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$group = "news";
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$title = "january 30, 2001";
$id = 10;
$ALLOW_COMMENTS = 1;
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Greetank.
<p>
<b>[bows]</b>
<p>
I'm still alive, however improbable that is. Alive and cold. Not in the
sort of mean-tempered and cruel definition of "cold" so much as the directly
physical sense of lacking any sort of thermal exitation of the corps. Put
in more vulgar terms, I'm <b>freezin</b> out here. It was 44 degrees
indoors yesterday. INDOORS. That's just ungodly.
<p>
Now why is it that a nice young man would let himself freeze so badly?
Well, the <a href="http://hackerdojo.com/">house I live in</a> is very
nice, but it's really just profoundly, wildly inefficient. I mean, one
solid wall of our living room is nothing but single-layered plate glass.
You really couldn't have designed it to leak more heat, short of putting
a giant fan and a hole in the wall. Mind you, it's great stuff. We've
got just a mindnumbingly beautiful panoramic view of forest and bay,
but I find myself getting sick once a month instead of once a year,
which kind of can put a damper on the cheeriest of dispositions: the
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2549/damocles.html">Sword
of Damocles</a> in effect and all.
<p>
On the brighter side of things, I finally broke down and got a projector
last week. It's been really fantastic: we've had a few "movie nights"
(indeed, nearly every night of the week) where we'll sit down and watch
some spiffy movie. Just yesterday I decided it was time to go and buy
some appropriately cool movies for it, many of which I have yet to see:
Cool Hand Luke, Jesus of Nazareth, Silence of the Lambs...classic stuff
like that. I'm really delighted: I've always hated television and loved
film. I think a lot of that has to do with the point of television
being to sell you advertisements, while the point of a movie is to tell
a sufficiently compelling story that you'll watch it again, tell your
friends, and buy it when it comes out on DVD. One is just meant to
glue to inaction, one is meant to compel you to act on your enjoyment.
This differentiation in the stimuli required for profitability mean
that film can, in my opinion and experience, achieve a much higher level
of art, insight, and introspection than television.
<p>
Back to more melancholy things, my dang car's broke. =( My Mazda 626 DX,
gotten for $2000 before I even <a href="00feb29.php3">had my driver's license</a>
and which served
me flawlessly for a year and a half, started having problems around
a year ago -- the alternator belt broke, then the alternator itself died,
then the battery had some problems and I got replaced. Finally, even with
a new alternator, alternator belt, and new battery, it's decided to die,
putting out electrically. Doh! So I'm in the market for a new car.
<p>
Work is going alright, but it's amazing how just about everyone there
gazes out the window with glazed eyes, mumbling about how they hope to
go somewhere else as soon as the economy picks up a spate. I don't know
how long I want to let myself be negatively influenced by a relatively
despondent environment. I wish people there were just a lot more
excited about their jobs, about what they were doing. It makes me sad
to see dispassionate living.
<p>
My <a href="http://communitycolo.net/">non-profit project</a> is coming
along, very slowly but steadily. We're nailing down our Terms of Service,
we've got two servers in there, and we'll make it happen. We've even got
an alliance with <A href="http://www.CalTEG.net/">CalTEG</a> going.
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