Happy Mother’s Day to Helen and Virginia.
There is no greater hero in the world than a mother. I am very fortunate to have two great moms in my life.
Be sure to thank the mom(s) in your life. Thank them early and often.
I have started the process of rebuilding my site with a new style. I am pleased with the overall structure of things so far. I still need to hammer out some of the details and clean up some of my HTML and CSS code.
Please feel free to use the comments feature to point out any glitches you may find. If you do comment I would like to know the browser and OS that you are using. Thanks.
During the past year or so I have focused a lot of time and energy into this site, which reflects events and thoughts that I have as an individual. However, there is a professional side to me and it is with pleasure that I direct your attention to the newly revamped Partition Software site.
The original Partition Software site has languished for too long with out being updated. Created at a time when I was learning DHTML, it made use of a fancy cascading menu, that unfortunately only worked when viewed thru Windows IE. And then only sometimes.
I am pleased with the lightness and simplicity of the new site layout. It satisfies my needs as a professional geek hoping to attract gainful attention. And it pleases my individual creativeness need.
Update (5.9.2003 @ 9:59 a) Currently the partitionsoftware.com site is unavailable as it seems I pulled the plug on my former hosting location too soon. The whois registry shows the new DNS information, but it hasn’t trickled out to all the local servers yet.
Update (5.9.2003 @ 8:50 p) It looks like the DNS changes have finally filtered down to the local level. I’m able to view the site again. And my POP3 accounts are working.
Like the rest of the Mac world I have upgraded to the latest release of iTunes, which includes a new pay-per-track music store. While I haven’t made any purchases yet it seems like Apple has hit the center of the target with this feature. It’s Napster only legal. In Napster’s heyday I participated and collected about 400 titles. With iTunes I can do this legally. Of course, it’d cost me $396 to duplicate my earlier collection. Hmm, this could be like the early days of AOL, when stories of massive monthly bills were common. Who’ll be the first person to rack up a 1000, 5000 or 10,000 dollar download charge in a month I wonder.
I also like the ability to collect and display the album art with iTunes 4. After doing some searching I discovered the easiest way to grab the image is drag-and-drop from Amazon. Select all the songs for an album in iTunes and then, using Safari, surf on over to Amazon and look the album up. Drag and drop the image there to the Selected Song panel. Wait while iTunes updates the tags for all selected tunes. Very slick.
Now if only the image would update to the currently playing title, rather than just showing the artwork for the selected title. Maybe there’s a preference setting somewhere that I missed.
I respond to job stress by looking for a way to change the situation. In the past this has led to cross-country moves to new job situations. If moving to a new job situation eliminated the stress and I was able to stay in the new situation for as long as I wanted this would be an okay response. However, the mere fact that I moved cross-country 3 times in less than 3 years is an indication that a new job isn’t the answer.
So I have spent a lot of time and energy recently to understand my current work situation, so I could deal with the real issues and not just the surface stress. I feel that I have been moderately successful in this endeavor. However there are still moments of stress that prod me into wanting a change.
The stress energy builds in me until I need an outlet. I’m talking about little day-to-day occurrences that taken individually are hardly worth mentioning. Taken one after the other they begin to wear me down, eventually my stress level is high without any one thing to point at and say, ’this is responsible.’ I am left feeling like I am over reacting and as a consequence I shove the stress down into my emotional piggy bank without giving it expression. Naturally it earns interest in that bank, and when I finally withdraw it, I over react in a way that maybe harmful to me and my family.
For a number of years I worked out in the martial arts and the physical activity there helped to burn off some of the little day-to-day stresses. I wasn’t dealing with the real issues then, so eventually it caught up with me. Physical release alone is not enough. But physical activity did help to vent the minor little day-to-day things in a way that was helpful. I have learned how to express my emotions openly and honestly in the moment, which has made a vast improvement in my responses to situations. However, I am still adding some of these little day-to-day stresses to my emotional piggy bank.
My current work situation, when viewed from some angles, is very much out of control. No ones knows what is going to happen in the next few months, and rumors are a dime a dozen. As much as I like to think that I have grown beyond the need to wallow in this atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, I haven’t. And, because these rumors tend to fall into the minor day-to-day annoyance category I tend not to express them like I should.
Without some kind of safety value the pressure of these little stresses will build to the point where I feel the only way out is to leave. What I need is someway to constructive expend the energy that my emotional stress piggy bank holds. I can’t work through this stuff with my coworkers. In many cases they are the stress. I feel badly bringing home petty work innuendo and rumor, for it isn’t fair to dump this on my wife. I either need to take up a physical hobby again, which, combined with my openness regarding my emotional life, will help to keep things in balance. Or I need to develop a new habit to express this stress.
This morning at work I packed up some textbooks I no longer use, and generally tidied up my area. The change this created felt good, I felt less stressed just by exerting some control here where I feel no control at all. I think the answer to expressing these little day-to-day gotchas lies in finding a way or ways to feel in control, especially when all the events around me feel out of control.
I have trouble with present and gifts. I struggle to get excited about getting them for other people, and I resist receiving them for myself. I’m sure that the root of this lies in my past but it is one of those issues that is hard to see clearly.
Over the Easter weekend, Michele and I talked about this issue, as it came up when she wanted to put together some easter baskets for my brother’s children. My initial reaction was one of resistance. I didn’t want any part of getting baskets and candy, nor did I want to present the completed items. Michele pointed out that I am a scrooge. As much as it pains me to admit this, she is right. I only strongly object to labels that are apt and fitting.
I suppose some of my reticence about gifts lies in the events surrounding my sister’s death. My memory of that Christmas tells me that she saw to it that I had a Christmas gift from her, even though she was hospitalized much of that December. I, in turn, had nothing for her. Writing about it almost 3 decades later still brings a tightness to my chest and hot tears to my eyes. I know that as a child of 12 I couldn’t control whether I had a gift for my sister. My adult self today understand the awful reality that was December that year. As an adult I can forgive my 12-year old self, but as a 12-year I cannot forget how badly I felt when I got something from her, knowing that I could never give her a gift again.
I have never allowed the emotional scar that was created at that time to heal. Every birthday, anniversary, and Christmas since has been an occasion to pick at this old wound to reopen it again. I have been beating myself up with this quilt for almost 30 years. I guess I feel the need to be punished and since no one else sees this need or meets it, I turn upon myself. There is no harsher critic or punisher than self.
The trouble with all this is that I have never been reflective about why I disliked gifts so much until recently. I have allowed my scrooge-like actions to continue, unquestioned and unabated, until they are deeply ingrained in my personality. My initial reaction to the idea of getting or giving a gift is automatic and occurs before I have a chance to question what I am doing. It has only been through the images of me I see reflected in my relationship with Michele that I have finally started to see what I have become. It is only through her loving presentation of my truth that I have been able to identify this ugly little facet of my personality.
Now the hard part is up to me. I need to intercept my ingrained response to gifts and insert a new one. I need to alter the neuron-pathway that I have built over the years to have a different feeling and outcome. The first step in re-programming it was talking to Michele openly and frankly about what I was doing and how it felt, to me and to her. The second step is writing this posting and setting on my website for all to see. For me, at least, the path to enlightenment requires public scrutiny of my motives and actions.
I guess I am giving my self a gift here. I am allowing me to grow and heal.
I saw a link to Revolution is Not an AOL Keyword over on slashdot this morning. While I wasn’t familiar with the original, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," I found this to be very good and worth reading. Read it out loud.
In my daily travels around the internet I stumbled across this transcript of the speech given by actor Tim Robbins to the National Press Club on April 15, 2003. Because of his position on the war in Iraq, and because of his wife, Susan Sarandon’s, position on the war, his scheduled appearance at the Baseball Hall of fame was cancelled by its director.
I think it perfectly sums up the dangerous situation we have in this country today. As Mr. Robbins says in his speech, “In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when an administration official releases an attack ad questioning the patriotism of a legless Vietnam veteran running for Congress, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry.”
It seems that someone over at CNN.com goofed. Earlier today, for about 20 minutes, several mockup online obituaries were available at the CNN site. The errant pages were quickly pulled but not before copies were made and posted to the Smoking Gun site. Follow along as we bid a premature farewell to Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Dick Cheney, Fidel Castro, Gerald Ford, Nelson Mandela, and Bob Hope.
I have discovered a new game, called “Enigmo”, from Pangea, for the Mac, which you can learn more about here. It is a puzzle game that requires you control the flow of up to three different liquids using slides, accelerators, trampolines, and funnels. The demo version of the game has 10 levels, buying it released 40 more levels of play. The game allows you to build your own levels.
The graphics are superb, and the game is addictive. It is the best game I have played in years. One more reason I am glad I switched to Mac OS.