the bits

Everybody, meet starlyric :)

The basic breakdown of what’s going on between she and I is presented in my last post… During the recent while, we’ve enjoyed tons of AIM and email action, and now she’s here too :) happy day :)

So, been a while since the last post… it’s not that things happen slowly in my life… quite the contrary, usually… I’m the type to mull things over a bit before writing about them. I seem to use this less as a live journal, recording day to day thoughts / activities, and more like a place to air out my ideas on the culminations of things, where I’ve been / where I’m going, and other concepts that outlast the fleeting musings of any old day…

All in all, things are fucking fantastic right now :) I’ve got a job I’m real happy with, saving money (will have a place to call my own before long), the social scene rocks (seriously), but most importantly, I’m once again back in touch with an old friend of mine in Florida.

It’s actually a fairly involved story, but the short of it is that we enjoyed incredibly strong love despite unwieldy situational blockades (beyond our control) that ultimately prevented the relationship from flourishing as it could have. That didn’t stop us from trying, though… several times over the approximately 5 years we’ve known each other, we’d try and try and try, but ultimately the blockades made it impossible, and it would end in the strife of loving somebody you cannot be with… Even so, throughout the whole ordeal, my conviction and feelings didn’t waver. It’s rough… pining for something when you really don’t know when you’ll get a shot at it… I did know it would happen, though… it had to. Our bond is such that it simply has to happen (that is how I see it, anyway, though I’m usually not prone to such sweeping, ungrounded statements ;). Eventually, the situation would change… I felt it was incredibly unfair that such a strong desire between two people to be together should go unfulfilled…

It so happened that the situation did not change before she left for college. So, she went, and I carried on. We didn’t communicate much for a while… a year and a half or so… The unspoken truth for me is that if I’m out of touch, it’s easier for me to keep a handle on my feelings. It was often on my mind, though… not usually in the way of any immediate thought / project, but…. when my mind would float randomly, aloft in the currents of spontaneous connections, I’d return to her… not in a disappointed / bummed out way at all, though… it was more like just knowing that she’s out there… I’d think of random interactions… remember vignettes from the past, visualize things that might happen in the future…

Then about a month ago, we start emailing each other again. I wasn’t too surprised when everything clicked right back into place :) We both have grown considerably over the past 1.5 years or so, but the love seems like it never went away since it came ~ 5 years ago…. it’s really quite incredible :)

Now the situation *is* different. Of course, WA is a long way from FL… but that’s aight. I don’t think either of us knows what will become of “us”, nor do I necessarily feel the need to predict. We’re both keen on the idea of taking care of our respective shit, which means that more than likely, things will continue on as they are for at least a little while…. but… *glows*… she’s coming for a visit soon :) I don’t want to get into the details of the situational blockades from the old days, but suffice to say that we had to savor every minute we could physically spend together, because they were few and far between… (our primary means of communication, even when we were trying to consider ourselves a pair, was email / chat). This visit will mark the first time ever that we’ll have been in the same room together for more than a couple hours on back to back days…. The fairytale / epic qualities are almost palpable, eh? Naturally, I miss her like crazy, and the anticipation is so electric… but I can wait a little longer ;)

Saw Autechre last night at the showbox. I’ve been listening to some of their older stuff for quite some time, but only recently have I been exposed to some of the newer recordings. It seemed to me as though they’re taking quite the atonal and disjointed path, but it’s tricky…

I’ve noticed a trend that I like very much in some electronica these days, and that is to get away repetitive downbeats; to mix it up quite a bit. Not breakbeat, per se, cause that’s almost as predictable as everything else. It’s more like little offsets that are inserted before a beat… maybe just a sixteenth note in duration; sometimes triplets. So you get these offsets cranking in such a way that you maybe only actually land on a downbeat once every 4 (5, 7?) measures. Then on top of that these little offsets are scattered throughout the length of your rhythm, perhaps in predictable locations but with always changing values.

This kind of music isn’t immediately easy to listen to. Last night I found myself having to work quite a bit to figure out what they were doing, where the emphasis was, and where the rhythmic undulations were going. As a result, once I finally did fall into a grove (which it seemed that most people didn’t ever find, judging from the number of bodies moving and shaking), I appreciated it that much more.

Oh, and they both had g4 laptops, and the apple logo was really bright :)

In other news, I’m basically settled at my new / temporary digs… I’m quite happy with it, actually… Behold:

So this is me capturing that moment of uncertainty that occurs when you’re not exactly sure where you’ll be living a week from now. Quite a mix of factors brought the situation to where it is now, ranging from unfortunate to unlucky to just plain dumb. It’s a rather involved story that I don’t think I’ll get into here.

Frankly, though, I think I’m handling it a lot better than I’ve seen others handle situations like this in the past. Roommates, lack of rent money, and differing fallback plans almost always seem to end up embroiled in a nice heaping mess, but I’m not that kind of dude. I’ll play it straight up with you; I’ll let you know how things are from my perspective and discuss motivations for my actions (or lack thereof), and attempt to come to an understanding about what could / should / will happen. Even if the current situation is based on personal mistakes (which may or may not be my own), I won’t hold it personally against another party unless the intention was to dick me over (in this case, that is certainly not the case).

I’ve often been criticized for being too nice, too understanding… Perhaps it’s true, but it’s much better than the opposite ;)

Mac OS X Users:

1) Set your desktop pic to “Flow 1.jpg” located at “/Library/Desktop Pictures”
2) Download Blacklight.
3) Put the blacklight screensaver module included with blacklight into the “/Library/Screen Savers” directory inside your home directory.
4) Open the System Preferences application, click “Screen Saver”, select BlackLight, click configure, check both boxes, and put the first slider slow and the other normal.
5) Set up a hot corner under “Activation”, then drag your mouse into that corner.
6) Enjoy the kneading effect that the color rotation causes. This looks *really* cool under certain circumstances, as I’m sure you could imagine :)

So, that’s the end of the geek weekend… I can’t help but be a bit nostalgiac already :) Good times…

whew.

It’s day two of the weekend geek festival here at blackmagic labs… Last night, kupo graced us with his presence, and I do believe that others are queued up for today… It’s pretty badass to be able to geek out with another mac fiend… usually it’s just me and eJoe, a decidedly wintel guy ;) I think we might just end up doing something like this more often… We’ve hung out online for quite a while, and it’s pretty cool do that while being in the same room…

blackmagic himself has some rather telling photogrpahy of yours truly, which you will undoubtedly enjoy in short order…

In other news, my livejournal account registration was accepted, and now I’m a full fledged paying member :)

Hopefully there will be some sort of production that comes out of all this… might be web stuff, might be some video… I dunno, something. Stay tuned…

If I could clean bathrooms for $30 an hour, I might seriously consider it as a career choice. Perhaps it’s not the best use of my skills, but you know, it’s honest labor. I just spent about 1.5 hours in my own bathroom preparing it for inspection by the landlady and her next unsuspecting victims, and I must say it’s never been that clean…. Actually, cleaning bathrooms for a living would suck. What am I thinking?

This weekend will be devoted to geeking out. I’m bringing my rig over to blackmagic’s place, and some others will be doing the same. I look forward to a couple days of solid computer love… Wait a second… I get that all day, every day. Well I guess this time I get to be in physical proximity to others with the same affliction…

So yeah, there’s more to this than meets the eye. I’d be remiss to just start writing without first taking some time out to really look around, get the lay of the land, etc…

With that in mind, I’m going to ease into this. I don’t know exactly what to expect from ‘the community’, or what is expected of me, really… I’m just gonna go with it, I guess :)

Actually, it’s pretty damn exciting, considering the things that have happened to me as a direct result of online acquaintances I’ve had in the past. This seems to be a really tight way to bring people together, so I’m interested to see what happens. I’ve always enjoyed any kind of forum that involves expository writing… nothing structured, really… just people telling each other whatever comes to their minds, with the ability for feedback. This seems to be less about “issues”, per se (ala usenet, etc), and instead focused directly on us, which is cool. There’s no question that people enjoy sharing their trials and tribulations with others, so I look forward to it :)

It’s a time of change yet again, after about 7 months of relative stability. To truly understand what I’m about, you sorta have to know how I got here… all of which is just a lot of stuff that there’s no way to really tackle in a single entry. Instead, I think I’ll just describe bits and pieces as I go along…

The encapsulated version goes as follows: I lived my life from the age of 3 on the west coast of Florida. Almost one year ago, after getting finished with some pretty fucked up shit (see the website), I managed to finally get out of Florida, after many many months of trying. I spent two weeks at my family’s home in Pennsylvania (they had moved there several years previous), then it was off to NYC to stay with some friends I had met online. The intention was to find a job and a place, but it didn’t quite work that way. For several reasons, I didn’t land a job… I’m pretty damn good at what I do, but I don’t have any degrees or certifications, and I was doing my job search all wrong anyway… After over a month and no job, I was just about to drag my ass back home when blackmagic, another of my online acquaintances, saved me. He flew me out to Seattle, put me up in his phat condo, and made a concerted effort to help me get a job. It was exactly what I needed. Not long after, I had a steady job, an apartment, and was generally having a great time enjoying Seattle and all its citizens.

Cut to about 9 months later, and you’ll find me without a solid ‘job’, per se… I do have some temporary contract work for another month or so, but after that it’s up in the air. I don’t look forward to finding work. I hate the job search, in fact, with every fiber of my being. I’m further discouraged after having just finished 7 months at a Big Company.

It finally happened, you see. That little bubble inside me that was so optimistic about the “real” world of technology, where people have “real money” to do “real business”… this is where all the good stuff has to happen, I thought. For about 4 years, I worked strictly in education and private consulting, so I knew nothing of what technology companies – or any other company, for that matter, is all about. Sure, they’re not all the same, but most are. The realization? Most of it is bullshit. Bullshit companies with bullshit internal politics and bullshit ideology. It was especially painful after having come from education and private consulting; both ventures in which I can see a real positive impact of my work, and can do it with other people that care about their jobs (i.e. they’re not in it for the money).

Even companies I respect fall prey to the bullshit factor. It’s a damn shame, but I guess that’s just the way it is. Many of the jobs that I previously considered badass would more likely than not be too much bullshit to be comfortable with. This time around, I’m gonna look for those ‘other’ jobs. I have no idea what yet, but I’m certainly not focusing myself on IT. I want to get back into something creative, something that can affect positive change… I don’t like the idea of spending lots of my time on anything that I don’t enjoy, and a stupid job is definitely not enjoyable. I dunno… perhaps I’m asking for too much here, but I’m quite sure there’s stuff out there that I could be doing, doing well, and having a good time (or at the very least, not loathing it). We’ll see.

Oh, and I have to move out of my apartment soon too. I’m fortunate, however, to have at least one very generous friend that has taken it upon himself to help me make the transition smoothly… my most sincere thanks, once again :)

… but what’s the point of writing to say that I don’t have time to write?