This will go down on your permanent record.

What to say about the last year and a half.

I've been busy. Obviously far to busy to note that I have not written.

I no longer have the truck. Such is life. Gas prices got too high and I had to offload it.

I've moved. I now have my own place in north central phoenix.

I've changed jobs. I now work as a contractor for IBM for their AmEx account.

I've gone thru yet another relationship. Don't know how much I learned, only know that like all the others, in the beginning it was wonderful, in the middle it was nice and at the end it was painful, and remains as it was at the end. Wish I could move on, life is so much better without baggage.

Wierd thing about reading things you posted years ago... you were ALIVE back when you posted them. Life didn't begin this morning when you woke up. The good part about that is that you know somehow that you have progressed. The bad thing is to note how long that progression has taken.

Hope everyone is doing well out there in slash-land.

Have a good day.. I'm hoping to, lack of sleep or no.

LW

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion..

Well... as the subject implies, I've had my mind opened to new music... Tom T Hall... the Ramones... yes laugh if you will, but techies the world over have (WARNING: sweeping generalization about to be stated) rather shallow experience if not taste in music.

Not me, oh no, I like most anything with a beat, and some things without; pop, country, classical, heavy metal, blues, parodies, you name it, I like it.

Anywho, just thought I'd put a road marker out there and let the world know I'm still alive and kickin'

I logged appr. 16 hours of sleep last week. Been workin' around the clock tryin' to pay for my new truck! WOOOOHOOOO! It's a Toyota 4runner 4x4 and it stole my heart when I saw it for the first time. It's going to cost me too... stupid thing has 262,000 miles on it, Its about due on a new engine... but I'm in love, so I don't care.

Purrrrrrrr

I love my truck
I love my new music
I love life...

And now I can't sleep... phoowee

Oh well, peace and stuff and things... be good and stuff...

Luv ya!

-LW

2004-05-17

Yesterday was cell phone HELL!

"Ring! Ring!" said my cell.

"Hello?" said I.

"I have a problem with my computer..." said my cell.

"I have a solution." said I.

And so it went. Call after call after call. And all from different users. Did everyone have yesterday marked down on their calendar as the "Bug your Techie" day? I mean, what gives. 9 different people can't have technical problems all on the same day can they? 9 diff people that know me well enough to have my cell #? c'mon!!! Where is justice?

Fun, fun. Some I fixed, some I didn't, but all seemed happy enough just to get ahold of me. What is it about the techie 'pacifier' that causes people to feel so much better? I mean sometimes I can't even fix their problem! I just tell them to do what they had to do anyway, "call the vendor." And yet, while they knew that that was what they had to do, they were happier hearing it from me.

Oh well. Today my cell has been blessedly quiet. Thank the gods!

Anyway. That's it for my Non-Deep Journal entry. If things keep being this exciting I may have to make more entries in my journal than this. Time better spent building my own webpage prolly... who knows.

Hope slashdot is treating you all well. Thank you and goodnight.

I look back today on the me that was and the me that is. I wonder at the me that will be.

In the past I was shaken by the tower incident, back now almost 3 years ago. My life has changed since then, but not as much as that incident changed it.

In the past, I moved on, and in the past I made a vow. A vow that I have found, was most likely made in vain. Or, rather, while not in vain, it is beyond my power to affect. For whilst most things I seek can be hunted as prey and when found can be enjoyed, relationships, when hunted, end up not being what you thought. There is a mighty facade at work in my mind apparently, one that is not easily seen for what it is, nor seen beyond.

You might say I have learned and moved forward. I say I have felt pain and reverted to an earlier version of myself. I feel as if I have traversed a giant circle in the last 8 years of my life, and that all the while I thought I was moving toward a goal, I was in fact merely marching in place to the beat of a drum that wasn't mine. A sad state of affairs.

I have gone through a cycle of seeing life through rosy sunglasses and running excitedly after the ice cream truck, through a state of avid depression that threatened to consume me. Then to a state of bitterness and anger that threatened further. Then I progressed to a place where emotion did not exist anymore... I stayed there for a long time. Not feeling anything. Then, in an effort to live, I hunted once more.

You'd have thought I would've learned something. No such luck. But now, while I'm not wearing rose colored glasses anymore, my eyes are open, my heart is open, and I can feel once more. Most of what I feel is pain, but that, I have learned, passes.

What else I have learned is that in order to find... completeness, I need to look inside, not look for some magyck love of my life to come and fix everything that I have decided is wrong with me. I have to consider where I am on the line of my life, and where I would like to be, and work... hard and long, at becoming that which I wish.
For no dream is unattainable if a man be determined enough.

My vow stands, but I will take no further overt action to see it to its completion, that has proven ineffective. As someone once said, "I have not failed, I have merely found 10,000 ways that did not work."

----------------------------------------------

And now we come to the future, where will I be when I am old and decrepid? Who knows? Not I, certainly. But where I wish to be, ah, now that is an entirely different thought to entertain.

I would have a plantation, or maybe ranch is a better term, not filled with cattle or horses or crops, but simply empty grasslands and forest and streams, with perhaps a small garden that I can maintain myself. A manse with two or perhaps three stories in that ancient greco-roman architecture I admire so well. And of course it must have internet connectivity and computers as well, what place on earth would be complete without that? There would be no television, as I have come to dread the media as an evil self perpetuating eating machine that devours minds, but there would be a theatre complete with a stage for live plays and a silver screen, and an audience chamber large enough to seat perhaps 20 people comfortably on divans and such. A courtyard with a fountain at each of its four corners and a very large tree for shade at its core... a library with every book I have ever read or wanted to read lining its walls... a dining hall, rich with the lush pleasantries of comfortable dining... a laboratory for research into the grand design of the planet and the universe... all of this I would share with my closest friends and family...

Ah what a lovely reverie. Such thoughts bring peace of mind. I don't necessarily want all of these items, for items are just that, items, and they have little meaning for me. Experiencing life has almost always brought me joy, and I want that more than anything else. I will die happy knowing that my existence has brought others as much joy as they have brought to me. And now I that I have thoroughly soiled everyone's ears with the rantings of a pompous windbag attempting to sound properly humble and failing miserably... I will bid you adieu, until next I have the opportunity to entertain and delight you...

Hope slashdot is treating you all quite well. Thank you, and goodnight!

It has been more than a year, since my Journal's pages lay open and eager for my hand. The reason that my hand touches these pages this Friday Night's Eve is simple, but at the same time complex. I am going through a time of intense change. I have met a beautiful Japanese Girl who has opened my eyes in the direction of Compassion (an uncommon trait in a Unix Systems Administrator) and in the way of Calm Serenity (which has ever been my own way) has begun to bring me into the light of Buddha, in whom's teachings she believes strongly, and me I cannot gainsay them, for they make her happy. At this same time I have met the techie dream gurl, who may be reading this post at this very moment, for she is neuroticia on slashdot and has many friends and enemies, and knows even of my tender existence as I have made myself known to her via email. Now, I have never moderated, I have never even posted aught but my journal on slashot, and that I have posted slimly. But I share this now, and it will be forever known, or at least for some months, due to the never fading virtue of the textual posts on slashdot.

I can accept me for who I am. I can upgrade my existence to meet my goals and objectives. I can find that which I set out to discover. Why you might ask? I have a better question. How?

By and through perservearance, and holding to that which I have quothed from day one as being the most permanent, the most pure and the most necessary of traits in people, and in myself. My humanity. Is that which makes me strong, it gives me the courage to face that which I fear, the unknown, the unknowable.

I will discover her, and we will be happy. This I pledge this 30th day of January, this Friday Night's Eve in this the year of our Lord 2003. And I set it down in my own hand and voice to let it be known upon the pages of my public (yet private) slashdot journal, that allows me an identity in anonymity, and thus allows this, my pledge to be valid, for all time. I will find her.

LW

Yet another Friday Eve is here. Its not especially spectacular, they hardly ever are. But today, of all days, we have so many people missing in action at work. Some of them are cooped up in meetings, some have gone home sick, but of the normal 25 employees that generally share the space here in my office, I see only 8. Its most depressing.

It is now 12 days since the fall of the Twin Towers, and everything is not back to normal. I highly doubt that it ever will be, nor would I want it to be. People died that day, and for us to forget about them, ever would be an insult to our own existence, to Every American and to every man alive. They didn't die for any cause greater than another man's need for bloodshed. The insanity will never end I don't think. From here it just gets worse. How much freedom will we be forced to renege before people are once again 'happy' and 'secure'?

These two items are like todays money, fictitious in that they only exist within our minds. They are like 'the future' and 'the past' not quite here, not quite gone, and never really existent in the now.

But they affect us. Our happiness and security are key to our survival they say. Money we need for food, in today's society. As it is pretty much against the law to hunt without paying for it... in cold, hard cash. The past affects how we make our decisions in the now. And the future is wholly based upon our actions of the moment.

Where will we be, what will we do? These are questions that every man asks himself in the quiet hours of the morning, when he is not quite awake, and neither sleeping any more. He tortures himself with these questions. Questions of the future, that have no real answer. And why? I couldn't even begin to tell you. I can only tell you that the questions are as meaningless as any answer I could give.

The circle of life is an everlasting ever twisting and ever turning dance of survival of the fittest. And I have no wish to not be here. I am not happy, I am not sad, I am not dissatisfied, I am not clinically depressed. There are all the things that I am not, and yet I know that there is something very, very wrong with how I do feel. Something very, very wrong with everyone around me, who refuses to acknowledge the here and now, who refuse to do anything but live in the there and then.

This is the world I live in.

This is the reality I know.

And how can I accept it?

I have a better question, how can I change it?

Today is September 18th in this the year of our Lord 2001. It is now a week after the terrible incident in New York, with the Twin Towers. I kept myself abreast of the situation through out the week, but now find myself turning, searching almost desparately for something other to spend my time on. It is too much, too much to handle and process all at once. So I turn to other things. I bury myself in my job, I bury myself in computer games, I bury myself in books, but always it finds me. And everytime it breaks through all my resolve and mental blocks and finds me anew, as if for the first time. All my security is shattered. My heart breaks and shatters and tears are the only outward evidence that anyone sees of this. Driving down the road to return to work every morning, the DJs in their patriotic duty inform us of everything going on, and all I can do is cry. They blew two buildings up on US soil, with US planes and cost US Citizens their very lives, cost children their parents, cost husbands their wives cost brothers their sisters, cost civilians their security, shook the very foundation of our everyday lives. We assume that its safe to drive to work, that the only danger is the other drivers on the road. We don't expect to be shot on our way to work. The VPs on that plane didn't expect to be blown up on their way to LA. The world is turned upside down. Hate is a disease though now that has every danger of spreading like wildfire. It is death though, the destroyer of worlds. We have worked so hard for so long, for peace on earth and good will toward men. This is not something to be taken for granted. War must be an option far down on our list. I am a firm believer that no one man has the right to take the life of another man. No one has that right. And yet, we turn our eyes there and hurdle along this course that will lead to so much _more_ loss of life. I can't do this anymore... tomorrow... the saga continues...