None of the Above: my site Archives

[ mental my site ] 2002-10-19

Yes, I'm back: Well, for varying definitions of the word "back". Okay, so my meatspace life is rather busy lately. I've been trying to put things in order, because I was a bit wayward, to say the least. Okay, I'm not being specific because some of what's been going on has been unpleasant and somewhat my fault.

But the point is, I'm doing better every day. I think I kinda hit bottom, mental-health wise, and I'm working at making sure things get better. I hope the creeps who were so keen on making snotty comments on my weblog go stuff themselves. With what, I dunno. Something that'll make 'em shut up, I suppose.

I really don't get why people are so mean. Maybe they ran out of puppies to kick and decided to go after me.

Really, I would *love* to be here prattling on and on about things which entertain people and not be depressing and realistic about the difficulties I've been facing, and yadda yadda yadda, but guess what? I come here and start typing and stuff comes out and I don't really censor it. This is me, this is my log, it's about what's going on in my head, and if people don't like it, they can click another link. No one's forcing them to read what I write here (at least, I hope not).

But here's what's shaking, mentally, lately: I've been having trouble sleeping, and having some really highly unpleasant hallucinations as I'm drifting off to sleep. The past two nights were horrid. Just really creepy bodily sensations of being... not right, and unable to ask for help. Ugh. You want details? Oh, okay.

So the first night (two nights ago), as I'm drifting off to sleep I get this freakish sensation that I would liken to the following: imagine that you have been buried in the ground under about 18 inches of dirt. Then imagine someone releases about half a dozen dogs to walk over your grave. That's what it felt like. It was this weird phantom sensation that went away quickly, but really left some mental scars. Trust me.

Luckily, that night, Richard was right beside me when I croaked out a weak "help", and he helped me calm down and feel that I was safe.

Unfortunately, last night was worse, much worse. I took one of my pills (geodon) to help my thoughts calm down a few hours before bedtime, and then another one about an hour before bedtime. As soon as the sun started going down, I was getting creeped out with anticipation of another unpleasant bedtime experience. I was unfortunately not off the mark...

I managed to doze off, even before my roommate got home. But then I woke up, three separate times with the sensation that something... some spirit, if you will, was *inhabiting* my body. It felt like it overlapped with my body but not entirely, as though on some ethereal plane this ... creature, entity, what-have-you were putting me on like a suit that it was going to wear. But the body parts didn't line up properly, especially the arms, and I had this weird sense that my arms weren't in the right place - they were touching somewhere that they couldn't possibly have been.

So that happened like three times. The third time, the... inhabitation feeling was even more horrid - I felt like it had gripped me totally, I couldn't move, tried to yell out but no sound would come from me. In my panic, I could feel my heart pounding like crazy and my pulse pounding in my neck veins. I thought I was going to die or something.

Also, oddly, I had a brief dream that I heard the tv on and went out into the living room to talk to my roommate and be reassured, but that he was nowhere to be found.

Finally, I did get up and looked around and he wasn't there. I called him and he was just a few minutes from coming home. When he arrived, I asked him if I could sleep in his room, so that if I called out in the night he might hear me and be able to help. Because Chris is a hugely gracious and kind fellow, he obliged. I did manage to sleep, but not before having a huge shuddering fit where my muscles just kept tightening uncontrollably. It was like shaking with terror...

Ugh. I finally made it through. When I woke up, it seemed to be around dawn, but I was *so* glad that the sun was up, that I had somehow made it through the night. Yes, I recognize that what I had been feeling was some kind of weird hallucinatory thing that my mind concocted because it's Just Not Quite Normal (to put it mildly).

Anyway, I called the county mental health crisis line when I got up, and since their office is closed on the weekends, they told me to head to the emergency room if I really needed help before Monday.

So that's exactly what I did. I headed up to Round Rock Hospital, through the pouring dreary rain, and didn't have to wait in line at all. I was amazed at how efficient everything was at the emergency room. They got me in to see a doctor quickly, who gave me a prescription for a bit of xanax and sonata to calm down my anxiety and help me sleep, respectively. I couldn't really have imagined a better emergency room experience, to tell the truth.

After that, I filled my rxen, went to Fry's and got a printer and a new network card for my laptop (and I confess, a Dr. Seuss ABC cd-rom thingie for Elena). Then I went to the little Catholic stuff shop and got myself a little booklet on the rosary, another one on the order of Mass, and a really beautiful poster of the liturgical calendar.

Go ahead and laugh. I dare you.

The thing is, I'm converting to Catholicism. There, I said it. I went last week after a particularly bad day, and it helped me quite a bit. I feel good there, like it's where I want to be. I'm re-joining the RCIA, which stands for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, and is the way you get into the church as an adult. We go to early mass (at 8:30am), then have classes afterwards in the library.

The point is I think it's good for me on lots of levels. The structure is something that really benefits me, and plus I must say I've become a true believer. You may not realize that this is a rare thing for someone coming from my background, raised all her life as a Unitarian Universalist. The usual direction for people to go between the two churches is from Catholicism to UUism.

So I'm a wacky data point going the other direction. :) But it doesn't matter how rare it is, only whether it's sincere and a good thing, and I feel very strongly that both are true for me.

This entry is way too long. Sorry. Anyway, I should be surfing the net more these days, especially since I finally got a working network card for my laptop, so I can look for spiffy websites to point out while I'm watching movies.

Someday I'll come up with a filter thingie for my weblog (probably as part of rolling my own) so that people can see the webloggish entries without having to slog through the journal-esque ones. For those of you who feel agonizing pain when you read a long rambling entry here like this one, you're just going to have to learn to scroll past them for the time being. I would say I'm sorry but I'm not - you won't see me criticizing anyone else for the content of their personal, private weblog.

I mean, that's the beauty of it - there's plenty of bandwidth for even the worst rambling spewers like myself. If you really hate it, then it's very simple - don't come back here.

Do I sound defensive? I suppose I am, but I think I have good reason to be. I've endured some rotten attacks on my weblog, bad enough that it hurt me enough to have me just yank it for awhile.

But not for long. Because when it comes down to it, they (the rude jerks) can't stop me. And what's more, they shouldn't. There's the whole moral aspect of it, which is quite clear enough on its own, and then there's the whole practical aspect of it - do you REALLY want to antagonize, attack, and piss off someone who is admittedly mentally unstable? Someone who wears the badge "Not Quite Sane" with pride?

I mean, really. What kind of idiot pokes a rabid tiger with a stick?

Okay, I'll shut up now. Gotta find something good on tv... :)

[ my site ] 2002-10-13

None of the Above is temporarily closed: It will be back shortly, once I get my house in order and stuff. Not to worry, I just had to take a bit of a mental vacation for awhile, but things will be back in tip-top shape before too long. Today (Sunday, October 13th) I am going to church (Mass, actually), then we'll see what the rest of the day brings me. I think it's going to be a good one.

[ animals my site ] 2002-08-31

The webcam is on for today: Just in case you wanted to take a peek.

I'm hanging out doing my morning reading and transferring some powerpuff girls to tape for a friend of mine, but later I'm going to tidy up the living room and do some filming.

I figure at that point, I'll point the cam at Swiss, the big white dog, who sleeps under my table. Weeha!

Addendum an hour or so later: Just to show that whoever runs this universe has a wicked sense of humor, after I hooked up the webcam and tried to move it around for a better position, I had to unhook the USB cable to untangle it, which meant that it kept uploading copies of the last picture before the unhooking - a big ugly picture of my hairy armpit.

And what's more, the cam wouldn't function again right away after I hooked it up again - oh no! Windows 2k made me reboot my stinking machine! Gah! I thought we were past that kind of idiocy, but NooOOoOoOOooo...

So I rebooted, worried that hundreds if not thousands of people were staring at my ugly hairy armpit and thinking awful things about my character and basic worth as a person.

And after the reboot, Windows just had to do a consistency check on my hard drive, eating up further time until I could fix the darn cam and overwrite the offending pix.

But finally, at last, my mission has been accomplished. Aren't you pleased? :)

[ my site rants ] 2002-08-29

I have no readers: At least that's what I'm forced to conclude lately.

Yes, this is a shameless request for feedback!

Post a comment to this thread or send me something in the box o doom there in the left column.

Please? Just so I know you care?

You can even say something snarky about how you hate the content lately, if you want.

Even better, tell me what you'd like to see here. Otherwise I won't know, see, and then you'll have absolutely no chance of seeing it. (My psychic powers are still pretty weak.)

[ good my site ] 2002-08-27

Ahh, my minions: My plans for world domination are starting to come together nicely, I am pleased to say. I will unveil some spiffy stuff soon, but don't hold your breath.

At any rate, I feel invigorated and creative, and I hope this feeling will last long enough for me to create some actual content. I believe that you would be pleased. I hope so, anyway.

Time for me to get something to eat, and watch some tv. I'm way behind on my tv-watching lately, I'm afraid.

I was going to go out today, but the punishing heat is even worse than normal, and I didn't get up early enough to escape the worst of it, so I'll put off my errands until tomorrow.

For now, enjoy the last five minutes' worth of webcam pix that were taken before I left my seat at the computer. Perhaps I will one day have webcams throughout the house and you can watch me as I go about my mundane activities. Not yet, alas, though.

[ my site ] 2002-08-26

WEBCAM! Yes, that's right, I'm a cam girl! Well okay, cam lady, thankyouverymuch. I do not have nearly the skank factor required to be a cam girl (thank goodness).

Instead I will offer you, the viewer, the extraordinary glory of viewing me, a mere mortal, at the computer.

I know, you can barely contain your enthusiasm. So we'll see how long this lasts, and if anyone actually cares I may set up an auto-updating window so my throngs of fans can have a little Beth window in the corner of their screen whenever I'm online.

Come to think of it, I should set up a little indicator-thingie to say "the cam is ON / OFF" or something. Let me ask my webmonkey, he'll know the easiest way to do that. That's what I keep him around for.

[ books movies my site projects ] 2002-07-21

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea magnifica culpa: Okay, so I *didn't* get around to writing posts the other day. Please forgive me. Life got in the way (as it has a tendency to do) and I got quite busy.

Plus, Friday night & Saturday morning are my prime visiting times with Elena, so I was on Mommy duty much of the time. Yesterday, after we dropped Elena off, we went to the movies (Men in Black 2, highly recommended), shopping, and when we got home I was so tired I just conked out in bed after finally finishing off the latest Pratchett book I've been reading, Moving Pictures (also highly recommended).

This was around six pm, mind you.

So by around two or three, I was quite ready to get up. It's now 4:13am by my computer clock, and I'm going to see how many posts I can manage here before five, at which point I'll go read and take notes in the other room.

My schedule's really odd lately, and I know that's something I'm supposed to watch for because of my condition. I just want to reassure everyone that I'm feeling *fine* these days, taking my medication, et cetera. I was feeling quite horribly stressed before David got his new job last week, but things have improved drastically since he started work.

So, I've decided to write a book. A big book. I hope to have it in hand by Christmas. If it turns out there are only five copies which I have made at Kinko's and hand out just to close friends and family, and not even they really even bother to read the thing, that's okay. Because I need to write this book for *me*, to say what I need to say.

Though I figure at least one person besides me, somewhere, someday, will think that my book is worthwhile, and be glad that I wrote it. So I'm doing it for them, too.

But, I hear you in the peanut gallery crying, we've heard dramatic pronouncements from you before, Beth, yet you're the laziest person we know and we keep seeing all talk and no action from you. And I would say that you have a point.

But keep this in mind, dear peanut gallery: the last time I felt the need to write something big and important, a need so strong that it sort of took me over for a little while, I churned out 40,000 words in three days of frantic writing. That was a bit excessive and I didn't get enough sleep and so on when that happened, but what I'm trying to show is that I've got, or at least had in the past, a nice little pipeline into my noggin from whichever Muse controls these things. He / she / it / they know where to find me, in other words.

And so I have begun. I take lots of notes on 4 x 6 cards as I go through reading the book We've Got Blog. It's slow going, since I keep getting more and more ideas about the book I'm going to write, and I have to pause and write out notes about that before I can go back to writing notes about WGB and underline stuff and write in the margins.

And here's another thing about the book-to-come: I'm going to do it all myself. Why? Because I feel a compelling need to, that's why. More than just a want to, even. I have to show what I can do all on my own. If it's the kind of thing that merits a revision later, then I will accept some input from other people on the revision, but that will come later on.

For now, I need to get my ideas out as quickly and as well as I can, and frankly it would slow me down considerably to have to listen to someone else's opinions about what I'm writing, especially since I imagine most of the discussions would go something like this:

"Hey Beth, you should say something about ."

"I have a whole chapter about ."

"Hmmm, but you left out ."

"That's because I'm focusing on other things. Leave me alone, write your own darn book! Argh!"

And then subsequently I'd be going round in circles in my head, losing my original vision, as I wonder to myself "What if they're right and I really should go into huge detail about and all that?" and the dang book would *never get finished*.

Bah! Just deride me as another fool who thinks she's a mad, lone genius or something. Snicker away while I write, and then we'll chat after you've read my book, okay? I just don't have the time to deal with criticism about a work that isn't complete yet.

[ my site ] 2002-07-18

More posts tomorrow: I promise.

[ books my site random thoughts ] 2002-07-10

One of these days: I will return to writing more interesting weblog entries. Really.

You know, when I have like, leisure time. True leisure time, meaning that it's earned. Meaning that I have a job that can pay the rent and feed me and pay for my medical insurance.

These are things I cannot pay for right now. I can't afford squat. We're broke. Like, busted broke.

I went to a temp agency yesterday, and signed on with them. Not sure if they'll be able to get me anything, though. Sigh. This economy sure sucks.

Yesterday I went to the library, and got four books. One was "Interface Culture", which looked interesting in the library but seemed too hype-filled when I got home. The author seemed totally keen on showing off how well-read and smart he was, and he didn't seem to be making any real points. Bah. I flipped through it and I won't waste time reading it.

Another one was "Pragmatic Programming", which I thought would be good, but seemed to be common sense for managers of programmers, and it made me want to gag after flipping through it. Also goes to the "not gonna read it" pile.

The other two were on Greek mythology, and I made myself dizzy reading a *ton* and filling my head until it was so full that myths were spilling out my ears. I even *took notes* on 4 x 6 notecards. If that's not a sign that I'm crazy, I dunno what is. :)

Then I researched some mythy stuff on the web, until I felt really dizzy (and noticed how often people just plagiarize other sites). Also I learned that there are 23432433 versions of most of these myths, and that there is not "one true version" of most of them.

That is, there's only a fog of possibilities - these things changed so much over time, because different people had different points to make when they told the story, so they skewed it for their purposes, leaving parts out, embellishing other parts, and making stuff up because it suited them.

Kinda like modern times, only less trackable. :)

Anyway, that's what I learned yesterday. I feel I have a decent basic grounding in Greek myths, at least some of the most commonly known ones. Which is something I didn't have before. So I made progress.

[I notice myself using sentence fragments more these days. Part of me rebels, but the part of me that scans the text insists that the fragments make sense and are more readable than the otherwise achingly long and convoluted sentences that I tend to write. So that part is starting to win more. Good god, I'm starting to write more like David Foster Wallace. When I start using constructions like "line's end's end" instead of "end of the end of the line", please throw tomatoes at me until I come to my senses. End of digression.]

[ my site random thoughts ] 2002-06-22

New categories: I'm going to add a few new ones. If you have requests, dear readers, now's the time to convey them to me. I don't want my list of categories to grow too huge (cuz then it would be too darn cumbersome to use).

You'll notice what the new categories are when I post things and attribute those categories to them. So it'll be a gradual thing.

This is just an FYI, I s'pose.

[ my site ] 2002-06-03

On hiatus: Beth is away in Colorado. None of the Above will return when she does.

[ design my site ] 2002-04-24

Daniel is spiffy: He made this thing called slug so that I can post entries to my weblog from its own application. An interesting thing, I believe...

[ animals design my site ] 2002-04-24

New kittens! Yes, that's right, we've got four new freshly-minted kittens!

One's calico, one's black (or tabbyish) and white, and two are white. No idea on the genders, we're trying to leave them and their mom alone.

Except for the infrared spy-cam we've got trained on her and her latest litter, that is.

Anyone want one?

[ my site ] 2002-04-11

Er. I redid my website. That is, the home page. Not this page yet, obviously.

In the void, you can see some ideas of things I'm thinking of adding to my site later.

First I have to work on my database content management thingie, though.

I'm tired. I've been wrestling with those dang tables and I actually even used a style sheet this time.

I think I'll go outside and warm up for awhile. Yeah.

(yes, I still have tons more updating to do)

[ my site weblogs ] 2002-03-21

Welcome to MovableType... None of the Above has been migrated to Movabletype as of today; Horizon has been retired.

[ my site weblogs ] 2002-02-18

I redid the weblog list: In the left column there, I went through and moved some things around, deleted a few that were 404 (or that I never read), and added some new ones.

Ahh, I look forward to some new juicy reading! :)

[ my site ] 2001-11-14

You may have noticed the title change. Yes, that's right, after more than a year, I finally decided to implement a Real Name for my blog. "Just a Log" was just an interim name, and I kept putting off changing it.

So I like the new name. It sort of describes this thing. One may ask, "Is it a journal? A log? A diary? Random spew?" Well, it's None of the Above. Which means that it's not limited strictly to any of those (or other) categories, so it can freely float among them. It's nebulous, in other words. Plus there are other interesting meanings that I like... I'll write more about it some other time. Right now, I've got to get going before the traffic becomes truly painful.

[ my site ] 2001-11-06

The box o doom queries me: two questions:

Will you write the novel on the web?

To which I reply: Yes!!! Though I probably won't release any of it until I'm done. I'm too shy about brainstorming results, idea lists, and other messiness. For that matter, I almost feel physical pain every time I let a typo slip, so I know I want to give it at least one really good last reading before I let anyone see it.

Plus, I reserve the right to change my mind and switch everything around, change characters' names, and delete huge chunks until the very end. I don't want anyone getting attached to a given version and getting annoyed with me for changing it. :)

Question two:

Where can I find the Ron Paul statement?

Ahh, dang it! I somehow forgot to do the link originally. I have gone back and inserted it, and in case you don't want to scroll down, just follow this one.

[ my site ] 2001-08-28

Time for flooding: Yes, that's right, I am finally writing again after umpteen days of relative quietude, much as the Texas sky has recently spilled torrents of water onto this overheated landscape. I think something weird has been up with my medications - I end up in a brain state in which words are trapped inside me. :(

I know that sounds odd. Let me explain a bit: I think to myself "gee, I want to say that or write that, it's a good/interesting thought", but there just isn't enough energy available to actually get it *out* of me. Strange. And annoying.

But after a slump towards the end of last week, I'm feeling decidedly better now. I think part of that has been spending more time on my own. I had been hanging out a bit too much at Anthony's house, and there just isn't much for me to do there. Watching tv isn't even much of a decent option since he only gets a very few cable channels, anyway.

So... I'm going to try to do a braindump of a bunch of stuff I've been holding onto in my head for weeks. Let's see how it goes (and of course, this will probably appear at the end of the list instead of at the beginning, as read from the top. Oh well).

[ my site ] 2001-08-21

One Whole Megabyte! Daniel tells me that the database for my weblog has finally reached 1 Meg. Yippee! I guess it's a sort of milestone...

[ mental my site ] 2001-07-21

Happy birthday to my weblog! Well okay, it was actually a couple o days ago. So sue me. I'm pretty proud of myself for keeping this going so long. I like it a lot.

[gee, that sounds profound]

Seriously, I think it's been good for me to keep a bit of a record of things. If anyone else likes reading it, that's a bonus. I like that my family reads it, because it becomes a bit of a way for us to keep in touch - it contains a lot of the casual stuff I'd say to them if we were able to spend more time together in person.

I dunno what else to say. Guess I'll keep doing this as long as it seems worthwhile, which I think it will. Things have really changed character since I had my mental health escapade (during the last four months or so). Maybe it'll eventually settle back more towards the way it was, as I get ever closer to whatever passes for "normal" for me.

Seriously, you should be glad I didn't write about all the odd ideas I've had along this strange journey. I certainly am glad I didn't write about all of them in my weblog. I do feel, however, that I have a lot of material to write about in the coming years. I feel as though I've had twenty years' worth of perspective poured into my head in the span of a few months. But there's no need to rush it, of course. :)

[ my site ] 2001-06-25

Horrors: Daniel added reverse-sorting capability to the all entries version of my weblog (for those who are into chronologically sorted exhausting detail).

[ my site ] 2001-06-07

I updated some stuff: specifically, my home page and my about page, since they were so egregiously out of date. I actually did the home page awhile back, and then re-did it today.

Sad, really, how I just let things slip (all my projects & stuff). Oh well. Someday I'll get back to them. Or not. It doesn't really matter.

[ my site ] 2001-05-16

From the box o doom: come two very nice entries that made me feel pretty good (as compared with the nastiness I got awhile back). Here's #1:

:) Just wanted to let you know that I love your site, and your musings, and wish you the best of luck managing the bits and pieces that bipolar can cause. My friend Noah also is manic depressive and I know that often the darkness and the genius go hand in

I'm supposing the word "hand" was left off inadvertently at the end (or perhaps it was "foot" ha ha). Anyway, thank you - it helps to know there are other people who manage to make it through this illness. I am having quite a bit of darkness these days, but it depends on the time of day. When I'm low, I feel incapable of even taking care of myself.

I greatly look forward to the time when this particular depression passes and I can feel "normal" again for awhile (similar to how I've been for the last four years). I'm convinced that getting a good job is part of that recovery, but I have to wait until my summer travel is done with (sometime in July, or else after Burning Man in September). Geez, that's a long time to go without a job. *sigh*. I'll figure something out.

Here's the other bit someone sent via the box o doom:

I found your weblog via davidchess. You're quite amazing. If I were about forty years younger, I'd probably ask you to marry me...

Oh *wow*! I'm totally blushing and utterly flattered. Why, thank you. :) And you realize, of course, that you *can* just send me email if you want to...

I'm kind of floored that someone can think so well of me at a time when I feel so low, like all I do is spew drivel here about how I'm feeling ("I feel good.", "I feel bad.", repeat ad infinitum).

Guess it just goes to show how warped my perspective gets when I'm in the grips of my darker moods. Alas.

Anyway, I'm glad I decided to keep the box o doom. For awhile there when I kept getting nastygrams, I almost decided to ditch it, but I'm glad now that I didn't.

[ mammalog mental my site rants ] 2001-04-05

Really nasty doom-o-gram: Someone has a bug in their hind end about me, and decided to take it out on me via the box o doom. If this continues, I may discontinue the thing. I mean, how incredibly rude. But whatever, sometimes I'm rude too. Here's what they wrote, with my responses:

Just tuned into your site. At first you really pissed me off. As a North Reading employee I was offended that you would complain about having to work during our snow storm.
Actually, I was complaining about *other people* having to work *on the phones* during the snowstorm. For me, it didn't change much. But it was one of those gripes about what has to happen, not a gripe saying that it shouldn't ever have to happen.
Maybe we could go back and count how many days Austin was closed for ice storms the past 10 years and how many times North Reading was closed due to snow.
By all means, let us count. The Austin site hasn't been open for 10 years yet, though, I don't think.
I think Austin was closed 2-3 times more often.
I disagree. Ice storms don't even happen every year in Austin, more like once every several years. Snowstorms tend to happen at least once a year up there.
And then you complain about the number of sick days the company allows -
They asked me for my opinion, explicitly, in the work/life survey, and then repeatedly prodded me via email to fill the thing out - they were *begging* for my opinion. I just suggested it would be cool to be able to pool them if both parents work at IBM, even as I recognized that HR rules would probably preclude this. Yeesh. Part of my problem was that it wasn't my fault I had to take so many sick days - Spencer couldn't take many because he was A) unable to drive and B) too stressed and overworked to miss even one day. Only one of those is IBM's fault (and even then, only partially).
but weren't YOU the one taking advantage of the company while you were avoiding your job responsibilities?
Yes, I am the most horrible person in the world because I slacked off at work and then decided to leave. Listen, I didn't feel very good about it, but even my guilty feelings couldn't compel me to actually do much work. Call it a personal failing, if you like. At least I finally had the guts to quit when I felt I couldn't honestly work anymore. It would have been easy to do the bare minimum and keep pulling in big paychecks, trust me. Is it really my fault that it took so long for them to notice that I wasn't doing much? Doesn't an employer have a duty to keep at least cursory track of its employees?
Hey, wait a minute... were you in my group? I'm starting to wonder...
I guess you don't have to worry about any more boring meetings do you?
You're right! I've never felt better. The corporate world just wasn't for me - it was sucking the life out of me. Of course, now I've got different types of challenges, but that's okay too. It's just part of life. I am happy with the trade-off. And I'll still be happy, even if I have to take a job washing dishes for awhile to make ends meet. No big deal - it sure beats the mental slavery of tech support!
Like, I said at first I was pissed. Now I realize you are just a very sick person. You need professional psychiatric help and I suggest you get it - it would be nice if your little girl had a real mother to take care of her.
Oh, my. Oh, dearie, me. Have you been officially appointed by the Powers That Be to rain hellfire down upon me? Anyway, I actually *do* need psychiatric help, but they can't get me an appointment until May 3rd, so go figure. I'm trying to be cooperative, take my medication, and be a patient patient, but there is some worry that my medication might run out before I get seen.
And I am a real mother to my daughter, not a card-board cutout. Sometimes the hardest part of mothering is letting go a little bit, when it's necessary. I know my daughter is safe and well cared for, and I see her as much as I can. This is tough for me - I miss her terribly, but I'm coping to the best of my ability right now.
Having strangers judge my mothering ability, not to mention mental stability, certainly doesn't make it any easier. I guess you should be proud of yourself - the hurt you intended to cause has hit its mark. Congratulations. Are you happy?
And are you going to send me a link to your website so I can judge you the same way you judged me? I doubt it.

They later added this:

My apologies. My last comment really should have been something more like: - it would be nice if your little girl had you around to take care of her in the future. If you don't get yourself put together this might be a problem.
For what it's worth, I *AM* put together. I feel better than I have ever felt in my life - more in control, more whole, more confident, more able to get things done, more empathetic, less afraid, less bogged down in depressive emotions. Why do you feel that you are in any position to judge my mental state? Geez...
I guess it's one of those things - spend any time in a mental ward and have the guts to admit it and not be ashamed, and the world thinks you're nutso forever more. I'm not nuts, Mr. Or Ms. Anonymous Judger. I'm saner than I've ever been.

Time will tell if this is typical of what I get in the box o doom. Maybe I will remove it, and require those who wish to insult me to at least go to the trouble of faking a return address.

What's with people these days? Why must they be so unkind? Why must they kick other people when they're down?

You know what? If this person were down, I wouldn't kick 'em the way they kicked me. If they had a mental health "episode" and had to get help, I wouldn't assume that they were always unstable afterwards. I'd have compassion for the difficulty they went through, and I'd do my best to be understanding, or at least non-judging.

If this person lost custody of their child, I wouldn't belittle their parenting ability - I'd feel bad for them and their family having to go through such a difficulty.

There are just some topics that you really, *really* shouldn't attack someone on. It's called "tact".

I used to lack it quite a bit myself, but I'm getting better. I hope the Anonymous Judger eventually gets better too, but first they have to want to...

[ my site rants ] 2001-04-04

I removed hydrant.jpg: from my cow orker humor page, because the guy who took the picture was hassling me. Apparently, he doesn't want to share.

I am amazed that he has so much free time to go around chasing down people who have copied his picture. I mean, really. Is this causing him lost income? No.

Apparently, this picture is so important to the advancement of humanity that it must be protected at all costs. Whatever.

I took it down. I hope he's happy. You'll just have to make a picture in your own mind of a bmw with the windows knocked out and a firehose going through the car, attached to the hydrant that the car is illegally parked in front of. I know, it's causing you great distress, isn't it?

Dang, I'm in a snotty mood. I even responded flammably to an imminent flamefest on a list I'm on. Some *ahem* poorly informed woman claimed that nipple confusion doesn't exist because she hasn't seen it, then disingenuously claimed not to be wanting to start a flame war. Uh huh. So I was moved to post that I didn't believe in Tibet or gall bladder disease either, since I'd never seen them.

Yeah, I changed my list options to "read on the web" so my mailbox won't get flooded.

What's with people? They can be such idiots at times.

Myself included.

[ my site ] 2001-04-04

I rolled my own: weblog software, that is. Over at birthsupport.com, one o my other sites. It's only rudimentary, of course, and the formatting is all boring and default-ish, so please be gentle. There's barely even any content there.

But, but but but, it marks a milestone for me, and I'm proud of it. I've got several key things implemented:

three datatypes: article, weblog, and logentry
three linkage types (actually six, if you consider their reciprocal versions separately): left column (99/1), right column (98/2), bottom section (97/3). And they work!
ability to edit stuff (only for me, only when I'm logged in)
permalinks for each separate entity in the database (not shown all the time, depends on conditions)

More coming soon, tomorrow is to be a Coding Day. I'll get up, code & write about what I've done and what I'll do (and probably start a weblog to chart my progress), then when my mind feels mushy I'll go into town, go for a hike, then either swim or take my boat out for a spin, then take care of errands, then spend some time with Elena, then come home, eat something healthy, read, practice my guitar, and go to sleep.

Hmm, there's actually not that much time for coding - I'll have to see how the day goes. Maybe Thursday will be more of a coding day, since I probably won't have to go into town at all.

[ good my site ] 2001-03-07

Category coolness! Daniel has updated my weblog categories page so you can see how many entries are in each category! Or rather, I think the whole thing is now dynamically generated and this ability to the number of entries in each category is part of the overall new spiffiness.

Of course, now that the numbers are available, I have to notice which one has the most entries - I feared it was "rants", but I was very happy to realize it was in fact "good". Here's a rundown of the top few (as of the moment before I composed this one):

good - 74
rants - 62
beauty - 57
humor - 48

Interesting. I'm not sure what it all means, but I'm glad that rants is not on top, somehow. The next few, in order, are: "consume", "my site", and "design". I have no idea what that means, either.

Ah, well. Keep in mind one entry can appear in many categories, too. And there's certainly nothing to prevent me from making entries in seemingly orthogonal categories - I could easily write a rant about something good, for instance.

Once I get this puppy moved over to thirdhand, sometime in the next few (-ish) months, I will have an even more powerful category system. Fear ye, fear ye: my output shall mightily increase once I finally have a good place for all my data!

[ good my site ] 2001-03-06

Exciting morning: Yes, that's right, I've been modifying shell variables so that using vi and more (well, less) and elm is less aggravating for me. I'm sure you're thrilled.

So I had to page through many man pages, figure out how to do a custom prompt for less, and so on. Here are the results of my labors:

# make pager sane, dammit!
setenv LESS "-e -P %f  %pb\% (page %db of %D)"

# fix reply-to addy
setenv REPLYTO beth@bethroberts.com

# make happy vi sessions
setenv EXINIT 'set wm=5 tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 autoindent'

# more or less the same thing
alias more 'less'

You realize all this futzing about is because I can't do any substantive work on my project while I'm sitting here in the office. Because then they could say that they owned it. So really, I have done all the work on it at home. Honestly.

I don't think twiddling shell variables counts as substantive work on the project... I hope IBM's lawyers agree.

Which reminds me of the employment agreement I signed when I came here, which purported to attempt to claim that anything I did during any hour of any day while I worked for Lotus would be their property. Heh. I don't think so...

And come to think of it, I now remember the little clause I added on a separate page before I signed it, saying that the existing and ongoing work on my project was not subject to this agreement.

And the scope of the project that I mentioned there is much larger than the thirdhand project, actually. Thirdhand is just a stepping stone to what that project is all about - it's just the informational architecture that will eventually be used for some rather interesting purposes. Well, if I ever get it working, mind you. I certainly may fail.

The project I've been aiming at for years is nothing other than the Holy Grail of Computing: ai. This is the part where you're supposed to laugh and snort your beverage through your nose, then shake your head and say "She's nuts". It's okay, I think so too. :)

But on some days.... some days, I have an inkling I just might be on to something. I guess we'll see. Give me ten years, I might have a fraction of something worthwhile by then, okay?

[ good my site ] 2001-03-03

Morning coding update: I'll just keep adding to this as the morning goes on, rather than make zillions of entries. It looks like I've got a couple/few hours to work with this morning, so I got up, grabbed a Pepsi, and here I go. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is serenading me right now, and it's putting me in the right mood. :)

First goal: make generalized tool to add new data types to the database, since I'm going to be doing this a lot

Second goal: abandon first goal (this entry is about three hours after the first bullet point). The first goal just isn't necessary, I realized, since I'm getting so much better at my sql commands, so it's just easier to massage the database manually.

I made my very own weblog! That is, I built the code myself, and it works! I'm so incredibly thrilled!
Okay, so it's rudimentary, so what? I can add new entries (and nobody else can), I've got permalinks, I can edit the text at the top online.... yee freakin ha!

There is still so much to be done, of course, but I've made so much progress in one day, that I can see that I really honestly will be able to do this! I feel so creatively powerful. And uh... exhausted. :) I need a big-ass nap, I tell ya.

More updates as they occur. Next up: streamlining, cleaning up, chopping up re-usable bits of code so they can be... re-used. Then: adding more features to the weblog specifically and the whole db in general, including the Magnificent Power of Relative-focus Linking, and spit-to-html capability, which will help ease some of the strain on the db for pages that do not need to be quite as dynamic (such as those burned to cd, where there is no web server at all, such as for a photo archive!).

Looking back up at my bullet list, I consider that it is good that I am the kind of person who is able to quickly abandon lines of action that do not seem to be fruitful. In the end, this makes me more efficient. All due to the programmer's virtue of Laziness (plus a dose of Impatience). I think I'm ready to start moving towards the third virtue, Hubris. It's been awhile since I learned of the three Sacred Virtues, back when I bought my holy Camel Book...

Okay, rambling, sorry, need sleep, must remove butt from chair...

[ good my site ] 2001-03-03

Ahhh, success! Wow, I got a lot more done, even. Now I've got authentication really working with a form (instead of the bs browser password window thing that I hate), and I can change my password! Utter coolness.

And I password-protected all my little scripts that can actually affect the database (adding and editing tidbits, and adding users), so rogues don't go in there and mess with it. :)

Okay, it's entirely too late (or rather, too early in the morning, and I haven't slept), but I'm actually rather hopeful that I will soon have my weblog hosted with code that I've written myself. There will be much rejoicing!

What's odd is that even though I'm soooo tired, I can tell I've been getting more efficient as the night has gone on... Heh, cool. And it occurs to me that I'm really going to need to learn more vi commands. I don't really know all that many - enough to get by, but not to work truly efficiently. I'll have to change that, since I'll be doing lots more coding in the future.

G'night already. My left hand is starting to cramp up!

[ my site ] 2001-03-03

I am slowly getting somewhere: emphasis on *slowly*. Gah, it takes me so long to look up every single dang command, it's a wonder I get anything done at all.

Now I'm stuck because for some reason php is making my $id variable null, when I know dang well that I entered a number. Why is it doing this? There must be some trick. This is aggravating, for sure. Sigh.

I need more Pepsi, I'm starting to get sleepy again. At least I'm not freezing cold.

I realized my shell account has the spiffy unix program known as "screen", but I can't get it to work right. I invoke it, then my cursor sits up there at the upper left hand corner, and everything freezes. I end up having to disconnect and reconnect. Weird. I'll be a lot happier once I can start using screen again. Damn, I miss that program. It kicks ass! Control-A space, Control-A space, whooooosh, switching between windows. Sure made life easy. Those were the days, I tell ya.

Guess I'll have to get Chris to beat it into submission for me - he knows so much more about these things than I do. Too bad he's out of town, though. Harrumph!

Ahh well, back to debugging Things That Should Be Trivially Easy...

[ my site ] 2001-03-02

I'm attempting to get some coding done: So I claim, anyway. I'm sitting here with extremely cold hands, having wasted a bunch of time trying to get my stupid webcam working (without success), and in other ways futzing around with my computer.

I stupidly made myself a glass of the Most Sacred Beverage (chocolate goat milk, if you must know), not realizing the somnolent effect it would have. Stupid!

So I just grabbed some Elixir of Life (Pepsi), and I turned up the heat four degrees to see if it will help. I gave up on the webcam. I fixed my tidbit.php program by adding a '}'. I have no idea why I had to add it. For some reason php 3 is more forgiving than php 4. Go fricking figure. Anyway, I printed it out, then realized that it made no sense for me to do so.

On Winamp at the moment: The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas by They Might Be Giants. Cool. Rockin'!

My hands are too damn cold. This is a conspiracy to keep me from doing my Very Important Work, I tell you!

Oh well, I'll just grab my lava lamp and read something until my hands warm up. Sigh.

The goal for tonight: get authentication working. Sanely. I really want to do more, but I must be realistic. Status updates as I go on... hopefully it won't just be a quickly thumped out "I give up, going to sleep".

[ my site ] 2001-03-02

Belated box o doom: Yes, I've been terribly lax in regurgitating entries from the box o doom, but that's what happens to doomed input - terrible, terrible things such as languishing in my inbox. Anyway, here's what we've got at the moment:

Someone writes:
Heaven holds a sense of wonder And I wanted to
...to finish your sentence? By all means, try again, I'm curious to see where this leads...

Another respondent:
It is curious- the space-annihilating power of thought.
Indeed it is, I must agree. Reminds me of the idea I came up with one day, that motion is a magic whereby time is exchanged for distance. Or something like that. Well, it seemed deep to me at the time, but now it just sounds doofy.

And more:
Take advantage of Dr.Dose's Health Tip of the Day, designed to help you live a healthier and happier life.
Ahh, this appears to be a reference to the venerable services of iPing.com, about whose lax security policies which allow easy harrassment I ranted awhile back. For the record, they responded with utter cluelessness to my message.
They came back with something like "Hey, but the service only calls numbers *that people ask it to call*, so it's okay, see?". Yes, I see, and that does nothing to address the fact that any random person can cause any random phone to be rung at any random time, repeatedly.
They assured me that if I got any unwanted calls, I should tell them and they'd make it stop. All well and good for me, since I have internet access and I know who they are, but what of, say, somebody's poor Grandma who's getting fifty calls a day or something, and who has never even used a web browser?
Ahh well, I hope they get duly flayed in RISKS soon, and the RISKS members are moved enough to beat them over the head with a clue-by-four until they learn how to require an email address verification, at the very least.

Next:
The woman looked ruefully at the translucent plastic container in the freezer. In it were the remnants of the meatloaf they had shared that last night - was it just three weeks ago? - when some small annoyance spiralled out of control, when their words became sharp and spiteful, when she shouted things that she knew she should not, when he turned, wordless, scooping up his coat and slamming the door behind him.
The woman dropped the container into the trash, not bothering even to open it. And when it hit with a violent sound she stood there, breathing shallowly for a moment. Then tears came unwanted to her eyes and she cried, at first bracing herself against the counter and, when her arms shook and her sobs turned to anguish, collapsing, her knees colliding hard with the tiles, and her arms wrapping around herself as her body shook in hoarse gasps for what seemed like forever.
From the front room came the sound of a key in the lock and the muffled clack of a door opening. "Mia?"
The Infamous Mia's aura of mystery reveals a small glimpse...
Oddly, I've had a bit of a similar experience, though quite different. I remember vividly early on when Spencer and I were dating, when we had a big fight and afterwards I waited to put the passenger seat in my car back to its full upright position, because I liked the laid-back way he had left it. It was a small remembrance of him, and I didn't want to get rid of it.
But then there was a decisive day when I realized we were probably going to break up, and I decided "Screw it. It's over, then." and I reached over, grabbed the handle, and put the seat back to its normal position.
But somehow, we didn't break up (well, not then, anyway). I guess we had enough inertia built up by then - we just kept seeing each other. But inertia won't carry you forever, you know - friction eventually saps your kinetic energy, converting it to wasted heat.
Er. There's something there that I'm not ready to say outright, yet. So just... read into it what you will. :/

Speaking of freezer stories, Sarah Bruner of syrup dot org just happened to write up a particularly ghastly one in her journal (under the entry at 02.04.01, sorry no permalink). One of her roommates, some kind of artist, had kept a dead cat in her freezer. Because he wanted to make something out of it later. Oh, my. Dearie me. That just brings Freaky Roommate Stories to a whole nother level, doesn't it?

Back to more doomed stuff:
down the rabbit hole of delight - that's a great phrase
Why, thank you! Props to Lewis Carroll, of course, who gave us so many lovely metaphors to play with.

An inquiring respondent asks, in reference to my claim that I was neither dead nor missing:
How do you know that you are not dead? Or missing?
Dang, you got me there. I just had this odd hunch that if I were dead, the afterlife would not closely resemble taking care of a barfy toddler at home, but I could be totally erroneous in my assumptions.
And if I were missing, I would guess that being lost in a place that looked *exactly* like my house carried extremely remote odds, but in a similar manner, I grant that I certainly could have been entirely mistaken. Or hallucinating.
But if that's the kind of thing I hallucinate about - staying at home with a small cute pitiful sick person, doing repeated loads of vomit-covered laundry, then I really need to work on my hallucination skills.
Perhaps psychoactive drugs would help?

More doom:
http://www.acme.com/heartmaker/ayc/
Oh. Geez. So I was completely unoriginal with my little "YOUR BASE" candy heart thing. Ah well, I guess this is the result when you have a temperament like mine such that you only go for trendy stuff once it has become so passe that you can be considered ironic when you refer to it.
If I weren't so lazy, I'd put an accent on that 'e' in the previous sentence that cries out for one, but I am, so I won't.

The last one:
And we are eager to know... did you do it? {inw}
Yes! I have done it, as mentioned in the log entry immediately preceding this one (scroll down, I'm too lazy to make a link). And the response so far has been: silence.
But I did learn something lovely from my pal Jeanmarie - apparently one of the people who left my group about a year ago has been seeking a way to get back in, and various bureaucratically-tangled plans have been discussed. She was (and is, I'm sure) an extremely competent and very amiable person, so I would be thrilled if my exit allows her to smoothly re-enter this role. She is, after all, several orders of magnitude more qualified than any other potential applicants, having done what I'm doing for several years, plus additional duties.
So, assuming that the bureaucrats are clever enough to allow the easy refilling of an open "req" for my position, everything should turn out quite happily in the end!
But these are bureaucrats, mind you, and occasionally they get a little too excited about that "improving Profitability" thing, and so unwisely decide that an open slot should close, unfilled. This then dooms the rest of the team to struggle along, shorthanded, groaning under the strain, while the bureaucrat shuts their door so they don't have to hear the noise, and is rewarded with additional stock options, or a nicely framed little certificate or something.
Lovely little system we've got going here, eh?
Oh, sorry, *THEY*. See, I'm not stuck in it anymore, muahahahahhahaha!!! Well okay, two weeks. Two short little weeks. Oh yeah, and three of the ten days, I'm not gonna be here - I'm taking time off to attend sxsw. HA!

[ my site ] 2001-02-28

Someone doesn't like me: So they sent me an extremely rude and snotty (DEAD LINK) e-card.

Um.

Ooooooooooooookay.

I wish this kind of thing didn't bother me, but it does somewhat. It does hurt to realize that a total stranger thinks that you're a pile of shit, so to speak.

I guess this is an exercise for me to learn how to not take things personally, even when they're aimed that way. :/

So I shall endeavor to be like a duck, and let this be like water falling off my back...

[ my site ] 2001-02-07

Belated doomed feedback: I'm such a doofus, I forgot to check my box o doom email lately, and I found a message from this weekend - apparently someone was worried that my lack of posting meant I was gone:

Beth? Oh Beth? Are you there? Have you left us forever to sit at our computers, forelorn at your disappearance, wondering what we did to offend you?

Fear not, Reader - I was merely busy. Often at home on the weekends, I don't make any entries. But you can rest assured that I'm probably doing fun, adventurous, log-entry-worthy things and saving them up for a flurry of posting on Monday.

[ my site ] 2001-02-05

Yes, that's a Linux pin: That Bob the pets.com sock puppet is wearing on my web cam today. It's got Tux the penguin in a little blue bow tie & blue jacket, and it says "ibm.com/linux" underneath. Spiffy!

Someone came by earlier handing the things out, so I thought I'd let Bob wear mine...

[ mammalog my site ] 2001-01-26

First Box O Doom Cavalcade! I promised I'd share the results of my first box o doom poll this week, and so I shall. I didn't get many responses, largely because I failed to alter the left column to show the questions right near the box o doom itself. The questions only appeared in one log entry, so they were largely missed. Daniel promises to fix things so I can edit the left column at will without bugging him, so it should improve soon.

To recap, here were the questions:

What's the oldest thing in your freezer right now? (if you can identify it)
How long has it been there? (if known)
What are your plans for the future for this item? (if you have any)

Our first respondent answers:

Oldest thing in my freezer is a bottle of Absolut Kurant. it has been there for about three months. It contains roughly half an ounce of vodka which I plan to consume sometime today or tomorrow. Then I will give the bottle to someone who is collecting bottles.

Sounds quite lovely, for those who are fans of vodka. (I'm not among them, alas). Speaking of Absolut, I'd have to say they are one of the few entities who have succeeded in blurring the line between advertising and art (along with Andy Warhol and honorable mention for certain Nike commercials (not any of the recent ones, though, imho)).

On to respondent two:

Oldest thing: korean lychee gel candies, at least 6 months, and we're all waiting with bated breath to see what happens to it.

Ahh, fascinating! I've never had any of these candies myself, though I've seen them in oriental grocery stores (while I was shopping for Pocky, of course). Bonus points for correct usage and spelling of the word "bated" by this respondent!!!

I'm afraid I only got those two responses. Ah, well, if you feel you missed out, feel free to share your intriguing answers to these questions three in the box o doom at the left there.

Now, drumroll please.... my very own answers to these questions three:

The oldest thing in my freezer is a placenta, that which sustained my daughter before she was born. It's been in there for about 21 months, and we brought it with us when we moved (so it's not literally the same freezer). We plan to bury it eventually.
Before Elena was born, we learned how hospitals will sell the things to cosmetics companies to make money (ew), and we decided we weren't too keen on that. We also learned how some people will actually cook and eat the thing (ew), and we decided without hesitation that we were extremely not keen on that.
And we also learned how some folks will bury the placenta under a tree, so that it will help the tree grow, and you can show the child the tree when they are old enough to understand, and tell them of their special connection with the tree. We liked that idea a lot.
And we heard of yet another way to dispose of a placenta, which was that according to some nonspecific Native American tradition, it was customary to bury the placenta by the threshold of the door of the house. The story goes, this was so the child would always be able to find her way back home. We liked this idea very, very much as well. Almost brings a tear to my eye to think of it, really.
Our doorways are fronted by a porch & sidewalk on one end and a deck on the other, so we'll probably go the tree route. We've got three magnificent pecan trees that generously shade our house, so we'll probably choose one of those. And we'll probably do it in Spring sometime, when we're out gardening and so forth.
The only thing I worry about is: how deep do we have to bury it to avoid random urban critters (dogs, cats, raccoons, possums) wanting to, uh, dig it up and make a mess? Anyone have any advice on a minimum recommended depth? Please share via the box o doom if you would be so kind (or via email).

Okay, after two back-to-back placenta-filled entries, I promise I won't mention them again for awhile. Apologies to those of you who are nauseous right now. But remember, you wouldn't be here if it weren't for the honorable work of your placenta! So don't knock 'em too hard, they are essential for each of us.

[ design good my site ] 2001-01-24

Posted an update: To thirdhand, since the poor thing is in limbo right now. I am itching to get the thing finished - there's so much content I want to add to my site(s), but it would be largely pointless to do it before I have the thirdhand infrastructure to hold it.

And it really will be cool. Really. I think this could be something big and powerful and innovative enough that I might be able to make some kind of living off of licensing it someday. Maybe.

I could be wrong, though. And if I'm wrong, then I'll still have the coolest informational structure on the web. :)

[ my site ] 2001-01-22

The pets.com sock puppet has a new gig: Or at least, *mine* does. That's right, Bob has taken the job of acting as my stand-in when I feel too shy to show my own face on my web-cam (hey, I had to be here early for a meeting, so I didn't get a shower...)

Since he's been out of work awhile, he's used the time to develop a deep and abiding interest in recreational mathematics. He's made friends with my Klein bottle, and calls it "Klein". His code name for Klein is "the tabby cat", so when he gleefully says, "I'm here to play with the tabby cat!", I know that it's his new buddy Klein that he's looking for. (You see, he knows that his doggie pals just wouldn't understand his new interest in topology, and would consider him a nerd or something, so he has to use a code-name for Klein to avoid suspicion).

Bob really seems to love Klein, but I'd have to say it's a very one-sided relationship.

[ my site rants the net ] 2001-01-19

I sent her a reply: As follows:

I didn't read your site [again], but I did get some really uncool email from people who think you're wonderful. I dunno if you asked them to do this, or suggested it, or what, but the hypocrisy level is pretty high, as is the personal insult level. Including some very pointed attacks on my mother's housekeeping skills - my mother who was incredibly weak from battling breast cancer. Gee, how nice of them. Are you glad to know that some of your supporters behave in this way?
Of course it sucks having your stuff ripped off, especially without credit. I totally agree with that, as I wrote in my email to you. I just think it's a bit absurd to try to have an impossible level of control on the web, where data duplication is the rule, rather than the exception. To me, it's a lot easier and less hassle to just share in the first place. If I write or create something that someone finds useful/good/pretty, then I'm happy to let them use it (as long as they don't make a profit on it). I recognize the right of others to differ on their views, of course. It just seems a bit harsh and cold to me, especially the extreme degree to which you take it, forbidding "imitation". That's the most strict copyright notice I've ever seen, anywhere on the net - that's why I felt moved to say something about it.
I have to confess I laughed out loud at the irony of your copyright site getting ripped off. But then again I am a big fan of certain kinds of irony. I believe there are other sites with copyright info that *are* freely distributable, so people probably just assumed (incorrectly) that yours was as well. You might consider making the whole thing a bit shorter, or putting the "do not copy this" text at the top rather than buried further down, so that people will at least be sure to be aware of your policies.
Just out of curiosity, do you forbid Google from indexing (and caching) your sites? You might want to look into it if you are really totally against all forms of unauthorized copying. I'm not sure exactly how preventing it is done, but I believe it's possible. I read somewhere that the Google cache has actually saved several sites from destruction, because their host or internet provider lost all their data. They were able to get everything back from the Google cache - it functioned as a very good unofficial backup. So copying isn't *always* all bad. (in my opinion, anyway)
When it comes down to it, attempting to keep everything you create on the web from being copied at all or even imitated is just a losing battle. You're bound to be frustrated repeatedly by people who don't bother to ask for permission (and who may genuinely be ignorant, not malicious). They may even do it for good causes, to promulgate beliefs which you share (such as the sanctity of copyright, for example). Being unfriendly towards them is just shooting yourself in the foot, really.
And literally speaking, when someone accesses one of your webpages, all of the data is "copied" to their machine instantly, before they have a chance to even read your copyright statement (and before they even decide whether they want to read the whole page). Copying in this fashion is how the web functions...
I wrote *about* your email on my weblog, but I didn't quote anything. You definitely succeed in having quite a chilling effect - not sure if this is your goal, or what. Is having people terrified of you and what you might do to them (like sue them) worth the price of not having your stuff scarfed? Or maybe you consider it a bonus.
-Beth
p.s. you can freely reprint or quote this email, provided context is not lost or abused in order to change my meaning.

[ my site rants weblogs ] 2001-01-19

Gee, I seem to have started a flamewar: Well, the lovely lady I sent my nastygram to yesterday sent me a reply. I dare not quote even one word of it, of course, because she might sue me. She even said something about how she *could* sue me, because her law firm has an office in Texas, in the email, and then below claimed to be joking. I don't really feel like taking the risk, though.

So, she also tracked down my site and my weblog, and apparently wrote about it in her weblog too. Now I'm getting nastygrams from her readers, too!

Lovely.

So.... #1 is from a fellow who uses the following epithets towards me and my rant (directly and obliquely):

loser
"look like a real idiot"
lacking credibility
obnoxious
lacking class
not intelligible
"a spoiled kid throwing a tantrum"
pathetic

Gee, nice tone! Makes what I wrote to her look darn mild. This writer also tells me that it was not appropriate for me to bring her kid into my little rant. Heh. Ooooookay. I thought it was pretty benign, and I didn't say anything except "cute kid" in the email that I sent directly to her. She had to sleuth and find my weblog to read the other comments, which she presumably did willingly (I didn't give her the address).

But anyway, we'll return to this topic later, since evidently it's okay to bring in *my mother* and the status of the cleanliness of her house into this whole thing, at least according to another of this illustrious lady's readers.

#2 comes from someone who thinks that it's not the lack of Pepsi that caused me to write my rant, but rather lack of Prozac. Oh, dearie me. I hate Prozac, haven't touched the stuff in years. Zoloft is another story, but I am also weaning myself off of that at the same time as I'm reducing my caffeine level to something more reasonable.

But I surmise that this person was attempting to insult me by suggesting that my mental state was not normal. Sorry, didn't work - I *know* my mental state isn't quite normal, and I'm not stigmatized by the idea of taking an SSRI.

This person goes on to explain what a wonderful person the copyright lady is, and how she's done so much for people who don't want their artwork & stuff stolen from their sites. Okay, that's great! Good for all of ya. Nothing wrong with that.

I don't really see how that has anything to do with me being annoyed with the attitude expressed in her forbidding even "imitation" of anything at her site(s), though. I saw something that annoyed me, and I told the source why I felt it seemed unreasonable and unfriendly to me, and why I wouldn't visit her sites in the future. But apparently this makes me some kind of demon worthy of any kind of insult that people care to sling at me.

Let us continue with more of #2. I am accused of jealousy (uh, in yer dreams), of attacking her "out of the blue" (um, isn't any feedback on any website, positive or negative, from "out of the blue" by definition unless you already know the person?) (and isn't this author's email attacking *ME* "out of the blue"?), and a suggestion is made that I may be in for "tons" of email defending the copyright lady. I'm sure my employer will be happy with the stress on the email system if it really amounts to "tons" (since bits don't weigh anything, how many messages is that, anyway?). I would just like to suggest that sending me "tons" of mail at my work address is something that is likely to make IBM upset. At you. So I would suggest using one of my other addresses.

I'm also told that I'm missing out on her lovely websites (okay, whatever, somehow I'll get over it by reading the other billion or so pages on the web), that I'm a sad individual (this is true sometimes - I do suffer from blue moods at times, don't we all?), I should be ashamed of myself, and I have "no heart, no shame and certainly no conscience".

The icing on the cake is that this person then chastises me for even *mentioning* her son. This is quite ironic, given the "p.s." to the message, wherein the author proceeds to deride me for the appearance of the room in one of the pictures on my site.

It is suggested that I clean up the house before taking pictures, that there's "crap" all over the place, and other comments including apparent incredulous horror that there are liquor bottles on the mantle, and so on.

That's my mother's house. It was messy because she's been dealing with breast cancer for the past couple of years - chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, the works. She didn't have the strength to tidy things up to someone else's arbitrary specifications, especially when they're just looking for something to insult.

You talk about stooping low, about inappropriate attacks? I call this *way* out of line. I'd like to see the status of the house of the person who wrote me this after *she* had a horrible, debilitating, years-long fight against cancer, and ended up so weak for a time that she couldn't even retrieve her own mail. No, that's not true. I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, even someone who was rude to me. I would just hope that she would realize how out of line those comments were. And how they didn't succeed - you didn't make me feel bad, you just made me realize how uncool people can be when they're looking for *anything* to insult someone about.

Personally, I think this is worse than my nastygram, but I figure each person can decide for themselves.

Oh yeah, and those *are* liquor bottles on the mantle. It's wine, given as a gift to my mother. I fail to see how it's worthy of derision for any reason. Maybe I'm just stupid?

I never thought the choice of where I stood when I asked my mother to take that pic of me would have such ramifications... heh, what a crazy world we live in.

Let's move on to message #3... in which I am called "moronic", and offered this highly ironic advice:

Didn't anyone ever tell you that sometimes it is best to just hit the back button if you see something on a website that you don't like?

Advice which apparently does not apply to the author of this missive.

I am also called "a very unhappy person" (which is true sometimes), and this person seems to think I put the nastygram up on my weblog "proudly...like a badge", and that this is "mentally sick". Uh, I put up all kinds of stuff here, whatever's going on in my life, what I think, see, etc. Some of it I'm genuinely proud of, but other stuff is just stuff, and I don't typically make a clear distinction between the two. Interpretation is left up to the reader.

And further on:

Also, you wrote that you hope that her baby learns how to share. That is the one that really made me want to hurl.

That's right, *how dare I* hope that someone's child learn how to share - what a horrible monstrous person I am to even *think* such a thing, and write it down no less, where people can actually *read* it! If I were truly possessing a black heart, I might also state that it would be nice for any given child to grow up to be generous, or kind-hearted, or loving, or healthy, or smart. But I dare not, for fear of the Hell that would be unleashed by such clear violations of What Is Right.

The next bit of the letter is:

Listen, smartass, you should worry about how your own little girl is going to turn out, especially with a person like you for a mother.

Oh my. For the record, I worry each and every day how she's going to turn out. That's part of my job as her mother - to continually worry and consider and make choices and watch carefully to see how she's doing, adjusting what I do as appropriate to keep her on the right course. Apparently this person thinks I am likely not to be a very good mother - this is my interpretation of these words. Well, history will tell, won't it? Personally, I think I do a rather good job, overall, though I certainly have my bad days, my days of little patience, and times when I am just not sure what to do. It's a tough job.

The letter concludes with a request for me to "get a life". No thanks, already got one!

That's it for now. Anyway, you get the idea of how people will react to such a thing. I confess I am surprised, though not very.

What I find almost amusing is the level of hypocrisy - I am decried for daring to have a difference of opinion and expressing it in a snide, snotty way (I freely admit to this attitude), and the decriers proceed to level bitter personal attacks against me for my crime, far worse than anything *I* did when I suggested that I hoped the copyright lady's son would learn to share when he grew up (unlike his mommy).

But so it is. Make up your mind yourself - am I a cretinous lunatic bitch? Or am I a person who expresses her opinion and who is sometimes snotty, especially when I'm withdrawing from caffeine?

And please, please, pretty please - don't email this lady. Cause it will all come down on *my* head, probably, and I've already got enough email to deal with as it is.

Unless of course you think that she's wonderful and I'm a mentally defective loser, in which case I think she'd probably be glad to get your message, so go for it.

[ good my site rants ] 2001-01-18

Aha! I fixed the caching problem: I asked y'all to help me, but ya didn't, so I had to actually look for my own lazy-ass self. A search at Google for "webcam refresh problem" yielded this handy site which tells me that I needed a meta tag of the "Expires" variety in order to get around IE's idiotic caching even in the face of a Pragma no-cache. Jerks!

What's humorous is Microsoft's recommendation to get around the bug in IE 4.x where it ignores the Pragma no-cache tag - they suggest you add an extra "head" section to your html, below the body and before the closing html tag. I am not making this up.

And for IE 5, they decided not to bother even attempting to support it at all, so you *must* use the meta-expires tag to force it not to cache. Idiots!!!!! Why can't I set this in my user preferences? I *thought* I did, when I told it to check every time I visit the page for any changes. Argh.

[ my site ] 2001-01-17

My webcam is stuck! I dunno why, though. Apparently the webserver is caching the pic or something? I can't tell whether it's just me - maybe my browser's caching it. It wasn't doing this yesterday, though. Not after I added the pragma no-cache thingie in the html. Anyone know how to fix this? Lemme know in the box o doom if you would be so kind.

[ my site ] 2001-01-16

Doh! Before anyone sends me a box o doom message about it, I hereby pledge not to use the phrase "enthralled at the [very] prospect" again for at least three days. I hate it when I get in a diction rut. Sorry.

[ my site ] 2001-01-16

Behold, the BOX O DOOM! It was inevitable - I finally got permalinks, so the next step in the evolution of my log was set: an input box.

So now I have the box o doom there in the left column - feel free to give me feedback of a non-spam sort. Periodically I will ask for specific types of feedback, responses to assorted questions, and so forth. And if you're wondering whether I'll provide a larger version as Steve of Plurp does, the answer is: no. Just cut 'n' paste from your favorite text editor or something - it's really easy. Oh, and feel free to include html tags if it helps me to format your input.

All text entered into the box o doom will meet a perilous fate - either to be ignored forever in the bit bucket, or turned to serve my own devious ends. So enter only text that you are willing to part with.

For the first round, how about a few interesting questions? Please share your answers to the following:

What's the oldest thing in your freezer right now? (if you can identify it)
How long has it been there? (if known)
What are your plans for the future for this item? (if you have any)

After I get some responses (actually, after they start to peter out), I'll post a compendium, including my own fascinating answers to these questions! I know that both of my readers are enthralled at the very prospect.

[ good my site ] 2001-01-15

New Hardware!!!! After three long years, I finally got a new computer at work. It's very fast, very powerful, and I like it very, very much. The monitor isn't here yet, but it should arrive tomorrow.

Now that I have a machine with a USB port, I can run my webcam here at work. So now you can watch me sit on my butt all day in front of my computer. I know, you're enthralled at the prospect - who wouldn't be? :)

Also, I'm having Daniel update the list o blogs at the left, and add a feedback box o doom. Not sure when he'll get to it, but look for the changes soon (plus a new quote - that one up there is oh-so-stale, sorry).

And, I've uploaded the cute pic of Elena in the laundry basket. Enjoy!

[ beauty body good manifesto my site ] 2001-01-09

Things are coming together: It's really quite amazing and lovely. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it all, so I'll just start rattling stuff off...

I have been giving lots of personal importance to this new millenium starting, and at first I thought that I'd consider the winter solstice the beginning of the new year for me. You see, I've always kind of had this idea of using my own calendar, something that made more sense to me. I've never actually done it, mind you, but I think I will now.

So anyway, the solstice came and went and it didn't feel all that special to me. Ditto with the first of the year. The eclipse on Xmas eve and the asteroid nearly hitting earth could be said to mean something, if one wants to consider things in a certain way (perhaps signs that the era of Xtianism is waning?).

So I then thought more recently, after getting a nifty moon calendar of 2001 when I was in Denver, that perhaps I should take as my Day 1, Month 1, Year 1 of the New Era the day of the first full moon past the Solstice. Which is today.

And so these things have happened, in the past day, and I choose to take them as signs (and I don't expect anyone else to, mind you):

My mother called last night to tell me that The Notebook has been found. I haven't written here about this special Notebook yet, I kept putting it off. Anyway, it's a black notebook that I left on the Ski Train that was lost - we checked the Lost & Found, badgered the Ski Train people, and it never turned up. I cried when I realized there was no hope - real tears of stupidity, regret, and loss. You see, in the Notebook were several valuable things: 1) all my papers to prove that I've paid around $2500 in debts that still show up on my credit report, including originals of bank statements, check carbons, a settlement letter, a copy of my divorce decree, and my social security card, 2) the memory book from my 10-year high school reunion, containing all the addresses & contact info for anyone I might want to get in touch with, and 3) all my notes for my information system for thirdhand.org. I hadn't worked on a thing since I lost the Notebook - I knew I'd have to re-do it all from memory, which was quite possible, but I didn't have the time to work on it anyway, and I was just kind of stewing in denial for a while. But so, miraculously, the Notebook has returned. I hope that all of its contents are intact - there is nothing of value in it to anyone but me. It's funny that while in Colorado, I dreamed I would get it back, but I dismissed the dream with pessimism, stating that the only dreams I have that ever come true involve the activities of my uterus. (Don't ask me why, but it works. If I get a dream about uh, uterine activity (such as that which tends to happen on a roughly monthly basis or that preceding the birth of a child), then it happens in the next day or two). So, the return of the Notebook is Sign #1.
When I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, quickly brushing my teeth because I was late for the Big Meeting, I saw myself as really beautiful. This is rare, that when I catch a glimpse, it all looks pretty good - I usually focus on something that doesn't look right: something sagging here, a blemish there, some lumpiness over there, wishing it were different somehow. But not this morning. I looked and saw, simply, beauty. And it made me feel quite nice, and thankful for my body. Pretty amazing considering I still need to lose around 20 pounds to get to my ideal, but anyway. So, we have positive Sign #2.
The other day, I had some interesting musings about physics and gravity and probability and whatnot, you know, the Big Questions about how the universe works and why it is the way it is, and so on. Last night, before drifting off to sleep, I regaled Spencer with some of my realizations, and in the process came to some astounding new ones. I think I've finally Figured It Out. Well, from my own point of view, anyway. A bunch of the bigger pieces of the puzzle, at least. And so, this morning, at the Big Meeting that I was late for, as I pretended to take notes during the presentation of boring corporate slides, I clarified my realizations even more, with a mere one page of notes. I think it's really stunning, even if it's just a re-explanation of what Real Physicists already know, just stated in terms that I (and I presume at least a couple other people on the planet) can now understand, with this new perspective I came up with. So, we've got Sign #3.
And during this Big Meeting, the head of our whole division here at work went on about how the latest group of consultants had reported to the managers all the stuff that we've known for a long time about what's wrong and what needs to be changed. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Oh, and he equivocated skilfully when pegged about whether there would be layoffs in Support (we had a corporate restructuring warning from on high the other day). He said something like "I don't know where *all of them* are going to be happening, so I can't say". A true politician - I wanted to get up and say, "We don't care where *all of them* are going to be - we just want to know whether ANY of them will be occuring in Support?". But of course I didn't. I just sat there drawing little symbols during the Q and A. At the end, he spoke of some ship-based analogy, asking us to ask ourselves whether we're committed to being in the boat or not. I guess it was supposed to be inspiring us or something, but all I could think is that I want to find the dinghy and paddle the hell away. Preferable if the dinghy is my outrigger canoe and I can just go off and surf the waves. Anyway... as he was speaking, I felt that truly I don't belong at this company anymore. I kind of almost resolved to quit, a decision I've been postponing for awhile. I can't really afford to, of course, but we'll see what happens - I may not have a choice if I get laid off. That's okay, too. I don't really mind. I'd actually look forward to it. I am so sick of this job, to be honest. It's a good job, but it's just not for me anymore. So I guess that's Sign #4.
And then as I was writing symbols on my notepad, I finally figured out what to use my symbology for. I had developed some nifty symbols several years ago, trying several times to come up with a way to use it to represent a syllibary, a way to write phonetic speech in a simplified way or something, maybe for a language I would make up. I shelved it for a long time, because it just got so tangled any time I tried to take it very far. Anyway, today I figured out what to do with it - I made about 29 symbols that will be very useful for my personal little moon calendar. I really like them, this is going to be neato. So that's Sign #5.
And tonight, we are going to sit down with our friend Luba and discuss the possibility of opening a cafe-type thing in Austin. Luba has found a nice retail space for rent not far from us, in a very choice location. Conceivably, we could all get together on a new business. Spencer worked with her before on her food business, in which she made all kinds of yummy, fresh vegetarian food and delivered it to some area grocery stores which then sold it. She got sick of doing it all herself (which is how it eventually got to be), and she stopped doing it when she went to Beirut earlier this year. So she is considering doing a little cafe with take-out food in refrigerated cases, the same hummus and pasta salads she made before. People could grab it and go - the place isn't big enough for more than just a couple token tables, so she doesn't envision an atmosphere with people spending lots of time there while they eat. I am very excited about the idea - her daughter Clavdia is an artist, and she could surely sell lots of her artwork if it were displayed on the walls there. Heck, I'd like to do artwork too, with cut paper stuff once I get a laser cutter. So perhaps this is a new direction for us all to go in? We'll have to see... But it's an exciting possibility at the very least. Sign #6.

Okay, these things may not sound like a lot to someone else, but to me it's very meaningful. I'm very eager to see where this all leads... and yes, you'll hear more about my theories of physics. To give a quick hint of what I'm getting at - I think I figured out what gravity is (and no, it doesn't involve "gravitons" or any particles other than the matter involved), what black holes are, and why quantum uncertainty is only resolved when an observer steps in. It all fits together very neatly to me. And the implications are amazing - it ties in to so very many things. I do believe I'm going to have to write a book on all of this (including gobs of what's in the Pinata Manifesto (but not the parts I'm embarassed to have written at this point! Heh!)). It connects to the way we think, how events unfold and why, event horizons big and small, belief, magic, and coincidences. Dang, I may have to start a new religion or something (don't worry, I recognize the risk that I'd probably be the only member to ever join, and that doesn't bother me). Or at least a new philosophy. Should be fun!

Who knows, maybe I'll look back on this day years from now and think to myself, "Ah, I was so deluded back then!". But that's okay. When things are going positively, you've just gotta ride that wave, take it where it goes.

But first, you've gotta paddle like mad to catch it! I've got a *lot* of work to do...

[ my site ] 2001-01-06

I'm back: I'm just really busy, trying to get everything back in order after our big vacation. Also trying to relax and just take it easy a bit. Things will return to relative normalcy soon.

To tide ya over, here's a pic of Elena with her baby doll and her little baby doll stroller:

Dang, she sure is a cutie! (I'm her mother, I'm contractually obligated to say that at every possible opportunity, plus it gives me joy to do so).

[ my site ] 2001-01-03

I'm on vacation, dammit! I dunno what the deal is, I could swear that I told Daniel I'd be in Colorado from Dec 25 - Jan 4. Evidently, he forgot. Well, I left him a message on his machine earlier today, so hopefully he has been freed from wanton panic.

At any rate, I'm fine, I'm just tired and sick of having my personal moisture assaulted on all fronts - it's dang dry here.

Also, I lost a very important notebook that I stupidly left on the Ski Train. More about that later.

We get back tomorrow. Today we are going to the dump and then to the zoo. Yippee!

I've been at my mom's house the whole time, so I don't know what the heck number Daniel has been calling - he would have reached me if he had truly been dialing the right number.

Uh oh, Elena is messing with my mom's exercise bike, I'd better go.

See, I haven't been doing any weblog entries because I've been so darn busy... More later, after I get back tomorrow. Oh yeah, I'll also have boatloads of pictures.

[ my site ] 2001-01-02

I don't know where Beth is. I haven't heard from her since December 26, and I'm getting worried -- I can't reach her at home, work, mobile, or her Mom's.

-- Daniel

[ good my site ] 2000-12-22

Three cheers!!! The missing entries are back! Thanks to Daniel for grabbing them back from the abyss. I will have to do something nice for him, after I destroy him in our ongoing debate about whether grammar is innate (it's not, but he foolishly thinks it is - brainwashing from the linguistics and cognitive science courses that he's taking).

Don't worry, I'll make him see the light, eventually, even if I have to invent a different verb tense to use with Elena when it's raining, or when we're outside, or something (which Daniel claims is impossible ("unlearnable") according to the theories of generative grammar).

[ my site weblogs ] 2000-12-08

As the Brady Bunch sing: "When it's time to change, you've got to re-ar-range!"

That is, I have rearranged my list of weblogs in the left-hand column, placing my more favorite ones further up, and my less favorite or often-viewed ones further down. Please, don't anyone get your feelings hurt or anything.

They are not in strict most-fave to least-fave order, just in general zones of favoriteness. Frankly, my opinion on what's my favorite changes from day to day and even hour to hour, so it can only ever be a rough approximation anyway.

I also made a separate section for discussion sites, since they have the whole discussion paradigm in common and it made sense to me.

[ design my site ] 2000-12-06

Speaking of progress: I'm working on the design of my massive information-control system, which I have dubbed the Third Hand, or just thirdhand for short. (I got thirdhand.org right after I came up with the name last week or so).

The idea for the name is this: we've got two hands for manipulating stuff, and they're very spiffy with what they can do - extremely powerful, versatile, a big part of what makes us human. I am trying to create a third hand, a hand for the mind, to allow me to control and manipulate information as easily as turning over something in my hand.

Plus I kind of like the idea of thirdhand as opposed to secondhand. "Secondhand" to me means one step removed from the source. I consider thirdhand to be yet another step removed, yet a step which somehow is able to place the item into another, more proper, context. A context different from the source, of course.

I have pretty much set the basic underpinnings of how it will work, I just need to create the databases and start hacking. I am still waiting for my other (more advanced) php book to come from Amazon so I can learn more in-depth kickass stuff.

I am thrilled with how this is all coming together. It's odd, I have been working for so long on such a thing, trying to figure out how to make it work, and having figured it out... it's not... earth-shattering. I mean, it's not any huge major insight, just a different way of handling things. It's actually very simple.

Which makes sense, on a very deep level, to me. I mean, it should be elegant, not snarled in spaghetti strings of complication. But when I think about it, I am somewhat amazed that no one else has come up with the idea of doing things this way. Because it seems so... obvious that this is how it should be done.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The basic idea is that I want to be able to store anything and everything, in a way that allows each "tidbit" of information (as I have dubbed them) to be related to any other piece of information. Well, actually several other pieces of information.

I have been beating my head in frustration against the limitations of purely hierarchical categorization schemes for a long time. I *hate* them! Sooner or later you always end up having to compromise by putting something into a category which doesn't exactly fit, and you really lose something there, which starts small but begins to creep and expand, and soon your information structure is a total mess.

It's insidious. And I haven't even touched upon the notion of "category creep", where you end up with too many damn categories, and also don't forget the whole phenomenon of people misinterpreting the categories, or not realizing that some of them are there.

So I have my own proposal to fix this problem, at least for my own data. Part of the key to fixing this is something I've known for years - each tidbit should be able to be placed in as many categories that it needs to appear in.

There are other parameters to the solution which are just as key - for instance, not having a strict hierarchy. That is, no single top-down flattened way of organizing things. Each individual item does of course have its own orientation, things which are "bigger", things which are "smaller", and things which cover about the same size of ground. The trick is to let such a system end up with loops, if needed. That is, A is bigger than B, which is bigger than C, which is bigger than A. You can't do that with a flat hierarchy, but you can do it easily with my system. :)

And, I'll keep people from getting lost. There will be a breadcrumb trail of the last N followed links, and an easy way to get to "bigger" areas and "smaller" areas, as well as "similarly-sized" areas.

Yes, eventually I'll implement searching too, but I'm not there yet. I am also going to experiment with the use of color to convey information - perhap a gradient of hue to indicate how new or fresh information is, such as bright blue = new and black = a month or more old.

The really cool part is that I'll be able to have all of these things connected together exactly how they need to be:

weblog entries
weblog categories
bookmarks
quotes
photos
birth & breastfeeding info
long pieces that I write
discussion entries

and on and on... I am going to have a way for people to log in and get a user id, that way it can track their preferences better, and they can add content or participate in discussions if they wish.

And I promise, the urls will be really short. :) Oh yeah, and no steeenking java or javascript! The most complex thing I'll do is tables. And maybe just a wee bit of stylesheets, but I'm still not decided on that. My impression is that they are so inconsistently supported that you are just asking for trouble with varying browsers looking at your site. Ugh! Anything that's that fraught with peril, I try to steer clear of.

I'd like to eventually make a bookmarklet to add stuff to it while I'm surfing the web, so that counts as javascript, I guess, but it doesn't really count because it's not part of the interface. Heh!

So get ready, some interesting stuff is coming. I am hoping to have at least a working alpha version by December 15th, so I can enter it into the SXSW website competition. I entered my weblog into it yesterday, so we'll see if that gets me anywhere. The conference/shindig/whatever isn't until next March, so there's quite a while to wait. Sigh. Well, I've got a lot of work to do. Bye for now.

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