*blows the dust off this journal*
*waves away the airborne particles*
*coughs*
Excuse me.

Well, what has happened since my last update? How long ago was that? It seems like ages. LJ has been one of the things I've neglected lately.
June 11... Hmm...
I went to North Carolina for the UMVIM Connect rally, where I ran the slide decks for the plenary sessions and presented a workshop during one of the breakout times (the topic was: proper slide deck design). That went well, and it was very nice weather up there.
The next week, I went to Destin for a couple of days with my mom.
Since then, I guess I've been working mostly on driving around to visit the more than 50 churches in my town. So far, I think I've made contact at about 15 of them. But I've made a call list and prepared a call log so that I can call the rest.
Oh, and I've been working on that couch I've mentioned to some of you. Here's a picture:
( Cut because it moves )
So, I've been doing some software development lately. I had two programs that I needed that I couldn't find anywhere, so I ended up having to write my own applications. I don't want to get into Web development, but I wrote them both as CGI programs. I like CGI. I can write the programs like console programs, yet have a GUI interface through the HTML. I have a hard time wrapping my head around GUI programming, because it's all based on events, and I like to set things up in hierarchical menu structures, like the programs we used to use before we knew of such things as windows, icons, menus, and pointers. One of my favorite games in the BBS era was TradeWars2002. It had that kind of text-menu interface: Sector #486 (#) warp to sector, (p)ort (?) Help [20 turns remaining]: or something like that.
Life was simpler in computer programs back then. :)
Anyway, the status of my goals:
WIFE: I haven't found any likely prospects. I'm trying to get out more among people and make some new friends, to expand the number of people who know me and might possibly know someone who could be her.
CAREER: No bites yet. Just nibbles. I've posted a total of two church Web sites, along with my own business page, and one of those two wants to hire me to update the page. The information won't likely change often, so that won't bring a lot of money in, but it'd be something. I'm going to talk to the pastor this week about the page and see whether she hires me or not. I figure most churches I've given my card to will have to have a board/council meeting before they invite me to talk to them about possibly doing their sites, if they want Web work done, so I'm trying to be patient. I need to find more ways to get my name out there.
NOVEL: Still waiting for someone to return a proofread copy so I can post it on LuLu or Wowio.
DEGREE: Completed. Expensive piece of paper.

I'm feeling pretty good. I need to sleep more than I am.
My lips are clear.

Here's a secret: FVYLGFHDSNDROABEVDHEFGRDQPMH.
(Not really a secret)

http://skreyola.livejournal.com/268380.html

I covet your responses to this entry from way back when.
Trust me, I'm not poking anyone or feeling ill toward anyone about this. I totally understand how life can grab you by the collar and whisk away a whole semester. You may have noticed I'm not around LJ much, these days. So I'm not mad at anyone, even if you gave me a time and missed it. I feel you have done me no wrong. Life is like this.
But I'm still eager to learn the answers to my questions, so if any of you reading this have time now, or in the future, please take a look at the earlier entry and leave me a comment.
In short, it basically says this:

• Right or wrong, I wonder if there is material value to some (certainly not all) of the entries I've written in my LJ over the past six years.


• Writing is work, and it's fair to be paid for work, and someone might benefit from something I've written.


• I have the means to produce writing on a fairly consistent basis, provided the motivation to do so (someone cares that I write entries rather than not write entries).


• I am considering a collection of my best writings.


• I don't know what are the best ones, so please tell me. I don't know if this idea is totally off-base, so if you think it's stupid/conceited/pointless, tell me that.

By the by, does anyone have a suggestion for the best means of publishing something like this?

I suppose I ought to update this with what's been happening to me, for the benefit of my friends and my poor memory.
The semester is all but over. I have to turn in one packet of assignments tomorrow, and I'm free. I'll need to go back on Friday to get my packet back from Thursday night's class.
I'm still way behind on sleep. I'm hoping I will grow a brain in the next week and start going to bed at decent hours.
We got new fire alarms put up in our house. We went to a free dinner and saw a presentation on fire safety, and really, everyone should look into what protection their homes have, because the standard smoke detector is not enough.
I've been thinking a lot about what I'm going to do when the spring semester is over. In the spring, I'm trying to get an internship lined up, but that may not work out. If it doesn't, I'll do another semester of practicum as a copy editor on the student paper.
Anyway, after spring, I've decided that what I'll do is try to get jobs working for churches or Christian organizations, possibly through my church conference, so I could get paid by them and work for the small churches without charging them... editing copy, building Web sites, teaching churches how to write press releases in a form papers are likely to print, etc.
I found a LUG in the area, and they have an IRC channel, so I've been getting on IRC some (freenode.net). This keeps me up a little later at night, but since most of the people are in the same time zone, not nearly as much as Undernet used to. And I'll be meeting many of them in person at the next LUG meeting. I'm looking forward to that. It'll be nice to sit down with some people who don't get glazed eyes when I start talking about Linux. Sure, the art director at the paper understood it, but it'll be nice to meet multiple people who not only understand Linux but advocate it.
I've been annoyed by things I've heard in the news lately. A lot of people are bashing President Bush about this NIE report and ignoring both the biases of the authors and the intelligence we're now hearing about that refutes its findings. I'm annoyed that I see so much action that is based not on the welfare of our nation but on how people can smear their political opponents, regardless of how much it hurts morale and mission effectiveness, even though the people in question were singing a different tune in the past. It makes me sick, and I'm not going to mention any party names.
On the crochet front, I've finished a major project. Yay! I'll post pictures eventually. I still have 25 exposures left on the roll.
I'm working on a few other things, still. I have a baby blanket I need to finish, a hat I'm working on that I should probably wait until I finish the blanket before I work much more.
I posted some ads for artists, but I haven't gotten any nibbles even. I need to sit down with the pad of paper and just practice drawing until I can do my own artwork, since it looks like I'm not going to have an artist any time soon.
I wish I could think of something else to write. I wish I knew what my friends want to hear more about. I wish I were caught up on sleep. I have a lot of topics I could write about, if I were better rested and more confident.

Well, it has been an interesting week.
I got pretty worked up Monday night and threw up. Arguably, that was probably influenced by the rice I ate, since others who ate it had problems, but it was still a defining moment for me. I've decided that my worrying had reached a level far beyond what is sinful. So, I've been working on not worrying. I've also been working on getting more rest. To that end, I've decided to lay down as soon as practical after arriving home. If I fall asleep, I get a nap. If not, I've spent some time resting. I hope this (along with trying to go to bed earlier) will help me catch up on sleep. Over the past year, I've slept far too little.
So, I'm going through some rough times, but I already feel much better. I need to keep myself from worrying and rest more and exercise, and I will be well on my way to a better life.

I exchanged part one of Anna Karenina (15 tapes) for part two (12 tapes) a few days ago. I'm already in Part Five (or maybe Six) of the book. There is still more of Anna in the story than I'd like and less of Kitty and Levin, but it is still interesting and keeps my commute from being boring.

I'm working on two stories this week, and both are going slowly. I hope I can get one of them completed in time for next week's edition of the campus paper.

Looking back at the entries I've posted in the past few months and the responses they've gotten, I take it that nobody who reads this journal is interested in cryptography or taxonomy. If I am wrong about this, please leave a comment.

I think people should run either MacOS or Linux (or other POSIX-compliant OS). They're both good choices. *nod*

This journal is now over six years old. It started on Sept. 2, 2001.
  Over the past several months, I've been thinking about the value of my journal. What I mean by that is not that I'm wondering what use it has but that I'm wondering what might be the material value of the things I've written.
  I realize that this will seem to some as a conceited or mercenary thing to wonder, but I do wonder it, reasonable or unreasonable as it may be. And having wondered, I must ask the questions I have, so that if, perchance, someone else has the answer, I might be edified. Right or wrong, I have wondered these things.
  I don't want to waste my time producing things that have so little value to others that nobody would be willing to pay for their production. And the production of these essays and other entries does consume an appreciable amount of time, i.e., it does fit the criteria of being work. And the worker is worthy of his hire. I realize that many of the things I have written in this journal have had a positive effect on someone's life. I know because I have had people comment saying that it is so. Writing is work, and it might be possible for me to be paid for this work, and some of the things I've written have been of benefit to someone.
  Not recently, but earlier in the year, I set and met a goal for myself of posting at least one entry every day for a whole month. While not all of the entries have been good entries, I have managed to post one real entry every day for the space of a whole month. I reason that being able to produce one entry every day for a month (and having at the end of the month more than one topic awaiting expansion into an entry) means that I could write a daily column for some entity in exchange for a monetary benefit. I have the means to produce writing on a consistent basis, if I have a motivation to do so.
  Having decided that it seems not unreasonable that I might receive some compensation for my works, I am left with the question of how to do this. I have not been approached by anyone wishing to publish my work in their publication, so I don't plan to look for the daily column outlet. And I'm not in any way suggesting that I am thinking of starting a commercial commentary site. I am not seeking to transform what I do here on my journal into a paycheck. I am not going friends-only and locking out people who don't wish to pay for my rantings, quite apart from the fact that I could by no means do that on LiveJournal. No, I think the best route for me, if it be that my writings here have any material value, is to publish a compilation of the best of my writings. I am considering a collection of my best writings.
  I am not the person to decide what the cream of my crop is. After all, as the author of these writings, I am probably likely to consider them in a better light than anyone else, being dissatisfied with very few of the serious entries. Because of this, I need outside opinions. I need your help. Please tell me about your favorite entries I've written. Please tell me if there is any entry that would improve your chances of buying a collection if you saw it within a book in the store. Please tell me which entries you think should be in a paperback collection.
  Please tell me whether you think I am completely misguided in thinking that there is material value to the things I've written here in my journal over the past six years.
Those who help with this will receive a mention on the acknowledgments page of the book.

It has been an interesting week.
I spoke to Matt on Sunday about the comic, and we discussed some ideas about the characters. I've printed out a copy of some scripts to give him tomorrow. I'm anxious to get the comic started, but I'm being patient. I probably will need to wait until the end of July anyway, with all that's going on, but I'm hoping we can get everything ready to launch it then.
On Monday, I decided not to post an entry. I'd posted every single day for a whole month, so I feel I have reached a point where I could write a daily column for some media outlet. But having proven that to myself, having completed the experiment, I decided to not post, just to see what happened, how I felt about it, etc. Looking back over the past month and comparing it with previous months was interesting and informative. I intend to write about that in a separate entry.
Monday evening was a meeting.
Tuesday, I think I spent most of the day working on homework.
Wednesday was a meeting of the Poland team.
Thursday, I helped with some work on someone's house and lined up a job for Friday morning.
Friday, I went out and painted trim in a house that's going on the market soon. I also did some homework and some cleaning in the garage. We got some much-needed rain.
Today, I mowed the lawn and laid about five feet of HO track on the new grid table I finally finished. I think it looks fairly good, especially considering my level of familiarity in working with cork roadbed, and the wiring works well. I did a lot of drilling, soldering, and tinkering as I built and tested this section of the layout. In spite of careful planning and execution, I somehow got off somewhere (probably laid a track straight in practice that was not straight when I measured the layout, and I started from the end opposite where I started measuring), so I had to drill new holes for most of the wiring. Oh, well. You live and learn. Maybe I'll put buildings or something where the old holes are.
I'm making some headway in my research, but mostly, this week has been for other things. Still, I'm doing well in my course. I need to put a move on, though, if I'm going to finish everything by the deadlines.
God bless you all.

A while ago, one of my friends posted one of those comment statistics things, and she mentioned that some people didn't like them and made mean comments when she posted one.
I think there's nothing wrong with passing on some statistics now and then, so long as there is no clear message of disappointment in those who don't comment as often as others or tying of comments to levels of friendship.
I also think that anyone who has a problem with such an entry is free to simply skip over it. It's most likely posted in a spirit of fun and lighthearted competition.
Some mention has also been made of the quality of comments one generally receives on such entries, with some people making meaningless comments to increase their standings. I think that if a journal owner wants to avoid this type of comment, it is as simple as disabling comments on that entry. Other users, having to go to different entries to increase their comments, will be more likely to leave a comment about that other entry, in my opinion.
The idea that people care inordinately about how many comments particular individuals give them is, I think, not an accurate one. I think very few people care too much who does or does not comment. However, I think the discussion itself highlights something.
Everyone likes to get comments on their entries. The exceptions to this rule are those who disable the message board feature on their LiveJournals, but I think even those people do like to hear back that their entries meant something to someone.
For those of us who enable comments by default, we do like to hear that an entry was insightful, or that it made someone laugh, or that others are praying for a need we expressed. Everyone likes to have others reach out and make a friendly connection to share in a feeling or agree with an idea or come at that idea from a different direction. We all like making meaningful connections with other people. None of us is a self-sufficient island on the sea of humanity. We are all boats, wandering in loneliness upon the vast emptiness or traveling in a convoy with other boats. Wherever we are going, the journey is more pleasant if others are going the same way by choice.
I think everyone likes discovering that they are noticed. Many people feel invisible.

I've just added the tag money to an entry, and I'm sure I've talked about money before. Can any of you remember entries where I did so I can tag them appropriately?

Someone asked about the timeframe of the comment statistics in my earlier entry, so I decided to redo them with a smaller timeframe:

Coverage: Last 1000 comments

Total comments: 518/1000 not deleted, not my own

Displaying: Users > 1%

Username	%		Comments
pansyprincess		18.34	95
moredetails		9.85	51
advoir		8.49	44
( Read more... )

Generated using ljcommstats.py by premshree (available at LJ Tools).
(highest comment id: 4985)

Talk to me: When I do comment stats, do you want them to be a) Since the beginning of my journal b) For the last 1000 comments or c) Since the latest graph was posted d) Some other timeframe (specify)?

It's election season on the campus, and that means that candidates for student government and encumbents are destroying the Green. The large plywood signs have sprung up, and the parties are showing their colors.
The red party wants us to be assured, and they're claiming responsibility for great things that have happened on campus. The yellow party is promising to "Van Wilderize" the campus and displaying phrases and fragments that seem to have nothing to do with governance. The blue party has not yet made a visible appearance.
In this way, the red and yellow parties have shown that neither of them understands what students want in their representatives, but that doesn't seem to matter, because student government her doesn't seem to have power to do anything the students really want done. They spend the student activity fees, but from what I hear, they don't have power to put up signs (that's phys facs) or bring broader food choices (that's Chartwells). They can lobby these groups, but that seems to be all, from what i've heard.
There is an air of disenfranchisement among the students here.

The weather has turned cooler in the evenings, so I'm hopeful that the daytime weather will soon be nice, as well.

I've finished doing a tagging pass through my 850 entries. It took a long time to go through all those entries, but it also generated a lot of topics for discussion for me. I think some of you might be interested in looking at some of the different topics (http://skreyola.livejournal.com/tag/). Some of the more interesting tags include about my wife, insight, and something-profound-in-comments.
In any case, I want my friends to feel free to tag entries they see are missing a tag that applies. I added tags as I went through, so there may be some entries I tagged before I added an applicable tag. Or maybe some tags apply that I didn't think of putting on an entry. Of course, I don't want anyone to feel obligated to tag my entries, especially now that I've looked at every single entry for the purpose of tagging.
It is my hope that these tags will make finding a particualr entry easier and reading all the entries on a topic practical. So, you could easily read all the entries I've written on the subject of marriage or about the Brothers Karamazov.

I'm working on a repeat of my ideals list, and it's amazing how closely things match. :) I'll post it soon.

By the way, my lips now seem to be completely healed.

Explanations: I am still here.
    Since some of you are interested, I'll let you know what's been happening. First, let me say that I've been spending a lot less time on LJ than normal, so please don't take it personally if I haven't read many of your entries, lately. I'd gotten to the point where I was spending three or four hours every day reading LJ entries. I wasn't comfortable with that. So, I decided to spend more time offline, doing other things. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good manager of my time, and I didn't get done quite as much as I'd hoped. Still, it was a marked improvement.
    I'm in sort of a sticky situation. I want to trim the list of journals I read, but I don't want to hurt the people about whom I care so very deeply. If anyone can tell me how to do this, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise, I guess I'll eventually just make some drastic changes to my friend list and whine for a week about how much people hate me for doing it. ;)
    So, what's new? Well, I went last week to a nearby Linux users' group. It was fun, and I learned a lot. As soon as I have some money, I'm going to build a great box just for running Linux (and get rid of this proprietary Dell(tm) piece of junk that doesn't have enough RAM). It'll cost about $700 to build the new machine, but I'll have a great machine.
    I got a package yesterday. I went on eBay and bid on a package of two games, Myst and Riven. I only paid about $9.50 for it, including the shipping (which was most of the cost). When it arrived, Riven was there, but I couldn't find the Myst disc. I'm not terribly upset, because what I got was worth what I paid, but Myst was the game I intended to buy in the first place. So, I'll be looking again at the auctions soon, when I have a little money.
    My azaleas are blooming, and they are gorgeous. I recaulked the faucet I put into that bucket for using rainwater.
    Speaking of the Dell(tm) box, Love, I reinstalled Red Hat on it. Normally, I wouldn't have needed to do that, but I needed to resize the swap partition, and I don't know how (if possible) to do that without reformatting the whole drive. So, I backed up all the directories in my home directory and started the install. It was about three minutes past the point of no return when I realized that I hadn't backed up any of the files in my home directory, just its subdirectories. So, I lost a few files, including the one in which I keep my pending entries, my entry template, and the LOTDs I plan to post soon. So, I lost about three LOTDs, and I won't be passing those along to you.
    Did I mention I've gotten cards back stating that UNF has received my housing contract and that Uncle Sam has received my FAFSA? Well, I have now.
    Anyway, all of this is to say that I'm around, I'm getting things done, and I'm sorry I don't have time to read everything in everyone's journal, but I'm going to get things done offline if it means I have to abandon reading LJs altogether! I love you all, and I hope that your walk with the Lord leads you to blessings untold.

More explanations later...

Explanations: I watchedBeyond Tomorrow on Monday. It was rather a queer little movie. Fun, but queer.
    I'm in the midst of installing Debian on a small machine to use as a dedicated firewall/server. I don't know what I'll serve, since I don't have a static IP, but I have about a gigabyte to play with.
    I'm a jinx. Both of the times I've had a paid account, something has happened shortly before my time expired, and LJ has given more time to paid users. Am I being silly? Anyway, you can now claim 2 weeks of paid time if you had a paid account at the time of the outage. I think my interpretation is correct, but look into it just in case. :) 2-week extension Thanks to moredetails for mentioning this.

More explanations later...

Talk to me: Stolen from carlyd81: Sum up your opinion or impression of me in one word, leave it as a comment in this posting, and then post this sentence in your own
journal.

Link of the Day: A Poll for Girls - Ladies, please take moredetails' poll.

( Read more... )
The winner and still champ, mrs617!

Boy, LiveJournal is REALLY acting up, today!

Explanations: I don't guess I've gotten around to writing this entry yet, have I?
    Well, December was pretty busy, and I don['t guess January or February will be any different. I need to be spending less time on LiveJournal and more time on laundry, cleaning house, and writing.
    I haven't been writing much, lately, and I've forgotten to make posts in okaloosa this week. I have been learning a little more C and figuring out the ncurses library a little bit (Not a lot; I still can't get it to write to a user-defined window, grrrrr). Anyway, here's the current line count for the XTrader project:
[Line Count: 1071]
I don't remember what it was when I last left it.
    Anyway, the last page is this: I won't even try to post every day, or even on any regular basis. I'll update when I have something to say, and I'll try to say more about the events in my life, instead of just what my thoughts are. Thank you for your patience.
More explanations later...

Quoted: "My favorite was the lady saying war and violence is wrong, then shoving the guy with the video camera...." --abno

Explanations: I've been thinking a bit lately about the list... the friends list. It's quite an amazingly overloaded list. It serves as an aggregator of journals I read. It serves as a list of my actual friends. It serves as a security filter, both of those who can read my more private entries and of those who can post immediately-visible comments.
    I think, perhaps, that I've been a little bit snotty about the list in the past. Not that I haven't suffered because of LiveJournal's failure to separate the functions of trust, aggregation, and association; and not that that suffering does not often lead people into irrational behaviors-- yet that is no excuse for snottiness. I've been very hesitant to add people to the list, because drama often follows, especially when someone is being removed. This is why I don't read friends-only journals; why risk the pain if I ask to be allowed in, only to have to tell someone I'm not going to read their journal, after all?
    At any rate, I'm making a change. I'm not going to be snotty about adding people. I'm just going to say, here and now, that I will not tolerate assumptions and their attendant drama. People on my list are not necessarily my friends. Journals on my list that belong to my friends might not be read; I can't keep up with everyone's entries. That I'm not reading your journal doesn't mean I don't like you. That you're not on the list doesn't mean I don't like you. That I remove you from the list doesn't mean I don't like you, nor that I'm not your friend, nor that you're not mine.
    It means I keep the list as I want to keep it.
    This is why I hate this list. It turns me into a lawyer, covering my butt with a waist-deep pile of qualifying statements. From now on, if someone comments often in my journal, I'll probably add them. If I'm reading someone's journal, I'll probably add them. If I find a journal that belongs to a friend, I'll probably add them. That doesn't mean I'm reading them. That doesn't mean I'm your best buddy for life.
    [edit: After I posted this, a friend asked me a very good question: If LiveJournal is about the journals, why worry about the journals I don't read? For the most part, this unconsidered point is right on target. That being the case, I am going to, with small exception, follow his suggestion. One exception is that there are some people whose journals I don't read who are gracious enough to participate frequently in commenting in my journal. So that these people can post immediately-visible comments, their journals will also be on my friend list. The other exception is my own prerogative. I'm not an organization, so I'll make exceptions wherever I darn well please. I hate how trying to maintain the friends list turns me into the grouchy, miserly being who is trying to codify and pigeonhole other human beings. If peopole wouldn't get so uptight about it... ah, but that's not my business. My business is to react to people in love, and I'm afraid I fail miserably at that. Either way, I guess all I'm really trying to say here is that I'm sick of the drama surrounding the friend list. I use it mostly as a reading aggregator, and I don't like when people hurt their own feelings by assuming the list means a lot more than that. That's it, in a nutshell.]
    I give all within hearing fair warning at this time: I will get snotty with anyone who makes a stink about my adding/not reading/removing journals to/on/from the list. I graduated from high school nine years ago, and I had already had enough of drama then. I won't accept it now.
    We now return you to your regularly-friendly Skreyola.

More explanations later...

Talk to me: Have you had a bad experience with the friend list feature? Tell me about it.

Link of the Day: Discretion, Please! - Can't we all just be civil about our differences of opinion?

I won't be making entries about the West Wing. Responses were 50-50 as to whether I should, and the fact that I don't seem to have much time for anything and too many things to do tipped the balance.

Iunik, by the way, is pronounced "Unique" (You-Neek).

Come to think of it, I may not be updating three times a week, either.

Do you think I should change the name of that company?