When I was in college my favorite comic strips were ‘Doonesbury’ and ‘Bloom County.’ It appears that Opus may once again grace the Sunday comics page again.
I can hardly wait.
“You can lead a yak to water, but you can’t teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke” — Opus Penguin
A few weeks ago my wife’s copy of Camino became unstable and she was forced to use Mozilla Firebird instead. About two weeks ago I tackled this problem one more time. I stumbled across instructions on the Camino web site detailing how to remove Camino entirely from your hard drive. They are as follows:
Uninstall( hidden just above the documentation link ) To get rid of all the files that Camino created, do the following: ( a ) Drag the Camino icon to the trash ( b ) Drag the /Library/Application Support/Chimera folder to the trash
Since we already had exported her bookmarks I deleted the files in question.
Then, I downloaded version 0.7 (still the current version) and installed it. Everything works fine once again.
Hopefully someday soon we’ll see a 0.8, or 0.9 release and then a 1.0 version of this fine browser.
Today while I was reviewing our bank statement online I noticed a charge from my former hosting company. I thought I had cancelled the last account I had there when I transferred my business domain to my current host. I was therefore upset about the $19.95 charge I was seeing in the register.
I called the company, and after spending a glorious 35 minutes on hold, was connected with “Brad”. Brad was able to figure out that I had been billed an extra month on the business domain, but that was $24.95. He couldn’t find anything that resembled the $19.95 charge I was seeing. He suggestion was to call my bank and try to have the charge stopped at that end.
So I called the bank, credit union actually. The hold time there was less than 10 seconds, but they weren’t any help at all. It seems that debt card transactions are beyond the bank’s purview. The unhelpful woman there suggested I call the company who was billing me. This was the last straw in a contentious relationship with the credit union that has stretched back almost three years now. We were already planning on taking our business elsewhere with the arrival of the next paycheck, having the bank refuse to help me with this matter just cinched it. I told the woman that I was very unhappy with the lack of help or support, especially since I was a member of the credit union, and that with the arrival of my next check she could expect us to close this account forever. She said to have a nice day and hung up.
After having and setting aside several retaliation fantasies I decided to call the hosting company one more time. The new guy was much sharper and used the credit card number to track any charges. None were found. Then I remembered that once upon a time we started to setup a web site for my wife. I thought I had cancelled it long ago. I knew that the domain registration had expired. When I asked him about that domain, bingo! He found a $19.95 charge to my wife’s debit card number, which bills to the same checking account. D’Oh!
The account has been cancelled for certain this time. Hopefully I’ve remembered all the domains I’ve played with over the years and cancelled all the inactive ones.
We are still going to leave the bank. Even though it wasn’t their problem I expected to get better service and support. Rude customer service just isn’t tolerable in this day and age.
My earliest memory is of Christmas. I must have been about two-years old. When I described the scene for my parents years later they were astounded that I could remember something from such an early age. To my knowledge there are no pictures of the things I described so I think these are actual memories.
Most of my childhood is remembered in my head somewhere. Odd things will cause me to remember something from long ago. Mostly these memories are images only, there is no sound or feeling attached to the memories. Maybe as children we don’t remember our feelings, or maybe, the emotional memories are such that as adults we aren’t aware of them in a meaningful form.
In any event I have almost no emotional memory of my childhood. Even the few moments that standout are felt through a thick barrier. It is like I am an observer of my life and not a participant.
I grew up in a very intellectual atmosphere where thought and reason were far more valued than emotion or feeling. The emotion I have the most memories of is anger. Anger expressed by my parents, either towards each other or me. And I remember that I wasn’t allowed to express my anger. My recollection is that I was always told to stop being defensive whenever I expressed any anger. The message I got was that it was okay for others to be angry, but it wasn’t okay for me to express that emotion.
Later as an adult I was terrified of my anger. I told my wife that I was afraid of it and that it was a horrible thing. She worked very hard to get me to express my upset and anger at various situations. Situations where anger was warranted, and its expression would actually benefit my mental health. It took a tremendous amount of work on my part to break through the conditioning I had not to get upset and express anger. After I had expressed it in several appropriate settings, Michele pointed out to me that my anger wasn’t some horrible out-of-control thing to be feared. Rather it was a natural expression of truth.
Whether the message that anger was just an expression of truth was given to me as a child or not I do not know. All I know is that I took the messages, verbal and otherwise, from my childhood and built a model for dealing with the world. We all do this in our childhood; we all construct a model of how we think and feel the world works. Over the course of our lifetime we continually add to and subtract from this model. In some cases the model works extremely well and allows us to function successfully. In other cases the model hinders us greatly and causes unending struggle.
In my case my anger model wasn’t accurate or helpful. I felt that anger indicated I had done something wrong. Anger meant I had failed. I punished myself with more anger. Over time this cycle of unexpressed anger, and self-directed anger as a result, built into a series of medical issues and life threatening situations. In my early thirties I started having great difficulty swallowing my food. Over time this condition grew until I was throwing up during almost every meal I ate.
After several tests and doctors it was decided that I had a narrowing in my throat called a ‘shotski’s ring’. There is a treatment for this that literally tears the ring apart by inserting a balloon device into the throat and slowly inflating it. I had this treatment done 6 times in less than 3 years time. After each treatment I would have 2 or 3 weeks of eating with no swallowing difficulties and then the problem would reappear. Already dismayed at the prospect of going to the hospital every 5 months, I was crushed at the idea of going once a month.
After a move forced me to seek out a new doctor to perform this procedure, and after being thoroughly disappointed in the new doctor, I decided that medical treatment of this condition wasn’t working. I needed something else.
I have spent the last 6 years dealing with my emotions. The primary emotion I have difficulty with is anger. Especially anger towards authority figures. When I am on top of my emotions, and expressing them openly, honestly and in the moment, I have no trouble eating. When I am not facing some part of my emotional being I start to have trouble swallowing. When I start throwing up during meals I know that I have lapsed back into my old, destructive habit of not expressing anger.
I consider myself lucky that my inappropriate expression of anger as a truth was self-directed and not focused on others. While I have suffered medically as a result, I am healing emotionally and physically now. Had I turned my anger outward I could easily have ended up as one of the tragic figures seen on television after a spree-shooting incident. As a society we are failing miserably to give young males either an accurate emotional model of the world, or a safe place to express the anger that is a natural by-product of life.
I am a child of the space age. I was born just two days after Scott Sheppard made his 15-minute sub-orbital flight signaling the entry of the United States into the space race. I grew up with rockets and programmable calculators. I grew up a geek without realizing it.
I grew up lonely and isolated, afraid to let people see the real me. I felt that inside I was vastly different than the people around me and I was afraid of being shunned if they were to discover my secret.
My family was typical in many ways, and atypical in others. The defining moment in my young life was the untimely death of my sister to leukemia when she was 11 years old, and I was 12. Whatever emotional or spiritual energy my family had seeming died with her. I retreated into fantasies and books, where I wasn’t afraid of my feelings or afraid of getting negative reactions to them.
In high school I was that nerdy kid who didn’t belong to any one group, but eventually discovered the few other nerdy kids who also didn’t belong. For the first time I felt a sense of belonging, but only intellectually and then only briefly. Sometime in my sophomore year I was introduced to computers and I was hooked. I think the ability to control them completely was attractive to me. For most of my life I had felt out of control in one regard or another, and now I had something I could be totally in control of and totally responsible for. The fact that neither of my parents knew anything about it helped. I needed to get out from under their shadow and I had finally found a way.
By the time I graduated from high school I was prepared to go off to college and study computers. I wasn’t sure what kind of life that would give me but I was willing to find out. During the summers I worked at a YMCA camp, which gave me conflicted emotions about my future. At summer camp I discovered my spiritual and emotional self and a safe place to express them. The transition at the end of the summers back to the intellectually safe posture I used at school was painful.
I spent a lot of time agonizing over whether I should stay with computers and a financially secure future or switching to outdoor or recreational education so I could stay on at summer camp year round. In order to graduate from college I had to complete at least one summer of actual work experience in the data processing field. The summer I spent as a programmer was enlightening in many ways. For the first time I had proof that I could do this work and enjoy it. And that working a 9-to-5 job wasn’t so bad after all. Plus the pay was better.
So I finished college and set off on a career in data processing. I put my emotional self and spiritual self up on a high shelf and tried to forget they every existed. I tried to approach everything logically and intellectually. I was miserable, lonely and isolated once again. Sometimes, though, the pain we know is better than the pain we don’t know. I was too afraid of losing where I was to try and open up to anything new. Outwardly I led a good life, good job, new cars, travel, and toys. Inwardly I was slowly dying and hated my life.
When I was almost 30 I walked into a karate dojo and signed up for classes. Within in a week I was hooked. I spent the next 8 years practicing and working out. I advanced rapidly through the ranks and received my black belt in just over 4 years time. Within another 2 years I was a second-degree black belt. A ranking equivalent to a master’s degree. More importantly I had re-discovered my emotional and spiritual self. The philosophy of the martial arts appealed greatly to me, and I felt secure enough in who I was to finally start letting other people see parts of the real me.
I think that I grew from childhood to adult intellectually through my work experience. But I was still immature emotionally and spiritually, that is until my dojo experience. Not that I expressed a tremendous amount of emotion or spirituality in the dojo. Rather the confidence in myself that I gained from that experience allowed me to express my self more openly and honestly than ever before.
About this time I met the woman who is now my wife. We met online via AOL. After just one or two online conversations we started talking on the phone. Within a few weeks we were talking daily for hours. Over the course of the next year we met in person several times and decided that we wanted to be together. She moved to where I was living and we have now been married for over 6 years.
Our marriage has been a time of tremendous growth for me emotionally and spiritually. I feel like I am finally an adult in my emotions and in my spirituality. It has not been easy to overcome the years of self shunning I subjected myself to, but it has been worth the effort.
Today I am more myself in more situations than ever before. And I continue to feel more empowered and in control of myself than ever. I have decided that it is important for me to capture in more detail the story of my life. I need to do this for me, and I need to do it in a way that will allow others to view it. Some day this might become a book or memoir. For now it is enough to post it here and let the unknown readers of this site view it.
I found this to be oddly appealing. I’m not sure why, but I find I am attracted to it. Originally I found it on Leslie Harpold’s site.
In Place Of A Curse John Ciardi
At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected, I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who, having been slugged no harder than anyone else, never got up again, neither to fight back, nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.
They who are wholly broken, and they in whom mercy is understanding, I shall embrace at once and lead to pillows in heaven. But they who are the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters with extortions of a mock-helplessness, I shall take last to love, and never wholly.
Let them all in Heaven - I abolish Hell - but let it be read over them as they enter: “Beware the calculations of the meek, who gambled nothing gave nothing, and could never receive enough.”
Michele and I had a wonderful weekend. Little of any consequence was accomplished except for rest, relaxation and fun. We swam and napped, cooked in and ate out.
The breakthrough about my needing to write more to maintain my sanity was important. I have written two new postings that helped me a great deal. I plan to post more as a result.
As we wind down and head into the closing hours of this weekend I am feeling rested for the first time in weeks. It’s a good feeling.
Absolutely beautiful pictures of an incredible machine.
Someday…
I have been moody, morose, and feeling unfulfilled for some time now. From outward appearances my world is going in all the right directions. My employment situation is headed in a good direction, our finances are back under control. I have the love and companionship of a wonderful, beautiful woman; who is my friend as well as my true love. But at the end of the day I am not satisfied.
In the book “Messages from Michael” the ideas of “true work”, “true play”, and “true rest” are put forth. Without going into much detail here, I know that my true work is using computers to help people. I know that my true play is cooking and creating in the kitchen. However I have struggled with finding my true rest. I exercise, eat reasonably well and get enough sleep. Yet I am often tired and listless.
True rest isn’t just about the physical, it is about the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our beings. Getting enough sleep and taking care of your physical body isn’t enough. You have to feed your spirit, and give voice to your emotions too.
Michele and I talked about all this this evening. Today was my day to do what ever I wanted to take care of me. Originally I wanted to go to the movies. We spent the morning doing some household chores and then had a swim in the pool. Later we tried lunch out, but I had great difficulty in swallowing anything; always a sure sign that I’ve got some unmet need coming up to the surface. When it came time for the movie I decided I didn’t want to go, rather I wanted to go window shopping at the electronics store and book store. Neither visit was at all fulfilling. At the end of the day I hadn’t done anything that fulfilled all of me. I was still feeling antsy, and I was bone tired and grouchy.
As we talked I kept saying that I wanted to be creative and expressive but that I didn’t know what form that expression would take. Maybe a musical instrument, maybe wood carving. Maybe needlepoint or painting. I just couldn’t imagine what might meet this need. Then Michele, as she often does, helped me to see what was already working for me. Something I love to do, and hadn’t been letting myself have much lately. Writing.
Yes, writing. Putting these postings on my web site has a wonderful calming effect on me. I like the whole process, from constructing the flow of words in my head, to capturing them here, to reading my thoughts again later. It is truly restful for me to do this. All my life I have loved well written books and stories. I delight in the images words can paint in my imagination. I enjoy finding the best words to describe things to others so that I can convey my thoughts to them.
I have always discounted my writing as silly or not important. I guess because it comes so easily to me I never thought it had any import. Michele’s simple statement about my writing really struck home tonight. As we talked about it I could feel my self wanting to sit down and capture these thoughts. Just thinking about it made me feel better than I had felt in a long time. Giving myself permission to sit down and capture this posting has been a wonderful treat.
I don’t know for certain that writing is my true rest. Only time will let me decide. But for now it is fulfilling, and rewarding, and I plan on giving myself every chance to rest my emotions, spirit, mind and body through this medium.
I just cleaned out my spam folder by exporting all the August dated spams, a total of 4,917 messages. This brings my annual total to 42,702 spams for the year. In August my daily average slipped to a mere 158 spams a day. For the year my average is 175 spams a day.
175 a day sounds bad until you read about the man who gets 3,000 spams a day.
I’m thinking about trying knowspam.net again. I used it for a few days earlier this summer but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to accept a new paradigm for dealing with these messages. Currently I scan the list of spams that my rule set tosses into the spam folder for any false positives. For me, anyway, using a service like knowspam requires that I only skim the spam folder when I think I’m missing something.
When the spam folder is local to my machine I don’t worry about losing something to my spam rules. Even if I do have a false positive I still have the e-mail, it’s just filed in the wrong folder. With knowspam my false positives would be online somewhere, they’d be out of my control.
I suppose I should examine the incoming spam for a time and determine just how many false positives I really get. This summer as I was entertaining the idea of switching jobs I got a fair number of e-mails from unknown senders, which I treat as spam, that I actually wanted to have in my inbox. Now that I have made my monster and dice resume inactive I suppose I don’t have to worry about that kind of e-mail for a time.
All of this sounds like another case where I am making a mountain out of a mole hill. If I can figure out why I am obsessed with the fear of losing even one e-mail to a spam filter, then maybe I can relax enough to allow a service like knowspam to work for me.
Until then, I’ll be spending some time everyday buried in the latest pile of crap in my spam folder.
Sigh.