Blog

Thanks

Over Thanksgiving my extended family set up secret santa for xmas. This leads right to people asking each other what they want for xmas. My parents asked me later. I really don’t want anything for xmas this year – I really have everything I want, even the intangible stuff. I’m incredibly lucky and thankful for all of it, but I wish I could just remove myself from xmas.

Go To Bed

Me? No, not me, everyone else. Go to bed. Or stay in bed.

I just drove across town, and there are people awake and driving, and this is upsetting me. 0400 is supposed to be the witching hour, where people have yet to leave for work, and night owls have usually passed out. 0400 is supposed to be a time reserved for a special few – those who drink coffee at a diner, or wonder aimlessly about the streets. 0300 is too early, I know far too many lightweights still awake around then. 0330 is just stupid. I’m not happy about this.

Maybe its because of Thanksgiving? That doesn’t make any sense. I was pretty sure that in addition to the common sense above I had some evidence to support the existence of the witching hour, but it seems that either I was wrong or times have changed. Either way this is not good. More to come.

Applied Daydreaming for Jesus

Last Monday’s Applied Daydreaming session was amusing. Both Dan and I went, and 3 other people came. None of them had been before, so I briefly explained it, and we started daydreaming. Afterwards, we started to talk about what we daydreamed about and other things, and they had really unexpected remarks. One of the guys talked about how the music disturbed him (it was a set from chillits, mostly synthesizer drones), and how he wasn’t really able to daydream. He didn’t really like the idea of it because it seemed so selfish and empty, as opposed to the hour he spent in the morning praying.

The girl had journaled a bit about daydreaming and other things, and she mentioned that she was also a Christian, but I got the sense that she couldn’t daydream much either. We started into a philosophical conversation about daydreaming, religion, and some Eastern philosophies. The third guy seemed pretty convinced that I was looking for something, and asked me if I did drugs. He told us he used to do drugs until he found Jesus, and then told us about his two near death experiences, but didn’t really tell us how they related to anything. Eventually we got as far as we could, and went our separate ways. Dan and I are not religious, and while I’m glad they’re happy, it seems like they’re taking it a bit too far when they cannot enjoy daydreaming. Maybe that’s just me.

New Status

I’ll try and keep it brief, cause there is a lot.

I’m way tired of school. I’m definitely ready to get on the tour, and I’m even thinking beyond that. Boring and predictable is as much fun as it sounds.

This girl contacted me on facebook after she saw an article about the tour. She’s planning a similar trip this summer, and is looking for advice. I haven’t really talked to her yet, but its cool that she found it somehow (she’s in VA).

I’m rather annoyed at people going to shows at the Jorgensen because their classes assigned it. Maya Angelou was sold out because of this (we only got in by luck), and today the Warsaw Philharmonic was packed. If they actually wanted to be there, that’s one thing, but as it is they’re taking up my air (and the good seats). Get off my lawn.

I really want to do America on foot after I do it by bus. Not literally walking across the country – that’s a very silly and arbitrary goal that I don’t care to meet. Just setting out with a backpack, and seeing what happens. I’m looking forward to it already.

I feel like there was more. There probably was. That’s what I get for writing at 3am.

Our apartment has a very weird schedule. Each of us is on our own clock. We realized recently that no matter the time of the day, there is someone awake, and someone asleep. For the last month, at least, that’s been true.

I’m already messing around with my walking website. It is mostly just a way to ease the restlessness, since that actual trip is so far off. There is another year of school in the way.

I’m pretty sure in four years I could have learned more on my own than in school. I don’t know if I would have had the drive to do it on my own, and probably would have slacked off a lot, but I would have learned important things as well.

I still haven’t learned about the 20th century, and I’m pretty upset about it. My next semester classes are picked out, and there isn’t anything helpful there either (in all honestly, I’ve tried every class that could possibly help, and there isn’t one that is what I’m looking for). I’m going to give Wikipedia a shot at teaching me things. When this semester ends, I’m going to start working my way from 1900 to 1999 on wikipedia, and finally learn this crap.

The Open and Social Web

There is a certain kind of technology gaining popularity on the web. Most of it has been around for a little while now (a year or so), and is just gaining popularity and traction now. The idea behind this technology is that you’ll define something in one place, and it will follow you around the web, ideally making your life simpler.

First, and probably most prevalent, are Gravatars. The idea is that you set an avatar on the gravatar website, and any website you post to that is gravatar-enabled will automatically display your avatar based on your email address. So this way, on any website you post, your avatar will be there with you, and you won’t need to upload it to each site you post on.

Next are social commenting systems. I’ve just started looking into these recently, and I’m not really sure about them yet. The idea is similar to Gravatars, but takes it a step further and lets you post on any social commenting [Disqus or IntenseDebate] enabled comment system with a single user id. So you don’t need to sign up on new sites, and your comment history is associated with you. There are some other little features, but that is the main idea, and what is important to this post.

Lastly there is OpenID, which looks to do what the social comment systems are doing, but with everything (sort of). The idea behind OpenID is that you can sign into any OpenID enabled site with a single user, and access whatever it is that site is offering (this extends beyond comments). Oddly enough, both of the main social commenting systems support OpenID.

The way OpenID works is fairly simple – when you go to log in to a website that supports OpenID, you enter a URL specific to you. You’re then bounced over to whoever is authenticating you (likely whoever owns that URL) and log in. Then, you bounce back to the original site you were on, all logged in (and optionally some other information filled in for you).

I like OpenID more than either of the above systems, but not just because it has the potential to encompass both of them. OpenID is actually open. The other two systems are on centralized servers that are out of your control. Anyone can make an OpenID authentication server. Tonight I set up my own OpenID server just to test it, and it works. There are tools out there that make setting up a server trivial (I’m serious, you can and should do this). All of my information is completely under my control, and I am able to log into thousands of websites across the internet.

I don’t really have a conclusion, but the idea behind these services is interesting and worth paying attention to, and OpenID is pretty awesome.

Almost Done

And its a good thing too. I’ve hit that point in the semester where I’m restless again. I’m used to it by now though, and I can ride through it without getting too bummed about sitting around wasting my time.

I only have four days of classes left. And I have Thanksgiving break in the middle of those four. Then finals. This semester was easy. In fact, it just goes to prove my complaint about the educational system. Now that I’m actually in upper level classes, bullshit work is not required of me, and for the most part all I have to do is show up, listen, and think. That’s the way it should be, all along the road.

Though, this does have detrimental effects on boring classes. My poetry class (which is about reading, not writing, poetry) is tedious, and over analyzes otherwise enjoyable poems. I’ve found myself reading the assigned poems and then skipping class, opting for a nap on a couch in the lounge a few floors above.

Status

Ok, so I think I’m going to stick with       . But I’m going to really curve my use of it. Both present and past. So I’ve made some changes to this blog to make it less visible to people who don’t already know about it. I’d like to ask anyone who has me in a link on their blogroll to remove it (I don’t care about links in posts). There won’t be any more cross-posts from the Tour website – you’ll need to subscribe to its feed if you want to get updates. Interesting things are coming.

No Sleep Tonight

Turns out now is not the time for sleep. Well, it is, but I guess I’m not taking part. I dunno. I don’t have anything else to do, but I doubt I could fall asleep if I tried.

On a very related note, the third Lord of the Rings movie is long. And not as good as I remember it being. I watched the first two the past two nights, and I didn’t remember this as a trilogy that got steadily worse, but that’s what I picked up this time. Oh well. I think this was the second time I’ve seen Return of the King, and I would be pretty comfortable with never seeing it again.

I’ve tossed the idea around of watching all three back to back in their extended versions. I said to a friend, “I don’t know anyone who has done it.” “That’s because it’s embarrassing!” Now I realize that watching them all is a very bad idea, not only because it would take close to a day, but because they’re not that good.

I guess I’ll go to bed.

I need a new pseudonym

I’ve been using “       ” forever. I love it, its a great pseudonym. Unfortunately, I haven’t used it very well. It is abundantly clear to anyone who does even a cursory search who I am. I used Som Juan for a while, but that was short lived. Either way, both are pretty well connected to me.

I’d like to create a pseudonym that could actually pass as a person’s name. One I can use offline as well as online. Maybe I could just dramatically scale back my use of         and keep on using that. I don’t know how well that would fare offline, but it would be fun to try.