.m., 10/11/01

so he’s taking us out for dinner tonight to celebrate :)

I’ve been working on some text for the website… some of the customer-facing, “this is what this is, this thing works like this, we do it like this cause it’s good”… etc, etc, etc…

We’re sliding into a comfy routine with the four of us and our respective tasks and such…

in other news, we’ll probably end up paying more rent to use this place to “operate our business”… not like we’re running a store front or anything, but the land family (yes, it’s a family affair) sorta freaked out when some lease ammendments were made to try to secure our abililty to run a business without incuring extra rates… sorta backfired.

also, I’ve got a bunch of pictures to upload… c&w’s dsl is sucking that ass right now, tho, so I can’t quite upload at current… ah well, later tonight :)

*yawn*

Okay, where to start… ah, headphones, apple for breakfast… there we go :)

*answers email*

So, our flights took us from ft lauderdale to San Juan, then on to Beef Island, Tortola without incident. Interestingly enough, as I called to cancel my sprint phone in San Juan during the layover (after finishing my game of starcraft), I was informed that Sprint *will have service here* and in the usvi in a few months!!! woop!!!

We got to the rather smallish airport (they’re currently building a new one) and proceeded through customs without any problem… after all, we are here on legitimate business, so I was able to provide rapid and direct answers to their questions that seemed to satisfy them… (they turned away three guys recently who stammered, said they were here on business, then claimed to be staying in a hotel that does not exist). I’ve only got a temporary visa, however, so that needs to be converted into a permanent residency.

After we waited about a half hour (I had a Corona), rob and scott arrived, we loaded in our shit, and rob’s like “don’t worry! there’s kickass bar / cybercafe about 200 ft from here!”, and sure enough, there was.

The place is run by this dude Jeremy, and *as soon* as I walked in, I knew there are kindred souls here on the bvi :) His primary thing is renting out boats / windsurfers / sailboards and such, so the place is adorned with related paraphernalia… there was a distinct air of style… almost psychedelia about it… not much more than a single large room with attached bath and kitchen, could comfortably hold maybe a dozen people or so. He had three computers (an iMac and two iMac look-a-likes… needless to say only the iMac ever saw any use from the four of us). Nice sound setup, dsl ala cable and wireless (more on them in a bit). Anyway, this guy is a definite character… could easily be one of the more garish characters out of a douglas adams book… I rather enjoyed his spoken mannerisms and the sort of rapid-fire back and forth that the English seem so disposed to :) So, we hung out there for a couple hours, drank beers… he made us some kickass food… quite a delightful mix of a bunch of various things. He seemed quite happy that we were there, as I immagine there’s not a great bounty of tech-savy internet mongers passing through this little corner of the world… but of course it’s not just about technology… it’s about the surrounding thought process, open mindedness, ability to explore… etc, etc :)

We then drove from Beef Is. back to our place at the top of MacNemara hill… took a solid 20 minutes, considering the average drivable speed is somewhere around 25 mph. We saw most of the major areas of town and such on the way over… there’s really not a whole lot to this place. As I said, we’re way up on this hill, and the road up here is seriously steep / switch back (dan is going to attempt to bike it… gradually ;) We have a spectacular view of road town, road harbor, and the ocean from here (including a few spotty islands several miles out). We’ve got the third flood of a rather large house… there’s two other tenants below us. Even just this floor is quite sizable; three beds, 2.5 baths, etc, etc… there’s a deck that runs the length of the house on the side facing road town, two of the bedrooms and the living room have double doors out to the deck. I’m staying in the master bedroom with dan, and soon brian as well. I carved out a little nich below one of the windows facing the direction the constant trade wind comes from… it’s actually quite nice, once you sit still long enough to cool off :)

Yeah, nobody really has air conditioning in their homes, it seems, though it does exist in most public places. Everything seems to be built for self-cooling, and the winds really are constant and refreshing… without them, it would be close to intolerable, but with them, it’s perfectly tolerable :)

Our water is collected rain, and drains into a large tank in the floor of the second level of the house. This means rather judiscious use of water, very short showers, etc, etc… but that’s no problem. Small price to pay, really… (and besides, I haven’t once even considered a long hot shower since I’ve been down here…).

Friday we did some running around… picked up some basic supplies. All of our stuff is still in shipping containers in florida (and I do mean all of it, except the stuff we took with us on the plane). No furniture, no refrigeration. My bed is a conglomerate pile of clothes, bubble wrap, scott’s sleeping bag, and some foam stuff I bought at a department store… heh. Definitely as “rough” as tropical paradise can get, I rekon.

Friday night we set up our first link to the house of a friend of ours up the hill a little ways… We used only 12 dbi antennas and 30 milliwatt radios, and with a seriously kludged antenna setup on our side that splits half of the signal up the hill and the rest into the house… thus, this is by far a weaker link that anything we’ll set up once we’re fully functional – and of course, it works marvelously. about 3 ms latentcy… can’t do any real throughput tests without a server on the other end, but we can fill the dsl pipe no prob (up to 150 KB/s).

Today we’re gonna set up the demo link between our place and the gov’t building that we’ll be demo’ing on monday… tomorrow we go sailing :)

anyway, I’m a bit pressed for time at the moment… so more later :)

-dre

Finally it’s here. I’m poised once again on the cusp of the beginning (continuation?) of the next stage of yet another adventure. Tomorrow at 11:35 our flight leaves for San Juan, then on to the airport on Beef Island in the B.V.I.s. This time around, I’ve got a much better picture of what the immediate to mid-term future will hold, unlike the relatively blind stabbing out into the world actualized by my move to new york, then to seattle.

I don’t necessarily feel any particular compulsion to leave the united states due to recent events, but the change will be welcome all the same. I’ve never been outside the US, so I look forward to yet more enrichment that is the direct result of living in a new environment. It will be a change of pace and of lifestyle, to be sure… from what I gather, it will be somewhat reminiscent of small-town life, except instead of being just a tiny encapsulated town that does one or two things, it will instead represent a scaled down version of everything that’s required to make a country work. Take 30,000 average americans, put them on an island, and tell them to run their own country, and you’d probably end up with something that didn’t work too well… but the people down there are doing it, and doing it well, so I look forward to being around people with a generally higher level of proficiency, at least when it comes to their contributions to the function of their environment.

As far as some of the things I care about – that is, technology, and solid companionship – the Islandless plan takes care of both. It’s pretty clear, however, that the technical proficiency in the bvi is painfully low… but that’s okay, I’ve been there before. I helped bring the Manatee County school district through a period of incredible technical learning and growth. The biggest piece of that involves connecting to people on a personal level, providing the framework in which they can understand and relate to the various technologies we’ll be dealing with, including the Internet at large. That involves helping people overcome their fear and ignorance of technologies – not an easy task, but one at which I am skilled. Judging by the effects I had personally on many of the people in Manatee County, I’m pretty confident that I can do it again in the bvi. There’s a noble feel to all of this… like I’m some kind of technological crusader, devoted to exposing all of the wonderful things about the Information age to people that have never had that exposure. On the surface, we are simply a utility company, providing a connection from point a to point b. I intend to do everything in my power to help provide the philosophical understanding that’s behind it all, and convey the excitement of our Internet culture.

It’s easy to sink my teeth into these kinds of things because really, I’m wanting for nothing right now. From an emotional and intellectual perspective, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and I think it only gets better from here on out. By far the most important contributing factor to this happiness is my relationship with amy… it’s simply as great as it could be, geographical barriers notwithstanding :) Even in the last few months, our ability to communicate and share has been refined to the point that we’re practically extensions of each other… it’s absolutely fascinating, wonderful, exciting, fulfilling… perfect :) That fact that we’ve spent far more time physically separate than together over the course of our long relationship makes our time together that much more potent and meaningful. The week we spent together a while back exemplifies that fact… it was the best time of our lives. Thank you so much :)

If the current schedule holds, she’ll be done with school around springtime of ’03, which gives me a good amount of time to get the Islandless thing rolling smoothly. I’m not saying I’m necessarily going to bail out of the bvi at my first possible opportunity… I want to see this through, to help it succeed like I know it can and should. This is important for me, as it’s some vindication that I can do shit like this for real, but just as importantly, if not more so, I want to help Rob bring Islandless to its full potential. This has been his baby for quite some time, and he has been shouldering incredible amounts of load in terms of management, stress, and time… He deserves – we all deserve – to have this thing succeed marvelously.

Once I feel that my contribution to Islandless has been satisfied, I will seek her out, no matter where she is. I can be happy and self-actualized anywhere if it’s with her… the fact of the matter is that everything else is secondary compared to being able to be together.

There was an important meeting yesterday between the islandless core management team and some officials in the bvi gov’t, and things look good… the meeting went well :) We were somewhat apprehensive for a while there, not being sure if some of the applicable laws / contracts that are in place would be read as we read them. Our case is still quite solid, our grounds are equally solid, the demand for our service is there, our technical proficiency is in ample supply, and we all are committed to doing whatever it takes to make this thing work and work well. As with most startups that aren’t massively funded, the belt will be tight… but if it proves that the Islandless machine works as well as we think it will, finances likely won’t be a problem.

In the short term, dan and I will be joining rob and scott, who flew down on monday morning. Our gear (two shipping container’s worth) isn’t going down just yet… one of us will be coming back to the states for perhaps another week or so to finalize the shipment of our stuff to the bvi, to possibly receive equipment that we’ll be ordering… I’m not sure if that person will be me, but I don’t think it will be. And so, I’ll be having a communications blackout for some undetermined length of time. We have plans to jury rig some internet access by tossing up a radio link between our place and the residence of one of our on-island accomplices… not sure when that will happen, exactly, but we’ll surely need access, since the telephones are simply not an option for stateside communication ($1.75 per minute, anybody?). We don’t even have a real postal address yet, but we’ll probably be getting a p.o. box in road town somewhere… Primarily, though, contact with my friends will remain largely unchanged… that is, dre@mac.com and of course via AIM, yours truly, SplankThatAss.

With that, I think I’ll begin finalizing preparations for our departure… collecting the pieces of equipment that we’ve got room to take down with us… maybe a mini-load of laundry, got a spot of cleaning up to do here at jpc’s place, etc, etc.

My next post will quite possibly be made from the back porch of our house in the bvi, which is way up on top of a big hill, overlooking just about everything… sitting outside with the laptop in the shade, enjoying the constant ocean breeze… tropical paradise? I think it might just be… (oh, and I’ll be buying an iBot firewire cam just as soon as Orange Micro gets off that ass and finishes my OS X drivers…)

Take care all, see you on the flip side :)

-Andre

As expected, my last few days in Seattle went rather quickly… a bustling combination of last minute activity and an attempt to spend as much time as possible with the friends I’m leaving behind… There was definitely a good amount to be done as far as the logistics of it all… getting all of our stuff packed / accounted for… having all of the personal belongings of 4 people combined with all of the “company” stuff in one not-so-huge appartment was rather interesting, but some creative space management was all we needed ;)

Last night Damon gathered some friends at his pad to see us off. I’m quite glad I had that chance… when I left Florida for Pennslyvania / New York a little over a year ago, it was done quite hastily, and I didn’t really get to see anybody before I left. I’m very grateful to have been involved with such a tight group of people as the crew that I’ve associated with in Seattle. Much of it has to do with the Speakeasy influence… just about every one of my friends in Seattle is affiliated with the Speakeasy in one way or another. I know that I’ve got friends there, but it made me feel extra good that a bunch of them showed up to see me off and hang out for a spell.

Even though I’ve only been in Seattle for about a year, I feel like I’ve come quite a ways… met a lot of great people, learned a lot of cool stuff, done a lot of cool stuff :) I was remarking to somebody last night (a night in which, incidentally, no sleep was had by either dan or myself, on account of our 6 a.m. departure from sea-tac) that I had no real plans for what might become of me in Seattle. I figured I’d get a job and a place, and just see what happens… same thing I tried unsuccessfully to do in New York. Sure enough, I did get a job, and a place, and was quite settled for a good while. The Islandless thing effectively came out of nowhere, even though it had been in the works since long before I even left Florida to begin with.

The real point here is that you can’t win if you’re not at the table. I was watching CNN one night years ago, and it was Larry King interviewing Ben Stein (Beuler?). He had a lot of interesting stuff to say, but the thing that stuck with me was when he was talking about how he got his start in showbiz. He basically said that if he had stayed where he had been (not L.A.), he’d still be amusing his small circle of friends and that’s about it. The big move was just putting himself in an environment that was conducive to producing the kinds of opportunities he was looking for. In other words, if you want to be in show biz, it’s more or less required that you be in one of a few key places where there is activity in that industry. If you want simply to enjoy a cool town with interesting culture and a killer demographic, plus a whole lot of technology, then you absolutely must leave Bradenton, Florida. There is just no other way :) Some people may say that you create your own opportunities, and to some extent that may be true… but the simple act of being around new people in new places doing new things… it’s an effective way to kindle the fires of change, as it were…

I’ve accomplished more than I set out to accomplish during my stay in Seattle. Several journal entries ago, I talked about the various components to my contentedness, and they were all satisfied quite well. Not only did I really enjoy my time there, but it’s led to a fantastic opportunity that involves travel to far away lands, and badass technology all at the same time :)

Damon and I had been sort of tracing some of the events that brought all of this to where it is today, and some of the relationships are quiet remarkable. As usual, I find myself returning to the idea of ‘the connector’… that is, the kind of person that does an excellent job of connecting other people with each other. There’s no question that Damon is exactly that… he stumbled across me one day while looking for mac stuff on IRC, and we just sorta hit it off… dan, damon, and brian were living together at the time, and so that’s how I was introduced to them… I met rob not long after I initally got to Seattle (a good year after I first met Damon on IRC)… we went to the Resturaunt Formerly Known as the Bridge Tender and sipped on long island iced teas… Come to think of it, the only people I know in Seattle that I didn’t meet through Damon were my co-workers at VoiceStream. Seriously. I’d go to parties with him… work parties, regular ol’ friend parties… all in all, just a fantastic experience. Thanks again, Damon… for everything. I’ve spent some time in my life facilitating for other people… mostly in the form of time that I spend doing things like maintaining a cool mac community on the cybarweb, or giving my time to help train people in the wonderful ways of all this new-fangled technology… I do those things because I enjoy them, and because I believe they have a real positive impact. To be on the receiving end of facilitation (in my case, in the form of sharing his space with me) is really cool, and I’m extremely grateful. The impact has been totally positive :)

At some point over the last few weeks, I made up my mind that I wanted a new iBook enough to actually save up and buy one, and so I did. His name is Bish :) (bish, I hate that bish!!) … the first new computer I’ve ever bought with all my own money. Naturally, I’m writing this on the plane… I think we’re over Georgia right now. We flew out of sea-tac at like 6:05, arrived in St. Louis at around noon central time, an hour layover, and then on to Ft. Lauderdale… we’ll probably “be on the ground in 30 minutes”, as they like to say in the cockpit.

The schedule at this point is to spend some time in Ft. Lauderdale, as our final staging point before we head to the Carribbean. There’s lots of equipment that has to be ordered / received / sorted through / packed, etc. This is also the last failsafe, insofar as that once we get the final approvals necessary (or at the very least, solid timelines on when such approvals are forthcoming), then we are off… but we can’t leave until we have that. Thus, there is a chance that we may be delayed… Personally, I’m just fine with that, but Islandless as a whole is definitely on a time line, so the faster things can happen, the better.

I am of course excited to dig in on Tortola and spend some serious time building some really cool stuff, running it, and all the whille kicking back and enjoying it. Additionally, I’m extremely excited that this will hopefully be the last big thing I do before I hunt Amy down once and for all and live happily ever after ;) Of course, I do plan to orchestrate as many visits as possible… Florida is quite a bit closer to me now :) I keep having these daydreams of myself in my nice little b.v.i. pad in the middle of paradise, and flyinig her out to visit… just kickin’ back, loving life and each other…

Here are a few select pics . One shows our apt… we’ve got the third floor; the other two are shots taken from the balcony.

I’ll be online (in style, I might add… ibook + airport lubs) during my stay in Ft. Lauderdale, so don’t worry about finding a substitute for your dreness fix just yet… There’s the possibility of a lengthy blackout between the time that we get to the b.v.i. and when we have our network built / operational, but we’ve got a couple stop-gap measures that should hold us over until we can use our network.

Speaking of which, I feel really good about the technical side of what we’re doing. I’ve been charged with the responsibility of managing the network infrastructure, and I have to say, we’re as secure as a wireless network can possibly be. Not broadcasting SSID; Random 128 bit WEP session keys for every customer; MAC address checking at every entry point into the network; hard-coded username / password that the customer will never even see in their cpe equip; automatically generated / rotated WEP keys on the backbone bridge links that get swapped out before the minimum threshold of traffic required to crack the key is reached… and for the really worried / high profile business customers, an ipsec tunnel from their premesis directly to our core router in the bvi. Obviously, it’s not like I came up with all of this myself… (actually, only one part of it was my idea… the backbone bridge key rotation scripts)… the information is all out there, it’s just a matter of finding it and assimilating it properly. This really is the age of information, and the most empowered people are the ones that wield it successfully for their own benefit. I am proud to consider myself one of those people :)

We’re decending now, and any moment now I’ll be asked to turn my laptop computer off, put my seat back forward, etc, etc. I think I’ll not give them the satisfaction of watching me follow their orders, and beat them to the punch instead ;)

Here’s to the start of another great adventure :)

-dre

it’s’ all happening rather quickly. I’ve only got a little over two weeks left in Seattle, and things are super busy with work. There’s much to be done… much that has been done, much that is being done… I was remarking to blackmagic last night that one of the interesting things about moving so fast is that this won’t take very long at all. In three months, our network will be fully operational, and humming along smoothly… I’ve been putting in some good hours recently, but I really feel like I’m just getting warmed up. We’ll have something of a commune situation going for a while once we get there, so I’ll be working, eating, sleeping islandless, which is I think what it will take… actually, that’s probably not true…. I’ve heard of deployments similar to ours, and the technology is so robust that you can often times afford to be sloppy… but that’s not what we’re about… I really feel compelled to make things as tight as possible… after all, anything worth doing is worth doing right. Since this is the biggest / coolest thing I’ve worked on to date, I want to make sure it’s the best it can be. I’m confident :)

Spent some good hours rapping with blackmagic last night, after a somewhat uncomfortable experience that I’m at least partly responsible for (sorry about that… :/ ). I’m going to make an effort for my last two weeks not to just like… come back to the pad after a long day of work, crash out, wake up and leave for work, repeat, repeat, rinse. I want to spend time hangin ‘ with folks before I roll outta here.

today is more range testing… the tour director is on his way over with the gear… heh. this is fun :)

She sent me some wonderful mail today – like actual physical mail… thank you :) I feel truly privileged to even know her… but this… this is just fantastic :)

love is amazing :)

-dre

We were talking about what the double auto biography will look like, and where we’d be right now. I like the idea of this being the start of chapter 1… meaning that up to now, this is just one lengthy prelude…

that’s sorta supported by the somewhat fragmented nature of this relationship, and the odd order that we’ve experienced things. usually being physically proximate to someone is one of the contributing factors to knowing if you’re comfortable spending time with the person… we’ve gone without that for five years, when most people get it right when they meet. the little slices of time that we’ve been able to squeeze in over those years combined with the great wealth of communication that’s occured online has led me to believe that we would truly be happy with each other…. but until we could actually try it, I always had a hanging sense of anticipation and hope that it would someday all come together, that it would work out okay.

I was confident that it would, but nothing is ever 100% (well… it wasn’t then, anyway ;). I would have waited as long as necessary, but I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, even though I thought that it must be there, and must be very bright indeed. I didn’t know if I’d make it “in time”… there was always the possibility of something else happening that would preclude the successful manifestation of our relationship into a healthy, normal, real-world (not long distance) relationship.

of course, ‘someday’ finally came. there is no easy way to express the complete and overwhelming joy I feel right now :) how should one feel when a very long term plan works out better than ever anticipated? when something I’ve pined for for so long finally comes to pass… and it’s good… so good that I know with complete certainty that the waiting was totally worth it.

never in my life have I felt so much in such a short time. I think I amazed even myself with my capacity for love, which flows from me unhindered by *anything*… the love is not new, but the ability to be in the same physical space to express it is quite new. just to look into her eyes for more than 5 seconds at a time because somebody is watching (we had to be self conscious because we weren’t really allowed to be together… rather stressful way to spend the little time we did have, but all that’s over now :)…. we just did whatever we wanted, with 6 days to spend and a great pad lent to us by a good friend of her‘s. and of course, when you’re with someone for extended periods that is the focus of your attention, a lot of really great things happen in terms of perception and communication and understanding…

it really was the best week… for both of us :) I’m left with the certainty that we’ll continue to be very happy with each other… I don’t see any ceiling on this thing :)

more later…

-dre

So… amazing times :) I’m about to leave for a trip that may very well represent the best week of my life…

I’m flying to Florida to visit her. It’s been about two years since we’ve seen each other… and this is all sounding pretty bland so far. There’s no way I can capture all the things going on in my head and distill, it into a few paragraphs… too much history involved for that. Honestly, I feel way to preoccupied to write, but this is important…

Things are better than they’ve ever been. Finally, *finally*… we get to spend some time together on our own terms. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: this is the first time we’ll have spent more than a couple hours physically together on consecutive days, ever, out of our entire 5+ year history. Pretty amazing. All I ever wanted was a chance… a chance to spend some time, be together, make her happy, just see how things work out… have a great time, enjoy each other’s company… you know, the usual :) It couldn’t happen, for one reason or another, until… tomorrow :) This is a dream come true, and for a guy like me without a great deal of direction in life (going where the wind blows me, as it were…), this is pretty heavy. And the surrounding details are totally in place, too… We’ve got a nice place to chill at in bradenton; of course my very good friends nico and steph are waiting anxiously for my arrival… it’ll be great to hang with them; I just got paid; I’ve got a cell phone now; been burning cds to take with me and enjoy with her… all in all, I’m pretty well equipped personally to make this a most excellent trip… and, best of all, I feel goddamn fantastic! The anticipation is palpable… I mean, this is something I’ve been looking forward to for 5 years… it was always just tucked away in the back of my mind… “someday”… I knew it would come, but I was kinda never expecting it any time soon… but it’s finally here!!!!! *shivers with delight*.

I feel so loved. Not just by her, either. Things have been quite active here at blackmagiclabs… lots of change and lots of really really good vibes all around. I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time, doing the right stuff. A heartfelt shout-out to all my friends here that have wished me well, and have me in their thoughts… thanks a bunch all, and I look forward to seeing you when I get back (it’s my understanding that I’ll return just in time for a gathering…).

I’ll have limited internet access while I’m away (was actually considering buying an ibook before I left…), though I don’t expect to be spending lots of time surfing the cyberweb, or checking up on my bitches…

Okay, well… I think that’s about it :) See you when I get back :)

damn.

when I got to seattle, I had no idea how long I would be here, nor did I even think about worrying about it. I came here to live and enjoy myself, and to me, that entails a few basic things, beyond the obvious necessities: spending time with people I enjoy being around; being functionally important in whatever it is I “do” (for money); having no restraints on my ability to be a geek…

actually, hold on a sec, bit of background… my decision to come to seattle was made about two days before I got here. I was in new york at the time, and things were falling apart… I was staying with a friend trying to find a job, and not succeeding. when my last, best hope for a job fell through (these two dudes at this big internet media company really wanted to hire me, but they couldn’t ’cause the boss hired a friend of a friend… (who quickly was let go, which I learned when I received a message at the airport terminal to call the company, as they were trying to reach me, and my buddy called the airport to try to catch me before I blew town… turns out they wanted me to come work for them… alas, my luggage was already checked, plus I was … well, back to the exterior of this double parenthetical sidenote…)), I decided to accept blackmagic‘s offer. We’d known each other online for about a year, and had become pretty close. I was still surprised and extremely happy when he offered to help me get set up in seattle… so, since I totally screwed up my attempt at nyc, and having little other recourse, I was whooshed away to seattle on a jet airplane :) ooo boy :) he totally put me up in his phat-ass condo until I found a job and an apartment… but I mean… much more than just like… a place to crash. he genuinely wanted to help me… to see me succeed. thing is, I was fully underutilized in bradenton, florida… and that’s just a damn shame… we both saw that as really sucking, so it’s just totally kickass that I could put down roots in a town like seattle with his help…

initially the geeking was done at blackmagic’s, since that’s where I was, and he happened to have an extra mac laying around… after having just spent a year with each other building online communities on IRC, it was really cool to be able to sit online in the same physical space … still is cool, as a matter of fact… *glances to his left* :)

… but soon after, I moved into an apartment with a roommate, and I was able to afford a g4… sure, not brand new, but hey… it was the first computer I bought since the ol’ performa 550 back in ’94 or ’95… the g4 is a badass box with nearly a gig of ram and 120 gigs of storage, and two monitors, but I digress… well no, I don’t, since that’s the point. I was finally able to stock up on enough stuff to consider myself a card carrying geek (as opposed to just playing one on tv….)

anyway, my ability to have hardware combined with the nature of seattle in general allowed me to really feel totally fulfilled in the geek department…

finding good people turned out to be pretty easy too… blackmagic introduced me to the city, and also to many of his friends whom I now proudly consider my friends as well… I mean, what can I say… there’s just a lot of super cool people around here… I don’t know if it’s the university influence, or just the “big city” thing in general… I certainly didn’t feel anything like this about nyc… it seems as though the percentage of young people is very high around here, and that is good. Honestly, I am perfectly happy / thrilled about my current social situation, more so than I think I’ve ever been… which is one of the things that will be hard about leaving.

mid september, I’m off to the british virgin islands, to live and work. this is the last piece of the puzzle… the “being functionally important” part… quite possibly the most important part, at least according to ol’ Maslow… of the approximately one year that I’ve been in seattle, about 7 months were spent performing a mind-numbingly stupid job for an even stupider company, and I was (am?) quite bitter about that… just a flat-out waste of time. When that finally turned sour, I really wanted to find something else where I could actually make a difference. I want to think, not just perform repetitive operations. I want to do something that *requires* intelligence, not something that’s simply aided by it… so imagine my delight when just such an opportunity turned up right under my nose… good ol’ rob and his crazy ideas ;) he’d been working on it full time for quite a while… I got in rather late, but at a time when he really needed the help. my involvement started by me expressing interest in helping him with some wireless (802.11b) network testing… since, ya know… I’m a geek and all, and networking is cool, right? I had a ball with it, and it wasn’t long before I was working for Islandless full time… which is what I’m doing now, and loving it. It is *fully* satisfying work, even in these somewhat preliminary stages… I’m required to learn about new stuff in order to do my job… the amount of things I’ve learned in the past month makes me feel like I’m really using my time in a worthwhile fashion, and of course the knowledge is being applied to a real world problem, for our own benefit. but it’s not even just performing some list of varying tasks… it’s helping decide what needs to be done and assisting in the orchestration of the whole thing… it’s really quite a lot of stuff, and I’m constantly amazed at rob’s ability to just bust it out and keep on truckin’. that’s sorta been my approach as well… I feel like I’m really expanding my horizons… I could be happy only applying knowledge I currently have, but I think it’s more fun to persue understanding… “learning”, I guess they call it ;)

all in all, everything has finally come together. I’m a solid geek with great friends in a great town with a great job…. I totally feel like I’m blossoming or something… I know, sounds corny, but I just feel really alive… so why am I so excited about uprooting myself again? heh, I don’t know, but I am :) I’ve got a feeling that I’ll carry all this goodness with me…

in the mean time, I’m going to try to spend more time generally hanging out with people. there’s a lot of super hip folks that I hear a bunch of great stories about, and see once in a while, but certainly not as much as I’d like to…

for now, though, sleep…

I happened to be digging through some old cds recently (I’m a packrat when it comes to data…), and I stumbled upon something I’d written about a couple years ago or so… It was intended as a user profile for a (somewhat exclusive, wink wink) BBS (FirstClass calls it a resume). Interesting perspective…

So, the resume. There was once a time when I spent a significant amount of time updating my resume every few days, but that time has long since passed. Or has it? Here I am, after all.

Because this is all highly illegal, I don’t think I’ll get into anything identifiably personal, such as my name, where I live, etc, etc. I’m a 21 year struggling to get out of a suburban nightmare. I like to think that someday all of these tribulations of mine would make a fine book, but I’m not yet sure if it would be a commedy, a tragedy, or a drama – probably all of the above.

One thing is for sure. While a healthy outlook on life is important, it takes more than that. It might sound like I know the “secret to success”, but really, I don’t. I only know what *doesn’t* work. The basic qualities of laziness, uncertainty and poverty mixed in with a little bad luck can create amazingly intricate socio-economical clusterfucks, in the wallows of which I squirm like a horse caught in quicksand.

At least it’s not a boring life, though. I get to play with reasonbly cool toys, even if fate won’t let me own any myself. Life on the lamb definitly keeps the blood flowing, as I’ve discovered lately. The unlimited possibilities of online life monopolizes most of my time, but that’s nothing new. My current work schedule doesn’t really allow for too much tedium, unless of course you consider sleep boring :P All of that coupled with spontaneity and occasional recklesness keeps things generally interesting.

In the big picture, I’d have to say that I’m content with myself as a person at this point, even if not with my current situation. Situations can be remedied, though, which is what occupies my thoughts frequently (but generally not until I’m trying to fall asleep). So there you have it; perhaps my shortest resume ever – in 5 paragraph essay form, no less ;)

life goes on, of course… it’s at times like these when I realize how normal I feel most of the time… not normal like the same as other people, normal like not experiencing any sort of extraordinary emotion. I haven’t decided if it’s good or bad, but it’s certainly true that I seem to go about my business with little to no negative side effects related to the drama that can sometimes aflict a person (… but “drama” sounds condescending… like “oh, look at me, I am stoic and unwavering, impervious to life’s slings and arrorws that ‘you people’ deal with on a daily basis”… no, not like that at all…). that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy myself… quite the contrary. hmm… maybe the reason I don’t have a lot of negative action in my life right now is because it’s generally just pretty damn sweet. yeah, I’d say that’s a good possibility.

in any case, we had a nice long aim conversation the other night in which we both learned a good deal. It’s simultaneously amazing and surprising that two people that have communicated so much for so long could learn new things about each other that totally change how things lay out. the human condition fascinates me, and lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the basic problems of perception and understanding. I had a lot of wrong ideas about “us” that stem mostly from my own misinterpretation of information / events. my approach to understanding anything at all is fairly consistant, usually starting with observation followed by logical deductions. I know, what a goddamn nerd I am… maybe it sounds really cold and detached, and maybe it is… but it works really well for me… most of the time. but then, of course, there are always those things that completely defy logic. even going into consideration of such things, I’ll say to myself “okay, now you know this will probably not make any sense to you at all, right?”, but that doesn’t stop me from diving in headlong, or from feeling the burn of any of the results. I mean… if I only deallt in things I could understand completely, that would be pretty limiting, don’t you think?

I’m once again comfortable / happy with everything in my life. it’s certainly the way I prefer it :)

and… next month I spend 5 days in Florida, visiting starlyric, my good buddy nico, and hopefully others of the bradenton crew… I miss you guys :)

werp