Straight Edge Life

If you have a problem with me, come to me and we’ll deal with it. If I’m getting in your way… if I’m cramping your style… let me know so that I can decide what to do about it. Maybe I’ll stay and change my ways. Maybe I’ll decide it’s time for us to part ways. But don’t quietly test my patience. Don’t quietly build a case of irreconcilable differences so that you can pull a knife out of your pocket and stab me with it when it suites you best.

I’m not a dumb boy. People don’t always match up. They have differences. Sometimes those differences matter, sometimes they don’t. We all fight for the things we believe in, right? The other things we let slide. But I’m done dating girls who go to bars. I just don’t need the headache. Two people can’t disagree on something so fundamental, so important, and hope to have a smooth thing going. I’ve tried it so many times. I’ve tried it more times than I want to think about. And every damn time I feel like I’m compromising.

Living in a constant state of compromise is living on my knees. Vulnerable, weak and pathetic.

Windows XP pisses me off to no end. It’s devolution: In effect, a simpler being that’s easier to get along with because it doesn’t argue with you.. but only it’s too fucking stupid to understand your language.

I hate it. The amount of work I have to go to in order to make code that works flawlessly in windows 2000, linux and mac os x, work on windows xp is stunning. Take for example the wonderful and relatively new WebDAV protocol that’s endorsed by many of the industry’s largest players. It’s like ftp but better because it runs on port 80, the standard port for website traffic, and can be encrypted in transit. Yahoo. No more passwords sent in clear text with FTP.

So… Windows 2000 lets you connect to a WebDAV server simply by adding a network place. Enter the address of the server, http://foo.myserver.com/myusername, enter your username and password when prompted, and all-of-the-sudden you’ve got a WebDAV drive mounted on your computer just like it was a local drive. In OS X it’s as simple as hitting Apple K in the finder and entering in the address. Bam, connected to a WebDAV server. Drag and drop files at will. I think you get the idea here. This is not a difficult thing to do.

Enter windows XP. When adding a network place in Windows XP the geniuses at Microsoft decided that when you enter http://foo.myserver.com into the add network place wizard you aren’t really looking for a webdav server on the world wide web, no… you’re looking for an SMB server on your local network. Forget that SMB and WebDAV are nothing alike and that the http:// prefixing your address indicates with absolute clarity that you’re looking for an http server. No, XP wants to keep you local and in a happy little microsoft world using only microsoft technology.

Enter the average programmer who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what technology you use, he simply wants to get a job done and write some software so that you can get your job done. This is why we have standards in the industry afterall. Standards help different kinds of computers talk to each other clearly. Standards make different system work together. But when one company decides that they want to ignore these standards and make up the rules as they go along, standards really don’t mean much anymore.

There’s something about an empty room. I think when I buy a house I’m going to keep one room in it totally empty. Nothing at all on the floors. I’ll put photos on the wall, of course, but nothing else. I can put myself in this room and that will be enough. There’s a peace to it. A calm. A big window might be nice.

I never thought I would turn into an organized person but as the days go buy I want to spend less and less time dealing with stuff. The more stuff I have, the more time I spend caring for it. And the more messy that stuff is, the more

1. Get as far out of debt as possible.
2. Have a public gallery show of my photography. If not in a gallery, open up my studio and invite the city to see my work.
3. Lose 20 LBS (obligatory).
4. Travel somewhere outside the U.S.A.

I’ve never been one for the blue-eyed girls. Never for blond hair either. But this, she, is different. I’m like a fucking kid right now. Can’t sleep, waiting by the phone for her call, smiling like a damn fool all day long. Thinking endlessly about the next time I’m going to get to see her. Hear her. It’s fun. I’ll totally admit that it’s fun. It’s really really quite fun to have a crush.

Cool thing is that she seems interested as well. I think she’s pretty shy. Might even be a slow moving girl in the romantic stuff. Doesn’t matter. I’m digging this harmless stuff. More to the point, I’m loving getting to know her better.

I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed this morning. From the moment I woke up the whole world was just a little bit askew. I knew it was going to a weird day.

Cereal. Couldn’t find a normal bowl so I had to use a giant mixing bowl. Drop the spoon and it’s finger fishing time in Cheerios soup. This is, of course, after I wake up with a start thinking that I slept through my morning meeting. With my body pumped full of adrenaline but my head still very much asleep, I grab my laptop and deliver an invoice to one of my clients. I haven’t sent an invoice to them (or anyone in a while), so I really need this money.

Anyway, I hadn’t missed my meeting, but by the time I was in my car on my way to the meeting I got a call saying it was cancelled. Ug. So I get back home to find out that someone else wants to reschedule another meeting in 15 minutes. So I turn back around and drive to that meeting, at the end of which I find out that my invoice won’t be processed until the middle of the month. Shit. I’m totally broke for the next two weeks.

On the way to that meeting I get a call from a third party wanting to meet tomorrow. So much for my plan to get work done this week. So I get home and I find out that BlueWorld Communications, the company that makes Lasso (my favorite programming language), has sold Lasso to some random company in Florida. F L O R I D A ! So my programming life is now uncertain, up in the air, and completely who knows what.

The phone call came early in the morning. It woke me up with a start since I fell asleep with the phone right next to my head. Ring… r… I must have answered on the first ring. Sitting here now at breakfast and every word she said is cutting through my brain in slow ferocious little chop-chop-chopping motions. What the fuck? How? Really? Did I hear that right? Just like that she cheats on her husband? And chooses me to confess to?

Where it came from, I do not know. But it knocked on my door only 24 hours ago, and has not left. Between the waking hours, working hours and fractional slumber, there has been a mysterious math working it’s way into my soul. A balanced equation of sorts. A trail into the heavens, where I have never been.

Killer. I’ve got my new server all set up and doing it’s thing. You are all visiting this site at it’s new home on a brad spankin’ new xserve web server. Should be faster, although that probably depends mostly on your own connection. Anyway. I’m still fiddling around with the DNS and all of that fun stuff. More later.

I’m fucking psyched. Really. There’s something to thinking about something, loving it, developing the idea in your head and then finally seeing it created into something real… something really really real. There’s something about that which makes me smile. Big. And it’s not so different than I imagined it in the very beginning. It’s pretty close to what I expected it to be. But the thing about it that’s really cool is that this idea represents desire. My plain and simple desire to work as a photographer again. And I want that. Like I want nothing else, I want to be able to shoot again. 1/2 time, full time. Whatever. I just want to shoot. There’s a storm raging outside my house. Pine cones and branches are showering down on my roof, drowning out the white noise of the rain itself. The huge concussion of a transform pumping it’s final surge of energy as it explodes hammers my walls with a blast of air. And I, I am in here in total peace. Should a 40 inch trunk blast through my roof and strike me dead, I think tonight it would be alright. Tonight. Because for once the damn future feels like it’s looking up. And for now I’m going to hold on to it, like I’m holding on to the idea of photography in my soul. Today I present Pixenter. Enjoy.