Category Archives: Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts

Things fall out of my head and hit the keyboard

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Having just re-read Spider Robinson’s Melancholy Elephants and posting a link to it on Facebook, I had a realization as I searched for a title to tag the link with to entice people to read it. I chose “Society must be able to forget.”

Immediately my brain lurched forward with that thought, is that true? Sure it’s true for art, or intellectual property, but that makes it a maxim. Is it true? Universally applicable? What if when we say “those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it” we are making the argument for the true nature of mankind’s existence? What if we need to repeat our mistakes, what if we need to repeat history. An existence of perfect memory could be an existence of perfect actions and perfect sterility.

Or maybe I need to be wary of caffeine-fueled inspiration at 0900.

Random Thoughts

Regression by Self Image

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I feel younger today than I did two years ago. It seems my self image is tightly intertwined with some notion of an expected linear life progression. A large step back has made me feel younger, less experienced and less ready to face the world.

I look at my contemporaries and feel dwarfed by their accomplishments. I feel ill suited to be compared to them. I feel there have been points in my life where I have had a more meaningful existence, a more focused purpose, and spent more time working towards that. This is not to say that I oppose where I am, just noting the difference.

Geek, Netbook, Random Thoughts

There are a dozen aborted posts under drafts

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All of which I want to finish, none of which probably will be. I think Ze is right, if you have a neat idea just throw it out there now. To hell with trying to release it when it’s ready just punt it out the door and see what happens.

There’s stuff in there I would liked to have written about at the time, and I could do some small posts about them but I don’t know that it’s all that engaging to do so. So fuck that noise.

I saw Richard Fucking Stallman, a few weeks back, give a talk on how Copyright harms society. Nothing unexpected, I got to ask a question and he interrupted me as I pretty much expected he would.

A few days later I bought an Acer Aspire One. Upgraded it to 1.5gb of ram and soldered in a bluetooth adapter. Wiped whatever the hell distro they put on there and installed Debian Sid. Happy times.

The Soekris is coming along, it’s doing all routing at home quite handily and I’m working on asterisk. Once that’s done I think it’s time to ditch the personal cellphone. I’m tired of giving rogers money. The number will be ported to the VOIP account and people who don’t get the new mobile contact number immediately will have to accept voicemail and email as contact options for me.

Further to that, I think it’s time to ditch the equipment at the colo. Nothing I do right now justifies a half-rack of equipment, I could do everything I do currently in a rented VM, so that’s the plan.

It certainly does sound like I’m trying to cut expenses, and that’s because that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I had a plan for this year, I think it’s about time I made it happen.

Other news, the Golf was broken into this week. They got away with a flashlight and a couple of car chargers. Fuck them and everyone who questions my carrying the tactimurse.

Time to stay angry.

Life, Random Thoughts

On getting old (not older, just old)

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Out for drinks last night for John’s birthday and as is expected, the conversation meanders.  It didn’t strike me at the time, but this morning I just realised that the following exchange (now paraphrased) is indicative of how old we are upstairs now.

“I know what you mean about keeping hardwood and laminate clean, luckily I have a great vacuum. I love my Dyson.”

“You have a Dyson? Wow Dave”

“Oh yeah, It’s fantastic.  I can pull entire cats from the carpet and it never loses suction”

Are you fucking serious?  We talk about the horrors of keeping hard floors looking clean and cooing about brands of vacuum?

Random Thoughts

Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter

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Kind of a strange post, I know. These are the things on my mind as of late. Not so much as where I want Canada to go, but where the US might need to go back to. Anyone who’s talked to me in the last couple weeks knows that I’ve been struggling with this weird mix of strong social support systems and personal responsibility. I’ve been listening to Dan Carlin’s Common Sense, and the above are what I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

Random Thoughts

Another thought re: C-484

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Rollins has a phrase for this sort of situation that I’ve been using for a few years.

“Your choice is fish.”

I have used this in many a situation where the choice offered is no choice at all. Apparently there’s a name for this. Hobson’s Choice. Found the link in a fark thread on SCOTUS debating the 2nd Amendment… that’d be a completely different post.

But ultimately this private members bill would be a way of telling women considering an abortion, “Your choice is fish”.

Random Thoughts

Oh I see how it is

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Bill C-10 – A bill to make sure that illegal content doesn’t get tax credits or a bill enabling the use of an undisclosed morality system to censor film in Canada? Considering that no film has ever applied for a Tax Credit that could be described by the talking-points brought up on this so far (child porn & extreme violence), I’m of the opinion that the true reasoning is the latter.

Bill C-484 – A bill that would create a loophole that would be used to deny women the freedom to get an abortion. Not that the abortion would be denied, just an unclear threat that she could be charged with murder after the fact. But it’s not an attack on abortion. The Harper government aren’t going to re-open the abortion debate. They said so. They just want to make sure that someone who kills a pregnant woman gets charged for ending two lives, that’s all they want.

I’m growing tired of this government.

Geek, Life, Random Thoughts, Site

A Minor Update

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Life’s been treating me pretty well this past month.

I’ve been good about something things (try to de-stress and such) and not so good about others (diet… exercise) but overall I’ve been pretty happy about how this month has gone. Ultimately it’s time for me to develop a new routine and stick to it rather religiously.

Over the last couple evenings I’ve attempted a repair of the poorly designed floating bridge on my guitar and restrung it.  Spent a few minutes strumming away before I made supper this evening. I’ve been debating trying to pick up guitar again as a winter project. Other contenders for that spot are also getting my HAM license and working on my geek cred. I suppose it would be possible to do all of these things, but I don’t know how likely that really is.

Yesterday also brought an upgrade of wordpress to the blogs I host. 2.3 seems to be pretty neat. They’ve added tag support as well as a tag-cloud widget for the side bar.  It figures that such a thing should exist as just 3 days ago I found a cloud widget that works on the existing category system. I guess if I’m to start tagging things I’ll need to reconsider my current categories.

I’ve also seen talk of a Debian User Planet which somewhat intrigues me.  I think I’d be more inclined to write and thusly post more technical articles if I knew people who’d get some use out of them would actually be exposed to them.  Though for such a thing to happen I would need to be able to generate an RSS feed for just a single category and I haven’t found a way to do this yet.

To be fair, if I expect people to read what I write, then I need to write more compelling content and post more frequently. I suppose that would tie in with the above. Establish a routine that involves posting to the intarwebs, practicing guitar, studying for the HAM license, and working out. Oh yeah, and work and socializing and sleep.

oi.

Geek, Random Thoughts

Breaking up is hard to do

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Dear Digg,

We’ve had some good times.  You’ve given me a bunch of funny links and nifty pictures for backgrounds.  But frankly, I keep reading the comments. They’re making me dumber.  Until I can browse at +5 insightful, I think we need to take a break.

It’s not me, it’s you.  The real WTF is the comment system.

Just Another Dave