t3knomanser's Fustian Deposits

It's gorgeous outside. A balmy 32F, right on the edge of freezing, but warm enough that there's humidity in the air and you can smell the water. The sky is this flat expanse of grey, neither heavy nor light, just vast, and the grey is so strong that it leaches the color out of everything else.

It looks like some of my photos after retouching.

I don't like stressing. And I firmly believe stress is the gift you give yourself. And I'm under stress. I should stop. It's all work related. I find myself thikning about work when I'm home now, when I'm trying to sleep, hell, a few times recently it's even tried to enter my mind during sex. Suffice it to say, I can push it away. I did last night, and slept beautifully. But goddamn, this is too much.

So I've decided to stop. Poof, it's that easy. When I stepped outside and was greeted by the beautiful weather, it went a long way to relaxing me, and I'm going to keep that feeling. I will not let myself be stressed.

Meanwhile, I've got an idea for a database I want to implement. Essentially, an association of names and adjectives, so that based on the number of common adjectives, you can link people together in a network, weight the lines and set distances.

McDonalds and WiFi

pgnblade and I both work at the same place. And we're both feeling about the same about it.

It's crap. This week I've lucked out better than he has, but the level of apathy among the instructors is rising, as well as frustration. I'm not going to let this be a rant, nor will I allow it to remind me of what causes of stress I could latch onto, but I do want to examine this.

Most instructors are working multiple doubles a month (two shifts in a day), and some like pgnblade are pulling three in one week! From the instructors, since December we've lost two, plus one more at the end of the week, and have gained one. We are constantly given conflicting instructions, meaningless instructions, extra work and resoponsibility without compensation. We are told to teach courses we don't know, without time to learn them.

I've been lucky simply because I've worked myself into a unique position: I'm the only programmer. I'm the only database saavy individual. If it involves code, I can teach it, and as such, I've been able to use that to shelter me from most of the nastiness; a week long class that you refuse to teach without almost adequate prep time can go a long way to keeping you clean.

Okay, we've all pretty much reached the conclusion that protests won't work. At least I have. They're fun, and a good bonding experience, but are as likely to change events as my eating ramen for lunch.

So what will have an impact? Petitioning has had some effect, on some issues. Hell, protests have even had some effect on some issues.

But, this is not a nation ruled by its people, nor was it ever meant to be. Ideally, the system of checks and balances was to keep the rulers in check, but now, through shoddy electoral processes and court packing, all three branches of the government are all moving in roughly the same direction.

So what do we do?

We've been ranting alot about what's going on, and keeping informed here, which is really good. That's the main reason I joined. We vent and rant about how we feel about these things, and again, that's good. We snipe and bicker, which isn't so good, but there's been enough posts about that.

We know what's going on. What are we doing about it? What can we do about it?

Okay, so remember how I swore up and down I hated web design, and would never touch it? Well, I'm lining up a webmaster gig. Consulting, for Edifi.

On the bad news side, my friends Tim and Sara are on the outs it looks like. Uberbadness here, Tim was pretty attached to her, but they haven't been communicating. Tim's really really depressed. We're probably heading down this weekend to hang out with him and Ben and whoever else gets rounded up. Some roleplaying, chilling, etc. Which I'll need too methinks.

Caught on film

Delightfully depressing.

Eyebees is a way of swarming on the internet. It requires IE (feh), but is kinda neet- except for the fact that no one is using it.

The general idea? A group of people all browse online together, and can peek at the pages other people are viewing, and so forth. Cute, fun to play with, but right now... lonely. A swarm of one isn't much of a swarm, now is it?

My username? Why, t3knomanser of course!