15 Megs of Fame




Diaryland is da bomb I just *have* to tell you how much this all sucks. Who're these other people he's writing about? Who's the freak writing this, anyway? What's gone before. What's going on right now? Where do *you* visit on the web? What're you building right now?


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Another smart-assed remark from Mike
Early-morning angst, dissatisfaction and frustration
04:00:00 on 2000-03-16

Remeron ® Wellbutrin ® Day 21 Remeron ® Wellbutrin ®

Feeling:

...like maybe I should be doing a web-accessible database to keep track of my mood in a quantitative manner (even if it's "rate how you feel on a scale of 1-10" with annotations) rather than qualitatively in this sidebar.
I'm sitting here downloading milestone 14 of Mozilla, browsing some of the topic threads at Advogato, and trying to load my "about" page via FTP in UltraEdit32. On a 31.2k connection. Everything is sucking mud.

This need for bandwidth just highlights what's on my mind.


The other day I saw a Time-Warner cable truck in my neighborhood while I was driving through on the way to the barber. It was the full deal, too - cherrypicker lift, two technicians and when I saw in the back as I drove by it was full of lots of fun-looking toys. Of course, I don't really want cable TV; I'd turn into a 100%, unmitigated couch potato then.

Then I had a revelation - Time-Warner offers Roadrunner. Southwestern Bell won't throw a SLC hut down out here anywhere so I can get DSL... maybe I can get a cable modem?

Excitement ensues.

Imagine my disappointment when I discover that I can write off getting a cable modem, too. Broadband just doesn't seem to be in the cards for me.

This is my general plight - I feel like I'm trapped by circumstances of my life, and while I try to make do with what I have it drives me mad that I don't have what I really could use. I mean, let's face it - when I'm at work I am working in what I consider a fairly computationally backwards environment, at least what I'm used to using, with a fairly rich toolset. However, I find that in between calls I can generally be more productive because my access to the 'net to get this, look that up, transfer this file, is so much faster. No more worrying about how long it will take to transfer this or that, and what will I be missing out on doing if I block out two or three hours to do this transfer, or what have you. I finally got the cash together to invest in a decent piece of technology, and it's like siphoning off a straw trying to use it.

I feel like I lack basic tools, like I'm in the outback or something.


I feel like I'm trapped between worlds, too, while we're talking about it. I'm misunderstood by everybody. (And you wonder why I say I want to be understood.)

There's a certain partition of the whole set of entities (since many I know online, they could be aliens, uplifted lower-order animals, or AIs for all I know) who think I know quite a bit about science and technology because I do tend to have a fairly broad background. I think, for the most part, they tend to be the "I can't understand that, so you have to be smart to grok it all!" crowd. Thus, they tend to think I know everything, even when I don't. They're good for the ego, but they're stressful in that they come asking all manner of questions.

Then there's the partition who think I'm beneath notice because I have either:

  1. spread myself thin (I'm a generalist who loves to learn new things and integrate new knowledge into the framework I've got in my mind already, not specialize in one narrow area),
  2. have minimal or sketchy job experience in many avenues (Gurugrrl calls it "lots of experience," but most people don't see it that way; I've done a little bit of everything, but once I get restless in a certain position, off I go to do something else), or
  3. never finished a degree.

These are generally suits and other miscellaneous bean-counting business wonks, so we're just at a great cultural divide between us, anyway. Unfortunately, they're the ones I tend to be interviewing with, and love to point out all the weaknesses that I have, in their eyes, anyway.

Then there's this final partition that are supposed to be my peer group. They're the computer geeks who see me as somebody who gave up computing for science. Then there's the science geeks who see me as a computer geek who dabbled in their realm a bit. The gamers see me as somebody who gave up on gaming because I didn't see it as a viable lifestyle. I can go to them, and I understand them all.

So why can't I understand myself?


I think it comes down to that I never thought I would be what I am today.

Let's face it: I have given up so many things. I gave up being a first-class, compulsively code-eating computer geek as a teenager to become a physicist. I gave up being a relatively thoughtful theoretician wannabe because of a girl and the general boredom I tend to find myself in from time to time with anything I'm doing, including things I love to do (which makes me think that I've always had a depressive personality). After that, I didn't know where to turn, so I tried to pick up computing again, but found that things had moved quite a bit since when I last really worked with it. I gave up.


Where does that leave me? What am I today? I'm not sure. I see so many potential avenues ahead of me, but all of them are daunting. Frustrations face me at every turn.

I could do a Doug Lenat and shoot for a longshot. I mean, I could go back to school and study something like molecular nanotechnology or machine intelligence (I still think that a symbolic AI could be created) or artificial life. What does that buy me? A chance at "greatness"? I don't know if I put a lot of worth on that. It depends on if the field I choose takes off (all signs point that way for nanotechnology, but machine intelligence has seen better days, and alife is interesting but appears to be largely stillborn), but really, is it what I want to do? I don't really think so.

I could go the 100% traditional route. Go back to school, study electrical engineering or something, and get a job and just live out my days until I get old and decrepit. I could end up being a slightly more affluent version of that guy I saw the other day at the grocery store. That doesn't seem very appealing, either.

Or I could just try to start working on something. Rebuild my coding skills... somehow. Hope to hack my way into something better. Seems unlikely.


When I was young, I believed that nothing I did was wrong. Things just worked out. Nothing ever really came out disastrously bad. In a lot of ways I led a charmed life.

Somewhere along the line that fell apart. I mean, things just stopped working out. It shook me from top to bottom, and now I am convinced that everything I do will have a more than even chance of have negative consequences. I stay in one spot because if I stand still then I don't move further away from the desired destination.

The problem is that that destination seems to be on a speeding train. I have to travel hard just to keep pace with it, much less catch it. So I still fall behind, regardless.

And I watch the world pass me by.

restlessmind


Ancient history:
2013-03-01"You'll be stone dead in a moment!"
2007-08-07I covet fuck you money
2007-07-16My own long, dark tea-time of the soul
2007-07-11My internet experience is lacking
2007-07-10Coincidence



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