Writing helps me find my ideas. It's your choice to be subjected to it all.

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Curt Is:

Musician, Programmer, Polyglot, Rennaissance Man, Bon Vivante


(credits)
Hunting The Muse
 
Monday, September 30, 2002   
You know, I have a cookie sheet that I bake on sometimes. In the oven. When I'm done, I always clean it.

But I also have one of those little sheets that goes in the toaster oven. And I cook on it. And I never feel the need to clean that thing. It's just nasty.
(4:44 PM)
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Friday, September 27, 2002   
I am using NetNewsWireLite a bit more these days. I still wish I could blog from it and redirect items from other rss feeds into a new rss feed with attribution, and then publish that new rss feed.
(2:25 PM)
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Wednesday, September 25, 2002   
'Genius Grants' span art, science Among the winners:

Sendhil Mullainathan, 29, Newton, Mass.; associate professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose work shows how limits on knowledge, willpower and self-interest affect economic behavior.

I just thought that sounded really interesting.
(3:50 AM)
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Tuesday, September 24, 2002   
Entertainment Weekly's EW.com | Music Review: ''Before Your Love''/''A Moment Like This'' This is interesting. I haven't heard the song, but even when reading the lyric excerpts in this review, I actually feel essence from my soul being sucked away. This is basically creativity nihilism.
(4:30 PM)
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So I'm working on this massive intranet project for a big bank, which has financial centers all throughout the nation. We have this spreadsheet of financial information for each of the financial centers that we are trying to import into the database. Some of the rows of the spreadsheet are lined out, like for a former financial center that is no longer valid for whatever reason.

So our database guy was going through the 750 or so rows, spot-checking them to make sure that everything got imported into the database correctly. He sent me this email:

I was just about to lose my patience with my kids not letting me concentrate on the importing FC_AVG_Bals.xls into the database when I ran across a row that was struckout. 

Tristate    Manhattan Downtown  123 World Trade Center

I think I will go sing bedtime songs and hug them.
(2:03 AM)
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Monday, September 23, 2002   
Studio Log: Articles: - I'm not usually into buying applications, but this sounds pretty neat. Both OmniGraffle itself, as well as this article about rss-enhancing it.
(10:12 PM)
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Slashdot | Bezos Seeks Amazon Honor System-Related Patents - Crap, crap, crap, crap. Hope they don't awart the patent.
(9:37 PM)
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Losing control typical in child abuse - They have an expert give advice on child abuse phenomena. Pretty insightful. However she also gives advice on how to deal with extreme emotion. I looked her up and sent her an email reply.

Hi Ms. Berliner -

I read with interest today's article on abuse and Toogood at msnbc.com (http://msnbc.com/news/811799.asp). I think the stuff they represented you as saying were insightful and helps parents - I couldn't help but think it would be good for Toogood to hear too.

There's one thing I wish would have been different. The article included this section:

“Finding yourself almost in a rage is not rare for parents, especially when kids are in the 4-year-old range,” she said. But when you find yourself in that moment, there are two things parents need to do:
* 1) Cool off. That means count to 10, leave the room, get away from the situation; and
* 2) Reason with yourself. Tell yourself that society doesn’t allow it, that the consequences would be terrible for everyone.

(The context makes it sound as if these two options are how to respond to having the emotions at all, not just the urge to hit your child.)

There is a third option that is valid, and that is 3) Express your rage in a safe manner. If you're home, you can scream wordlessly, or hit a pillow, or do anything to physicalize the emotion you are feeling in a way that does not hurt yourself or another. Expressing rage isn't the same as hurting or threatening someone, although too often, if it's repressed for too long, it can leap out in unintended ways ("I just lost it.")

I think that when advice on how to deal with emotion is left at the two options above, it can lead to the impression that it is inappropriate in society to have feelings of rage *at all*, which is very unfortunate because given our ability to repress our emotions and damage ourselves over the long run, it can contribute to psychological unwellness -- or even increase the likelihood of of "just losing it" at a later date.

I don't know if the "2 things you can do" was your construct or msnbc's attempt to summarize, but I hope you will consider including the healthy *physical expression* of emotion (in a safe manner) in future presentations.

Thanks so much for reading.

Curt Siffert
Portland, OR
(2:48 PM)
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Sunday, September 22, 2002   
One thing I hate about blogs is that they tend to be shared with people you are close to, but most of the more important things I might want to write about have to do with people that are close to me, which means they read the blog, which means that if you ever want to write stuff about them without editing yourself, you kind of can't. Or you can force it anyway. Or you can invest a lot of energy being diplomatic. I don't feel like being vague right now, I don't feel like being totally open if it will hurt a known reader, and I certainly don't feel like being diplomatic. So, I'm just frustrated.

Weighing the three... weighing the three...

Basically I had this local friend that I only knew online. She didn't want to meet in person. I felt like I'd like her to be a regular friend friend since she was local. She's not into that right now. It's been eight months. For a lot of that time we chose not to meet for very good reasons, since we wondered if there was a romantic connection and I was going through transition. My transition didn't end very soon and I decided I was more focused on making friends anyway. Anyway, she started sensing more that I wanted to meet, and told me she wouldn't want to for another few months. So, I felt it through and realized I had been making too much social space for her in my head and in my expectations. I felt less attracted to communicating with her so often. She got upset. Now we're not talking at all.

So that's my recent drama. This wasn't spiteful or calculating on my end at all. It's just feeling into reality, my limits, my hopes, what's possible, doing what's right for me. I guess it doesn't work for me. I'm sorry it doesn't, but it doesn't.
(1:21 AM)
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I am playing hooky for two minutes.

I am currently on the clock, billable, but I just worked out that in two minutes, I will be all caught up for the year.

Meaning, I made all these calculations for my expenses, and how much I need to make each week, and if I fell short other weeks, then it meant I had to make more in later weeks. Well, I feel short (one minute left!) for many of the early weeks. Lately things have been busier. And now I'm about 45 seconds away from being all caught up for the year, right on target.

True, I still have to make the money for the REST of the year's expenses, but I'm not behind anymore. And true, it's all dependent on estimates that may be off here and there. But it still feels good.

There. Two minutes. All caught up.

Back to work.
(12:17 AM)
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Saturday, September 21, 2002   
Jan Herman: The Juice is one of the many corporate weblogs that we see peppered here and there. This one supposedly about arts and entertainment, although it really comes across as more of a columnist's excuse to not work as hard on his columns.

He wrote the other day about his thoughts on Tumbling Woman a sculpture created in response to the people that jumped from the towers on 9/11. It depicts a naked woman tumbling through the air, upside down, head first.

It was put on display in a public place (Rockefeller Center) until people complained and it was draped and removed. There's been a big outcry about it most about people like Jan crying "Censorship!".

I wrote him disagreeing (as I guess about a thousand other people did). My own disagreement centers around the fact that this isn't some control freak trying to pass judgement on what is art and what isn't. The decision to remove it was prompted by a public that found the work upsetting.

The way I see it is that people are grieving, are trying to come to terms with 9/11 on their own terms, and Rockefeller Center is a public place. The art isn't at an art exhibit, and it is deliberately upsetting/triggering in nature. True, there are going to be things that happen that trigger more grief in us when we don't expect it, but an artwork on display is calculated. I applaud art that seeks to elicit emotional reaction in people, but eliciting it at the expense of being able to express it? You're walking through a public place like Rockefeller Plaza, you see a sculpture that is described as a tribute to the folks that jumped from the towers, depicting a woman that looks like landing on her head. Do you actually feel safe expressing any grief right there in the middle of Rockefeller Plaza? So you're faced with the choice of expressing it right there, or of swallowing it? I just don't think that's what art is all about.

I think the outcry about Tumbling Woman is not about the existence of the art, or of judging the quality of it - I think it's more just about the placement of it. And to leap past the viewpoints of those most affected by the art and immediately scream "Censorship!!" is pretty offensive in my mind.
(7:53 PM)
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American Candidate - in an alternate fun-house-mirror-seen reality, this could be really cool, but given actual realities like the one described in Kelly Clarkson's professional future, I think this is reason to shudder.
(1:32 PM)
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Friday, September 20, 2002   
People say, "After Columbine, do you feel a responsibility about the way you portray violence?" And I'm like, "No, I felt a responsibility about the way I portrayed violence the first time I picked up a pen." - Joss Whedon
(3:56 PM)
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Tuesday, September 17, 2002   
I just stumbled across a bunch of dirty laundry about all the different RSS specifications. What a bunch of wasted time. I think the 1.0 folks should just change the stupid name. Name it RMS or something, it's even easier to say. No one outside of the developers really even CARES, they just want their software to work. If they change the name, it doesn't mean they can't still dislike Dave Winer.

For the record, I think Dave is being a jerk about the whole thing. The 1.0 folks' motivations started out being altruistic, from what I can gather. Sometimes from out here in lurkyland, it comes across more like Dave really DOESN'T want the name to change, and instead gets more satisfaction out of feeling indignant.
(2:11 PM)
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I don't know why it is that I got away from my blog, but I think it should get a little better now. Part of it is that I've changed my working environment. Whereas before I was always working from a linux shell and could use my "instablog" utility whenever I wanted, now I'm pretty much always working from OS X and Aqua. There's an Aqua app called "BlogApp" which supposedly lets me blog, but since I'm using blogger, it has not worked right once in the few sporadic times I've tried to use it. Finally I have a "Blog This" link that I've tried before, but at least while I was using Mozilla 1.0, the popup window would not let me fill more than a screenful. I'm testing the functionality out right now on 1.1 and it seems to be working okay, finally. So at least there's this.

What I really want is a decent OS X Aqua RSS aggregator, and there just doesn't seem to be one. There are several RSS readers, but not aggregators. I just want one that will let me easily subscribe to any RSS feed, and then do two things: blog certain articles/items to my blog, or redirect certain items into my own RSS feeds that I could then publish via my blog. And I could put my own authored items/articles in those feeds as well. That's all I really want. But I don't want it to be Radio Userland, because I like being able to blog (even edit old posts) from locations where my blogging software isn't installed. The server-hosted blogs like Blogger are what works for me.
(12:49 PM)
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Friday, September 13, 2002   
Wrestlers go to mat for gay rights - Okay, so here's the question for your exam: Is this progress?
(2:03 AM)
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Sunday, September 08, 2002   
Salon.com Life | Forbidden thoughts about 9/11 "I had a thought, when it first happened -- the kind of conspiracy thoughts that liberal college students have who studied poli sci and read too much about Nicaragua or Colombia -- that maybe the Americans let it happen so that they could use it as a tool to get serious in Iraq. Then the buildings fell and all the liberal poli sci hippie stuff drained out of my body and for the first time ever I felt, kill them all."
(12:39 PM)
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For the first time ever, my six month average income is ABOVE the amount I need to make per week in order to meet estimated expenses for the year.

Yet another benchmark! This was a big one. Now, I have been doing this for longer than six months, so I still have to make up the money that I fell short on between mid-Feb and six months ago... BUT, my short term average is way above my six-month average, so I should have that made up soon.

Right now I'm trending to having all my year's expenses made by mid-November.
(2:36 AM)
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Saturday, September 07, 2002   
Salon.com News | Crews contain Oregon wildfire Investigators suspect the fire was started by candles used in an animal sacrifice ritual.

New and decaying animal remains, including parts of a dismembered goat, were found inside a ring of rocks in the canyon where the fire began[...]

Eww. I've read a lot about this fire, but I hadn't heard that.
(8:20 PM)
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Weird - the other day on channel 15, I came across something that looked like a low-budget movie of the week - something to do with a mechanic that saw strange lights and then started getting funny abilities like being able to learn languages quickly, move things with his mind... he could break a code he heard on a ham radio, the army came after him, they told him he had a tumor, he identified an earthquake, he has a crush on a lady that makes local crafts...

If this sounds familiar, it should - I'm describing 1996's "Phenomenon" with John Travolta. Except it wasn't. It was other actors. He escaped from the hospital and took to the road, and all of a sudden it is "Fugitive".

Weirder still is that I hear it's actually one of the upcoming fall pilots. I haven't the faintest idea why I just happened to already see it.

Maybe I'm a phenomenon now...
(2:22 AM)
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Thursday, September 05, 2002   
Well, more real estate drama today. I had made an appointment to meet with the listing (selling) agent at her request. I had pretty much already told her I wasn't interested in buying it. She said, "Well, we'll need to get together and talk about things like the lockbox and stuff."

So I show up and she shows me some paperwork, some various ways that it might be possible to buy the place, including dropping the price down to 115,000 from 129,900 just to run different numbers scenarios. It was interesting but I wasn't really interested. Then she talked about the lockbox and gave me the form to sign it. I said, thanks, I'll take it home and look it over. And she froze and said that she actually really needed it right then. So I refused.

See, my lease says that I have to allow people access to my property - the leasing agents or the owner - with 24 hours notice. I already had signed that. I don't see why I would have to sign anything else.

The form said that I would give access to folks with 24 hours notice, OR if they knocked and I didn't answer, they could come right in. So if I choose not to answer or if I'm in the shower or asleep or something, they come right in. There's no way I'm signing that.

But after talking to some other folks I find out that I don't even have to agree to the lockbox if I don't want to. That pissed me off. This lady was trying to sneak something by me.

So now I feel like I have to "look out" for my next door neighbor the vulture real estate lady. That sucks.

It's possible she didn't even know I wouldn't be interested in the box; that it didn't even occur to her. But still I feel like I want to tell her off.
(6:13 PM)
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Wednesday, September 04, 2002   
'American Idol' winner to sing national anthem at Lincoln Memorial on 9/11 - The columnist writes, "The terrorists have won." Which wins the prize for the giving me my loudest laugh of the day.
(3:31 PM)
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Whale lands on boat; fisherman dies - It looks like the whale got away.
(11:32 AM)
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Tuesday, September 03, 2002   
Daring rescue in big fire near Los Angeles - Wow! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article.
(11:25 PM)
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