Everybody still having fun with APK? I notice that damned near every post I made last week has been responded to, questioning my educational bona fides. The hysterical thing is that some AC responded to his inquiries. Now, to about half of those, he responded, accusing me of being the AC. The really hysterical thing: I haven't visited /. since very early on Wednesday morning.

So APK spent a day or two running around and accusing people of sockpuppetry who had forgotten his existence hours before APK posted. Classic. How long until he goes all Hans Reiser?

I have never met a single person who is normal. I have never met a single person who was raised in a normal family. Yet I have met many people who insist, often to such a degree that it causes them a great deal of anxiety and stress, that everyone else, with them being the sole exception, is a normal person who was raised in a normal household.

I am not worried, dismayed, or upset by people who are crazy. We are all crazy. What I can't stand is people who insist on always holding themselves up to some idealized abstraction that they call normal.

Where I am from, being of mixed race is normal. Never going to church is normal. Recycling is normal. In the house I grew up in, worrying if there would be enough money to pay the bills next month was normal. A happy joyous Christmas was normal. My father getting up at 6:30am to fry me a steak for breakfast was normal.

Not knowing if my father was going to live tomorrow.

Normal.

Not knowing who my birth mother is.

Normal.

Cursing her every day for forcing me to live with the consequences and end effects of her behavior?

Normal.

Knowing I have a loving family to go home to, no matter how psychologically messed up or near death they may be on any given day?

Normal.

The things we take for granted, the things we, personally, in our hearts, believe to be universal truths that are beyond any doubt, make up what we consider to be normal.

To live a happier life, do not take for granted any of the positives blessings that you have received in life, no matter how few they may be. Be thankful, truly grateful to the world, for all the good that has come your way. Look at everything good in your life that you take for granted, all the positives that you assume are normal, and love them with all your heart. That which you assume is normal are things many others cannot take for granted. Food on the table. A safe bed to sleep in at night. A shoulder to cry on. A place to run away to when your home has become too crazy. Whatever it is in your life, love it and hold it dear.

Come to the understanding that everything wrong, everything negative in life that you take for granted, does not have to be that way. If you are unloved, do not assume that is normal. Do not take it for granted that no one will ever love you. If you saw your parents addicted to drugs, do not assume that you too must become a drug addict. If you saw your father beat your mother, do not assume that you must beat your wife or be beaten by your husband.

The beautiful thing about normal, is that it can, it does, everyday, change meaning. We define it. You and I define it for ourselves, and for the world as a whole.

Do not strive for normal. Strive for joy. Strive for happiness. Strive for a better future, for yourself, and for all of us. Make that the new normal.

I don't actually have anything to say. Kathleen is due any day, and I'm looking forward to a few weeks of staying home, getting poor sleep, and changing diapers.
But mostly I'm testing to see if journal saving works properly.

Anyone have any preferences for a b/g/n router? I'd like one so that I can put my nice, modern Apple stuff on the N side of things, and the shitty, legacy crap over on the b/g side. Already have an older Time Capsule that isn't full, so I'm not going that route. (Oh, and I'll probably not give my brother access to the N, cause he pisses me off too much).

Thinking to bridge the connection from that to the Time Capsule, and let the Time Capsule handle the rest of it.

I don't care about off the wall firmware. That doesn't interest me in any way, shape or form. Unless I have to deal with that kind of malarkey to get either my Time Capsule or my tons of BT stuff to work nicely.

We've made some significant updates to the submission/journal system. Visiting Submissions and Journals yields a new form that allows stuff like tags to the data types. There are a number of annoying bugs, but for the most part the dust is starting to settle. More notes will be coming, but this journal entry is really just me putting the final test on the new Journal form.

About time, i hope his only justification is "someone needed to do it."

Edit: Looks like he wasn't just shooting abortion protesters :(

I've lurked at /. without posting for ages, mostly because I just don't have the time to interact like I used to.

But I've been clicking through the old RSS feed more and more lately, and when I saw the PAX Plague thread today, I came over to comment, since I'm kind of affected by the whole damn thing. I thought I'd take a look around since I haven't been here in awhile, and I saw that there are freaking ACHIEVEMENTS associated with our accounts. It's silly, and I'm sure it's been here forever, but I thought it was awesome and I was delighted when I read it.

I didn't realize how much I missed Slashdot until I spent some time here today, and I bet that anyone who joined in the last 2 years doesn't even give a shit about my stupid comments or anything, but it felt good to come back here, and feel safely among my people again.

Modpoints for sale. If you have a good one tomorrow (TT) that isn't getting the love, let me know.

First of all, I don't want this published to the frontpage...
Having said that, I have a quick question. I'm a Java guy that manages a few younger java guys. I have been asked to tech a .net guy that (according to his resume) has managed over 30 developers. How do I tech a guy like that? Do I just stick with OO/patterns questions? I know how to tech a java guy, but one that has more experience than me is a daunting task...

fyi - can't multiply cause of work, so I've become a twitter man... that's where I do my updating... if you twitter, my id is my last name...

Not only do I have excellent Karma, but it seems that /. revived my previously deleted journals.

Pudge made a cool change in discussions- if you link to a comment deep inside a thread and click 'More' the sytem is much more intelligent about crawling down and retrieving children, and then parents and grandparents and so forth up the ancestry. So odds are you'll get more related comments sooner.

We now abbreviate journals in the firehose... so they are more like slashdot stories with a Read More link to the full text.

The big user facing change this week was structural: historically we had 2 different "skeletons" on Slashdot, but with this refresh we unified to a single one. This change simplifies maintenance for us quite a bit (maintaining the idle section and the firehose views of the same data was a royal pain).

You also will see some changes to the firehose.pl layout. We're playing with the tab layout a bit, moving some menus around and better integrating the core functions into the site chrome. It's a bit buggy atm, so feel free to email me if you see something wonky. We're extinguishing a few minor brush fires but there's no forest fires that we're aware of.

Zach knows the wind now. I saw him look at the window and see the leaves rustle. He then started making blowing noises. We blow the mobile over his crib whenever we change his diaper, so he knows the blowing noises move objects. But he's translated that to leaves hundreds of feet away through a window. Now I'm not saying he's a genius, but he's pretty awesome.

Yeah, really.

Only took that organization like five years to see what the rest of the football world sees... 'bout time!

New job (back to consulting) and current client blocks 'social networks', so I may have to make my return here until the situation changes.

What really sucks is hurricane ike destroyed Cincinnati, and I've been without power at home since Sunday, so even if I wanted to blog on multiply, I can't...

Stay tuned, I suppose...