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I was going to say something about how witnessing close friends go through changes never fails to fill me with creeping existential dread borne of a selfish need to keep everything around me just-so, but then I ate a sandwich and felt better, so I guess I was just hungry.
Dec. 6th, 2001
The Diesel, I see, has embraced the strange weather by removing the wintertime battens from its roll-up front facade. I still feel the need to have some token acknowledging that these temperatures shouldn't be here: I'm wearing my corduroy sportcoat, something I wouldn't do were we having this very same weather in June.
I wasn't nervous until two people at the Sunday gaming group agreed: "That's it. We're done, we're doomed. Head for high land!" While their attitude was ha-ha-only-serious, seeing any amount of fatalism in my friends still fills me with dread. This, and the constant little reminders of the oddball atmosphere (here comes Charles in the door wearing shorts, listen to the squeak of the air conditioner at the office), has put a dint on my ability to focus on things.
Internet access at home has been squidgy for over a week now, despite Charles' efforts to make the new would-be firewall machine, the scrounged Alpha, work. Last night we went shopping at Micro Center, and I picked me up a new Netgear wireless router. Though it has its own firewall capabilities, Charles wants it sitting behind the Alpha-based one if at all paossible. If we determine that the box is simply toast, we'll fall back to using the Netgear as the house firewall instead. Tonight should hold the moment of truth.
(I played with the router's Web-based configuator a little, enough to change the admin password from the factory-default "1234" (There's a tip for all you 1337 1s) (Also: insert quote from "Spaceballs" here, if you are Carla; I'll have to tell her about this and see if this triggers her automated quote mechanisms as I predict) and make its broadcast identifier string "Chez Chestnut"... @whee)
Today, though, I'm on my way back to O'Reilly to hang out (uninvited, but I'm fairly certain I'm welcome, given my goal; see below), since Internet access is out-and-out dead at Chez Chestnut, the Alpha idling with a screenful of kernel compilation error messages until we decide what to do with this mess. Charles is sincere in his belief that we can hit a working solution tonight. I just hope we can hit one before Saturday.
The pressure to not spend this Netless afternoon reading or watching movies comes from the imperitave to Finish The Book Dammit that Erik and I received yesterday. I must spend the next week and a half in hack-and-describe mode in order for this to work according to schedule. Strange and Wondeful fact: I think I can hold up my part. I don't know how, but over the last mangle of weeks (maybe since autumn) my confidence with the project has risen a lot, and stayed there. I've managed to get a lot done, and the path ahead of me seems reasonably well-defined. I'll say no more on this, though. I know myself a little too well for that. Mmm-hmm.
I'm also making progress on the other thing I told everyone I'd put off until the move was done, and have completed the first draft of my Statement of Objects essay for my MIT application and vetted it by Jon, my principal sponsor in this crazy endeavor. He filled my head with ideas for stuff the essay still needs, so that's gotta happen today, because there's now one month left for me to finish filling this thing out. I still have to choose who to tap for writing a third recommendation letter, but after speaking with Jon yesterday I have some ideas, at last.
Finally, my first-ever contracted programming job reached feature-complete stage this week. Yay. Now comes the part where the customer tells me about all the changes they need. It's just like I read about! But in this case the customers are also my dear friends, so it's all good.
I wasn't nervous until two people at the Sunday gaming group agreed: "That's it. We're done, we're doomed. Head for high land!" While their attitude was ha-ha-only-serious, seeing any amount of fatalism in my friends still fills me with dread. This, and the constant little reminders of the oddball atmosphere (here comes Charles in the door wearing shorts, listen to the squeak of the air conditioner at the office), has put a dint on my ability to focus on things.
Internet access at home has been squidgy for over a week now, despite Charles' efforts to make the new would-be firewall machine, the scrounged Alpha, work. Last night we went shopping at Micro Center, and I picked me up a new Netgear wireless router. Though it has its own firewall capabilities, Charles wants it sitting behind the Alpha-based one if at all paossible. If we determine that the box is simply toast, we'll fall back to using the Netgear as the house firewall instead. Tonight should hold the moment of truth.
(I played with the router's Web-based configuator a little, enough to change the admin password from the factory-default "1234" (There's a tip for all you 1337 1s) (Also: insert quote from "Spaceballs" here, if you are Carla; I'll have to tell her about this and see if this triggers her automated quote mechanisms as I predict) and make its broadcast identifier string "Chez Chestnut"... @whee)
Today, though, I'm on my way back to O'Reilly to hang out (uninvited, but I'm fairly certain I'm welcome, given my goal; see below), since Internet access is out-and-out dead at Chez Chestnut, the Alpha idling with a screenful of kernel compilation error messages until we decide what to do with this mess. Charles is sincere in his belief that we can hit a working solution tonight. I just hope we can hit one before Saturday.
The pressure to not spend this Netless afternoon reading or watching movies comes from the imperitave to Finish The Book Dammit that Erik and I received yesterday. I must spend the next week and a half in hack-and-describe mode in order for this to work according to schedule. Strange and Wondeful fact: I think I can hold up my part. I don't know how, but over the last mangle of weeks (maybe since autumn) my confidence with the project has risen a lot, and stayed there. I've managed to get a lot done, and the path ahead of me seems reasonably well-defined. I'll say no more on this, though. I know myself a little too well for that. Mmm-hmm.
I'm also making progress on the other thing I told everyone I'd put off until the move was done, and have completed the first draft of my Statement of Objects essay for my MIT application and vetted it by Jon, my principal sponsor in this crazy endeavor. He filled my head with ideas for stuff the essay still needs, so that's gotta happen today, because there's now one month left for me to finish filling this thing out. I still have to choose who to tap for writing a third recommendation letter, but after speaking with Jon yesterday I have some ideas, at last.
Finally, my first-ever contracted programming job reached feature-complete stage this week. Yay. Now comes the part where the customer tells me about all the changes they need. It's just like I read about! But in this case the customers are also my dear friends, so it's all good.
While correcting the spacing on my .signature file (after having changed the city pointer yet again), I did something spontaneous, and expanded my first initial into my full name. I dunno; 'J', the name I gave myself upon graduating college, just doesn't feel current anymore, no more so than 'Garfunk', my BBS handle from 12 years ago, even though in either case there are at least a handful of people walking the earth who think of it as my true name (which is fine and beautiful).
It seems to stick better with the name policy I've held for a while now, anyway: when introducing myself I use my given name, and from there on people can call me whatever they want. Nicknames and handles continue to emerge from this by themselves, and I state with confidence that more than half of my local friends routinely refer to me by my UNIX login name (which admittedly I sometimes offer along with my real name, since the latter is actually very common and often duplicated in any room with many male Gen-Xers in it). It's all good.
It seems to stick better with the name policy I've held for a while now, anyway: when introducing myself I use my given name, and from there on people can call me whatever they want. Nicknames and handles continue to emerge from this by themselves, and I state with confidence that more than half of my local friends routinely refer to me by my UNIX login name (which admittedly I sometimes offer along with my real name, since the latter is actually very common and often duplicated in any room with many male Gen-Xers in it). It's all good.