Author: Heather Meadows

Some businesses on Computex Drive in Jessamine County burned this morning after an explosion. Investigators are still on the scene.

While this in itself is newsworthy, I suppose (I don’t actually know where Computex Drive is, nor was I involved in any way with the four businesses that were destroyed in the blaze), the real reason I’m mentioning this is because of the officer mentioned in the article.

John Branscum.

Wasn’t he, like, my D.A.R.E. officer back in 5th grade?

(Actually, wasn’t he also our next door neighbor for awhile?)

Just now I awoke from a nap…although it would be more accurate to say that I wrenched myself violently from sleep, and am still not fully awake.

While I slept I had a dream about Cory Doctorow.

He and I were in his small apartment (flat, I suppose) in England. In the dream, I believed him to be married, and to have children. I realized that his family didn’t live in England with him.

He was working on a laptop computer at the foot of his bed. The laptop was actually on the bed and he was sitting on a low stool next to it. I didn’t want to disturb him, so I said, “Can I ask you a question?”

He was flipping from window to window. I could see that he was creating a BoingBoing post, working out a comment on another blog, writing his next novel, and reading several other sites all at once. He glanced up at me with pretend patience oozing from behind his dark horn-rimmed glasses. “Okay,” he said.

“Well,” I fumbled, as he did not stop multi-tasking. “I understood that you were married.”

“Yeah,” he said, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t stop working. For a moment I took this to be an acceptance of the rumor, and that he was going to correct it, but then he didn’t say anything else. Finally I grasped that he’d answered in the affirmative, and that perhaps he thought I was trying to hit on him. Feeling stupid, I went into the bathroom. (In real life, I had to pee, so I kept going to the bathroom in the dream, and it kept not fulfilling me.)

But shortly I went out and said, “Could I ask just one more question? Um, so your wife and family, they–“

But before I could finish, he sighed at me as if I were the most annoying person alive. “You know,” he said, “you don’t have to ask me if you can ask a question.”

“Yes,” I said quietly, not looking at him. I turned around. “I can see how that would be annoying,” I finished, feeling that I kept saying too much. I retreated back into the bathroom.

But again I was unsatisfied, and I poked my head back out. “I only do that because of my husband.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“He’s a very focused person, so if I didn’t break him out of his focus, he wouldn’t know that I was talking to him. He would just keep focusing on his computer as if I wasn’t even there.”

“I see.”

I was starting to wonder how I was going to cope with having to be in this apartment with Cory Doctorow. But he was a little nicer after that, getting up from his stool and coming to the door and explaining that he was married but had no children. We kept interrupting each other.

“Can I blog about this conversation?” I asked jokingly. “‘The Most Awkward Conversation I’ve Ever Had’. Well, maybe not the most awkward…”

“I’d rather you didn’t, some of that was private,” Cory said.

“Can I just blog about the awkward ums and uhs there at the end?”

“Sure,” Cory said, brightening slightly. He went back to the other room, to his laptop. “There weren’t any details there.”

“I don’t know if I can remember everything you said…” I trailed off. He was gone.

Then my dream turned into science fiction, in which a person found out that another person was a robot, and another person stole the robot to copy its design. Finally I yanked myself awake, because I really, really had to pee.

For no particular reason (okay, because I’m bored, and in too bad a mood to actually do anything productive), I found myself reading the LiveJournal of J. Jacques, artist of Questionable Content (a webcomic I love [today’s rules!], though the name sucks. Unless it is some obscure indie-pop reference I’m not getting), and I came across this hilarious entry (it reminds me of the X-E–god, I haven’t read anything over there in ages. I think the evil ads drove me away).

And that, friends, was about as many parentheticals as I am willing to insert into a sentence.

From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough:

At the airport, police use clamps to enforce a no-parking rule outside the arrivals entrance and instead require cars to use a nearby multistory parking lot. But on Saturday, an ambulance was clamped even though it was parked in a section reserved for emergency crews immediately outside the entrance.

Yeah, good job, Parking Nazis.

Eric Burns threw up some posts from an old(er) journal of his today. It’s the kind of stuff that is interesting if you are interested in people and their feelings and thoughts. As I am that kind of person, I’m enjoying reading them.

The first half of the second post, entitled Playlists and Coffeemakers: Recapturing the Personal, thrills at how iTunes (and digital music in general) helps us escape peer pressure and embrace the music that we truly like. The best part of this piece is the bit about Billy Joel:

While we were sitting around one day, I made some innocuous reference to Billy Joel.

“Oh, Christ,” Dominic said. “I hate Billy Joel.”

“Me too,” Bill said. “Ugh.”

Now, here I am. I’m an admitted geek. I’m living with geeks and nonconformists and men with Travolta hair. I’m (at that point) in my late twenties, and I’m an intelligent person.

“Oh Jesus,” I thought to myself. “I didn’t know Billy Joel sucked!” So I stopped listening to Billy Joel.

See, all three of my roommates at that time have musical tastes that appeal to me. They introduced me to hardcore Elvis Costello, to Bare Naked Ladies, to Kirsty Macall, to They Might Be Giants, to Bad Religion, to Oingo Boingo, to Stan Ridgway, to Tom Waits, to Warren Zevon, to the Jazz Butcher and that’s just off the top of my head. About the only heavy music influences from my time in Seattle — one of the music capitals of the world — not from Bill or Dominic or T was jazz, and that’s just because we had KPLU, which has to be the best jazz Public Radio station on Earth.

So, while I had always been a huge Billy Joel fan, I suddenly had doubts. And make no mistake, I was a huge fan. I went to his Bridge tour. I had all his albums. I listened to his greatest hits collection on shuffle.

Flash forward five years. I’m living in New Hampshire. I’m getting my CDs out of storage. I’m revisiting old favorites. I’m revelling a little. And I come across Glass Houses.

“Oh, that,” I think. “Forget it. Billy Joel sucks.”

Five years. Five years after an offhanded comment from a couple of guys who didn’t like Billy Joel, and I was still marked.

This really made me think about how our opinions are suggestible. How people will automatically try to like or dislike something based purely on other people’s thoughts on the subject. (The trend while I was in college seemed to be “If everyone else likes it, it sucks. If everyone else hates it, it rules.”) While I don’t know enough about music to really be a music snob or to try and fit a certain musical mold–I like what I like, and if you don’t like it, who cares?–I am susceptible in other ways. For example, yesterday Will and I were talking about a certain community, and I mentioned that I thought it was awesome, but that I would probably feel out of place because I wasn’t cool enough to really be a part of it. Why? What is that? What is the perception of “coolness”?

Part of the reason I like blogs is because anybody can be a rockstar blogger. You don’t even have to pay for your blog if you don’t want to. All you have to do is write. The playing field is completely level.

Or is it? What I’ve noticed is, there are certain rockstar bloggers who are far more famous and read than others. And there are certain types of blogs that are considered “cooler”. I’ve thought about how to reinvent this blog many times, because I’ve felt that it doesn’t have enough general appeal. I always come back to the inescapable conclusion that it’s my blog, and I write what I feel I want to write, and if I try to shoehorn myself I’ll probably just stop doing it. But making the decision not to change what I write about always makes me feel as if I’m giving up on an opportunity for more. (I have an idea for a side-blog that I’ve been kicking around for awhile, even. Something that might be more interesting to the blog readers at large.)

So what is this desire to please others, to eschew true originality in favor of the herd? I really think it comes down to community. We’re social creatures, and we don’t want to alienate people. We want to always know that there are people in our lives, even if we like to spend time alone. Not only that, we want other people to like and respect us, and this can cause us to go so far as lie about our true feelings, in order to alter their perceptions.

I, however, don’t like lying, or pretending to be something I’m not. In fact, I am obsessed with making sure that people understand my opinions. In effect, I want them to be able to make a proper judgment of my value. I want them to have as many of the facts as possible.

And that is really why I write, why I chat, why I post. I have always, since I first started writing notes in school, since I made my first post to a BBS, wanted to be understood for who I am. (Eric’s got a good snippet about the arrogance of writers here.)

I have a harder time with this in the physical company of people, though. I make lies of omission constantly–if I don’t like something, or if I disagree, but I see no point in “rocking the boat”. I don’t know that this is particularly misguided; if I was completely honest at all times and said everything I was thinking, I would hurt a lot of people, and they would stop being my friends. (And I already say too much as it is.) But when I write, it’s absolutely honestly. I write from my gut, from my soul. When you read my words, you are reading me. I can’t write any other way. All I can do is make decisions about what to write about–which is hard, because I honestly want to write about everything.

For example: Right now I’m looking through my water glass at my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pen and pencil holder. Michaelangelo is skateboarding with his hand out for balance. His pointer finger is extended. Through the glass, I see a reflection of his hand, and by moving my head back and forth, I can make the hands move together until the pointer fingers are touching, just like Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

These are the sorts of weird things I want to write about constantly.

And I want to write hurtful things, too, and things that could easily get me fired. (I wrote something along the latter lines today, and then deleted it.) I want my opinions to be known. All of them.

But I am nowhere near this brutally honest in person.

So Eric’s right, in a way that he didn’t intend. The computer, the Internet, is a haven from peer pressure. With a layer of text between me and other people, my reactions change. When something happens between me and someone online, I am more likely to become angry than I am to just roll over and accept it. Being a writer and maintaining friendships through writing forces me to cast off many societal restraints.

I think that somewhere, there must be a balance.

Not that I’ve ever been attacked. But the idea of being able to electroshock somebody is just awesome.

Maybe that’s just because I’m in a bad mood.

:P

Or at least, that’s the impression I get from this Mainichi article:

Investigators said Okumura dressed himself up in a long hair wig, a miniskirt and boots before entering the women’s underwear sales section of the supermarket. After selecting three items of underwear, he allegedly took them into a changing room and hid them in his coat before exiting the store and driving off.

However, Okumura wasn’t wearing any makeup, and a security official who realized he was a man and thought he was acting strangely followed him and took note of the license plate of his vehicle.

Poor crossdressing shoplifter…he wasn’t much of a transvestite, was he?

This was originally written in response to a forum thread. I’d like to archive it here because it expresses my present opinions about the responsibilities involved in having children and keeping pets. If anyone would like to discuss my opinions with me, please leave a comment or send me an email. If anyone would like to make fun of me, please go to hell.

I do not believe pets should be looked at as "children".  They are not human beings.  They have different needs.  When you consider buying a pet, you should consider why you want one.  A guard dog, a cat to kill mice…these are good reasons.  Companionship is also a fine reason, but I believe many people take it a step too far.  If the reason you want a pet is so you have something to baby and spoil, you should not have a pet.
 
A spoiled animal is only a joy to its owners.  To all others it is a nuisance and sometimes even dangerous.  Pets should know their role in the household.  They should be trained to treat humans with respect.  They should be trained not to jump on people or (in the case of dogs) bark incessantly.  If you have a pet you have to accept the responsibility for its behavior.  You have to take the time to train it properly.
 
I firmly believe that spoiling a pet affects the animal’s health.  If the animal eats the wrong kind of food, or doesn’t get enough exercise, it is in danger of heart disease, cancer, and other ailments associated with malnutrition, sloth, and obesity.
 
And spoiling a pet has a definite impact on the animal’s personality.  If the animal doesn’t know who is the boss in the household, it will make itself the boss, and you will be unable to control it when you need to.
 
The way you treat a human child is extremely different from the way you treat a pet.  Pets have their youth, during which they must be trained, but ultimately the things you expect out of a pet remain the same over time, perhaps decreasing with old age.  Children, on the other hand, are learning continuously for far longer than a pet’s childhood.  Their responsibilities must increase over time, and they must be taught how to surpass the role of child and become adults.  You do not have to teach your dog how to grow up and move out of the house.
 
Ultimately, I feel that many Americans are failing in the roles of pet-owner and parent, partially because they don’t see a difference between the two, and partially because they do not accept the responsibility of either role.  They want something to love on; they don’t want annoyances.  But annoyances are what they get, and more and more of them crop up when people don’t seriously take on the role of teacher to their children and pets.  Both can be guided, but in different ways.
 
As far as watching snakes eat live animals, I don’t like it at all.  I think that predatory animals that absolutely must feed on living creatures should not be pets.  The live animals that are fed to the predator do not even have a chance at survival.  They would at least have a fighting chance in the wild.
 
Raising animals to be fodder for our pets seems like extreme excess.  Pets themselves are an unnecessary luxury.
 
We already raise animals to be slaughtered for our own food.  I don’t have a problem with this in principle; I love steak as much as the next person.  But I think there should be a limit to our use of the fruits of the land.  Just because it’s there doesn’t mean we need to own it.  And the more responsibility we take for the lives of other creatures, the more risks we take.
 
Ultimately, to me it all comes down to responsibility.  I feel like our society is sorely lacking that trait.

From Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough. There are too many great parts to this article, so I’m quoting liberally:

It’s the busiest day of the year on the darkened stretch of road where adventurous couples looking for a discreet and special way to say “I love you” join in a long-cherished tradition among islanders who pride themselves on their passion.

[…]

The road is home to more than a dozen motels with names like “Bambu,” “Rainbow” and “The Fountain,” all nestled among a throng of tile stores in the otherwise unassuming town of Caguas, about 20 miles south of San Juan, the capital.

“There’s a saying here that goes if you’re coming to Caguas, you’re looking for one of two things: to buy tiles or go to a motel,” said a smiling Yvonne Rodriguez, the owner of the 30-room Rainbow motel, one of Caguas’ oldest and most respected.

[…]

“We get a lot of famous people here, too,” said Cano Alicia, a 38-year-old handyman at the Rainbow. “But it doesn’t matter who you are, the same rule applies for everyone: what happens here, stays here.”

He said the motels serve an important function for islanders with big sexual appetites who need to maintain appearances in the socially conservative U.S. Caribbean territory of 4 million people.

This reminds me of the idea of “face” in Japanese society (and surely I don’t need to remind anyone about Japan’s “love hotels”).

That’s what this Osaka man would have you believe, anyway.

Police declined to say whether he got any sushi.

Oh yeah, he totally got some.

She is such a fantastic storyteller. Here’s a piece about a man trying to reconnect to his teenage daughter.

This is the kind of writing I want to do.

I’ve created all the Projects I could think of, and then assigned at least one task to each one. Click here to see what my task list looks like. (The top Project is the possible new business venture I keep hinting about, and I don’t want people to know what it is, or what I’m thinking of calling it, so I blurred the name.)

I don’t know if I’m being too general with some of them or not. I can already see that I was a little vague concerning the Blogger export tool…what I meant to say was, fix the file up, and then publish the details of how to export from Blogger here in a post, and go link to my post on the WordPress forums. But that phrase could be interpreted as “Finish up Blogger export tool, then export Blogger posts and comments”.

(The tool is essentially done, but I don’t want people looking at the code until I’ve had a chance to make it user-friendly and less sloppy. I’m also not going to do my export until my WordPress template is done, and I’ve installed WordPress, and I’m satisfied with all the settings. Hopefully that will minimize the down-time for the journal. I’m going to have to edit the exported file to add usernames and to alter all the image links, as I’m planning on moving my images to /images. I figure I’ll use Dreamweaver’s Replace function to scour all the files for the latter; for the former, I’m going to have to go in by hand. Doing it before importing into WordPress will have the benefit of creating user accounts for each commenter. This will make it easy to find all comments by a particular person.)

I did completely change my directory structure in Outlook, getting rid of quite a few folders I’d been using to sort my “Done” items. Now they’re all in “Done”; if I need them I can find them with Find. (Imagine that.) I will be happy to stay with my new directory structure even if I end up removing the GTD Plug-In.

But to be honest, I really like the thing. It’s easy to use. Now we just have to see if it will help my productivity. There’s only one thing I’m concerned about, and that is where to put project plans and outlines. (This is why I think some of my Tasks/Actions are too general.) I’m not sure if I would make those into tasks, or if there’s something else I’m supposed to do with them. One of the main goals of GTD is to get all the stuff out of your head so it isn’t stressing you out all the time, so I would assume there is someplace I’m supposed to write all my plans.

You may note that I only have one deadline in my Tasks. The rest of them are ASAP, I suppose, but I wonder if I will actually do them without a deadline. I also wonder if I will tend to focus on tasks relating to a project I find interesting, and ignore the tasks for the other projects.

I guess we’ll find out :)

I had a post written. It wasn’t huge, but you know, it had information in it that I don’t feel like rewriting. And what does Blogger do, but have some kind of server error. Yet again. I’ve gotten in the habit lately of copying my text into Notepad before posting, so I won’t lose it. I don’t know why I didn’t do it this time.

Regardless.

After my lengthy lunch break, I took a shower. Then I watched the tour of the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In. The upshot is that it seems like a good tool, but I’m not sure I want to use it, because I don’t want to have to change all my settings back if I end up not liking it. However, this could just be an attitude based on the fact that I’m tired from watching the demo thing, and from thinking about all the stuff I want to accomplish. It’s overwhelming, and I need to buckle down and find the right tools. If I have to go back and try something else, that’s just what I’ll have to do.

I’ll check in later after I’ve installed the free trial and checked it out some.

Hai linked me to this United States geography quiz. Pretty fun! I did a lot better with the Midwest and the South than I did with the West or the Northeast, though thanks to our trip to Boston I didn’t do too badly around that area. Ultimately I got 41 out of 50 states perfect, with an average error of 82 miles. It got easier as the game went on, because after a point it was like doing a puzzle, so I’m not sure how many state locations I actually knew. Still, it was a good test, and a fun way to learn where the states are.

Ooh, they have lots of other games, too.

Slashdot linked today to a Washington Post story about how in the future, we won’t buy our music on media, but will simply purchase a data file, which we will then port into whatever format we want–mp3, DVD, CD, etc. It’s an exciting prospect. But what gets me is not the changing future of music, but this abysmally stupid quote from the article:

Sitting at your laptop, pressing a few buttons and cueing up Bob Dylan may not seem very rock-and-roll. Will air-guitaring give way to air-mousing?

Okay, that doesn’t even make any sense.

(Also, it’s “queueing“, damn it!)