Subterfuge

More chaos unfortunately.  Since we are just puny human beings often the things we say and mean and the things we say and don’t mean cause major issues.  I think communication is delicate and its deadly.  Especially if we “assume” that a person is approaching the same pain point we are in the same way, with the same degree of confidence, and with the same degree of understanding.  Without a shared starting point to things, its difficult to reach a satisfactory concluion many times.  Instead we jump all around building even more chaos.

The challenge for me in all this is to try to build bridges and not fences.  Fences don’t work and if you want someone to come to the table prepared to discuss a thng; don’t assume you can whisper over a fence and be heard. 

What I’ve learned of late is that communication definitely is a delicate and deadly act.  I’m glad its Saturday.  Now communication is limited to a few avenues.

This is just another wordpress weblog and I am just another wordpress weblog author or poster or owner. This blogpost is about nothing in particular so I don’t have any fancy links in it to other bloggers. If I did I would probably link to someone notable. That way I could raise my AI. That is my authority index. When I raise my AI (no… not artificial intelligence), I gain popularity and others come to read my weblog. That is important to me because I check my blog popularity by visiting any number of linking engines.

I’ve also built a careful repository of blogposts around different “tags” or categories but often my blogposts start out in one area and seem to drift much like the continents did eons ago somewhere else. I actually like blogging about open source stuff. Linux is fascinating and how it does things is too. Linux on the desktop will never make it however. Just because lots of people that I know use it and seem to be okay is no real indicator that it ever will actually go somewhere.

I also blog about anthropology and others have commented it seems like a crazy mix. Well, everything is a crazy mix. Life is a crazy mix of the almost, the pathetic, and the coulda been. Never really doubt how crazy it is and if you think you “own”; well you don’t. Its just the big joke that reality plays on you. But the real joke is there is no reality. You are simply asleep. Dreaming. All of this never happened. There are no pyramid of bloggers that are “authoritarian”.

Turn over, dammit. You’re snoring.

Call it subterfuge if you will… I end up on Sunday evenings with the kids in bed and having about 1.5 hours of purely personal time in which to decide to write a blog entry, update some information on my personal wiki, read, watch TV. Not watch the Raiders this year because they are now 4/9. But that’s even better than the 49′ers by all accounts. So now, I have this time to consider how I have been doing things, what I record, and what I see in the next weeks and months. Its that personal reflection time that I think everyone needs a share of. A person told me once there is an amazing difference between solitude and loneliness. Solitude is being alone and liking it; loneliness is being alone and hating it. I think I am primarily a solitary type person for the most part. Kids have kind of shocked me out of some of it; but I still enjoy those rare moments when my son has no computer hardware problem and my daughter is not asking me to watch another Godzilla movie. Well, perhaps I really, secretly enjoy both of those…

Other times though, when the kids are in school and the wife is asleep and its so quiet, I start thinking about things. Things like blogging or “wiki’ing”. Wiki’ing is an interesting pursuit. What started for me as simply recording a few factoids has turned into obsession. Having a personal wiki means I have a place to store mental meanderings that I really don’t want to post here on the blog. Its not like thousands of people read this stuff anyways. I kinda think my readership is down there in the single digits and perhaps its best that way. I don’t have any particularly englightening things to pass on any longer. I’ve moved past more than a few things and if my current work search pans out, I’ll move past even more. I still believe though, even with me desiring to move on along, that Linux is doomed to fail or at least be left in the evolutionary backwaters IF we do not see a joining of efforts. The triangle of use in Linux demands no less and I don’t see where it can grow or evolve without some basic change to how it creates standards that unite the three sides of my postulated triangle…

But now since this is a musing post, I can muse on. Musing is fun because it allows me to slip outside myself and watch what I do for a minute; how I muse, what I muse, and what I want to muse about. Everyone needs to muse and ruminate and consider. Ruminate sounds different but if that’s what you do, do it! I do think there is a value to managing data and I’ve started looking at the Getting Things Done mantra for aways and means to organize my life into better represented segments and not have information scattered here and there. The personal wiki is my attempt at doing that. But its become more than just that and if you need a “musing solution” (not one that’s amusing…) I heartily recommend that you find yourself a tool. Tools separate us, make us what we are. Use the tools! Become a habilis; a tool user.

Its come to me more than a few times that we live in a world of palindromes and paradigms. We need to have things like a man a plan a canal panama or our carefully fabricated world of seeing what you want, meaning what you say, but not hearing what you thought I said; all falls apart. In the world of paradigms, we can find just as simple and obnoxious references to any set of belief systems that overwhelm our senses and make us believers in that new world order. By definition, what is a paradigm anyways? Well, it says that its a…

1. One that serves as a pattern or model.
2. A set or list of all the inflectional forms of a word or of one of its grammatical categories: the paradigm of an irregular verb.
3. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

Ah yes. We need to have a set of assumptions, concepts, and values that we all use to view reality. Now if we compare that definition with palindrome, we find that it says:

1. A word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. For example: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!
2. A segment of double-stranded DNA in which the nucleotide sequence of one strand reads in reverse order to that of the complementary strand.

Now we’re getting somewhere. We also need to have things that read the same forward and backwards. But take a look at the second definition. Whoa! That is damned more than a canal that had a man that had a plan.

The main point to the article today is that there is no main point. Get thee out and palindrome your paradigm, buddy.

You ever notice after a few beers that things that were rather oblique become somewhat clearer? Of course, things that were clear become all fuzzy as well. Its like beer can bring things that you could not see clearly into a bit more focus but the downside is that the things which seemed clear become rather out of focus. The other night in my continuing weekend frenzy of drinking craft beers, it came to me that getting jobs in technology is an interesting pursuit. Here in the Silly Icon Valley, we have literally thousands of people out of work which possibly are trying/vying for the same job that I could be wanting. Perhaps several other thousand want other jobs that yet others want. Its a pyramid of sorts here.

Top of the Pyramid

Only a few souls inhabit this part of the pyramid. Jobs are inherently theirs no matter what. They already know the people that know the people that know the people that know who is doing what. You can’t get to the top no matter what you try because it keeps on moving.

Middle of the ‘mid

At the middle is the group of stirring restive currently employed folks that want the jobs of other currently employed folks. Action is hot in the middle but the population is bigger and people try in vain to get the job that they think they want but really do not need. There is a minor God figure at this level that grants permissions almost like a Linux box. You can become chmod’ed or chown’ed to something new but you have to carve the position out of bedrock and be able to issue commands like the root user.

Bottom Part

Man this part teems with populace. People enter this part from all the other parts. The succession is what you know, who you know, and how you know it. The “what” is more about what others think you know and not so much what you know yourself. The “who” is your ladder. Climb on out of the morass dood! The air is clearer at the upper levels and the conditions are nicer. Instead of several thousand competitors, you know the other person and you know their weakness. Finally, the “how” points at what price you have paid to get to where you are. Did you “stab” and “rend” in your rush to reach the upper levels? We are not so apologetic down here and we have long memories. Its tough down here and jobs seem to get filled before you even apply. If you send a resume to a recruiter, they will NOT EVER CALL YOU BACK. Its the rule of the jungle. Getting a call back is like the golden fleece. You suddenly have a beautiful gilded jacket and you can move up the food chain.

Is all this true? Who knows. I just invented all this stuff because I was bored and I drank too many of them beers

Well, the BTR (boomtown rats) tell me not to also. There is something about Mondays which seem to always border on ends and beginnings. Perhaps it is like what they say,

The Telex machine is kept so clean.
As it types to a waiting world,
And Mother feels so shocked,
Father’s world is rocked,
And their thoughts turn to.
Their own little girl.
Sweet 16 ain’t that peachy keen,
No, it ain’t so neat to admit defeat,
They can see no reasons.
Cos there are no reasons.
What reason do you need to be shown,Br.

Perhaps there is no reason. But Mondays seem hazy to me in all regards. Its like I enjoyed the weekends and especially Friday night with friends at GB’s. Wednesday and Thursday, I’m heading up to visit Ed and no doubt we will also go to SN’s. I’m gonna be riding the Capitol Corridor Amtrak line up there and I’ll be sure to have a good Wednesday and Thursday.

But Today is Monday and I don’t like Mondays…

Tell me why.
I Dont’t like Mondays.
I want to shoot.
The whole day down.

Well not the whole day just the beginning when the kids go off to school and stuff and all the hesitation, desire not to go, etc.

Today it dawned ome that we all live like canines at some point or another. Once upon a time, I was working with RWR down in the Mojave Desert and we were walking along the proposed route of a power windmill access road. We had been walking quietly, each mixed in his own thoughts, when we heard a noise behind us. RWR turned around first and yelled at me to “run like hell”. We both headed toward his jeep and behind us were…

the canines from hell

Fearsome looking, mouths yelping, paws padding the desert carpet. A group of feral dogs pursued us. I caught up with RWR and he hauled butt the last 30 feet or so to his jeep. I hopped in the back and he rumbled around in his bag and out came a 357 Smith and Wesson. The lead dog was about 50 feet from the jeep when RWR let out with a few well placed shots. The sound of the pistol reverberated across the desert and we looked at the lead feral hound.

He was stopped dead in his track and two big ole bullet wounds with seeping blood had appeared. The other dogs stopped on a dime and stared at us. RWR cocked the trigger back on the revolver. The dogs still stared at us. Then they smelled the “down and dead”. They all suddenly launched at the fallen one and left us alone.

We simply watched them devour the downed dog. Fangs ripped and tore. It was a primordial spectacle. RWR and I ended up at a local beer hall and ruminated on the dogs for awhile and over 2 pitchers or so of el cheapo yet cold brew. We both believed that that day RWR’s cool nerve and primarily carrying “heat” saved us. But the main thing was the scene of carnage after. It was frightful but rather mysterious. It took us back perhaps to what life was like on the savannah when the animals battled.

But most of all it tied RWR and I together in yet another way. As the years flow by, I have lost contact with those people. Its so easy to move on and leave the people behind. New people are awaiting behind the bend in the road. But no one could ever shoot the feral dogs and save my life like RWR did. Perhaps I will never call RWR again. I feel separated and different and I don’t know what I would say. So much has gone past and I’ve changed so much. My son went through losing his only friend and asked what it was like and how long the sense of loss would stay. Perhaps it stays forever but adults learn it like our other paltry sum of controllable emotions. That day in the back of the jeep I had a emotion not controllable by adult training. Fear makes the bloog pulse, the sweat flow, and the feelings grow. It also makes for great stories to kids