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?


New! Search this site:



Subscribe to the notify list for announcements of updates and changes




Buy Blue


Make me a friend on Twitter.





Another smart-assed remark from Mike
Where is the killer app that manages my life?
22:00:00 on 2004-07-07

We live in a two-story townhome in an apartment complex. It's not the best place in the world, but it has a few amenities that made it a decent choice (at least in my mind), including two assigned spaces that are right outside our back door so we don't have to deal with parking nightmares, remembering where we left our cars, etc.

Well, that is if we could park there. They're doing some sort of dubious repaving of the lot in our area right now, but since it rained for an hour or so today they stopped at 11:00 AM (even though in Houston the water will evaporate in another half hour, especially on a hot pavement surface). Now, we can't park there again tomorrow because the workers haven't finished the job.

It wouldn't be so much of a problem that forty to fifty cars are being displaced with this repaving fiasco if there was somewhere for them to be parked. Where everybody's going to park is anybody's guess, and the notice (which came only the evening before they planned to begin) didn't bother to tell us where spaces could be found, only not to park in our spaces.

You'd think any reasonably intelligent microbe would give that sort of information, because not all of us go around the complex much. In fact, for the most part, Marilynn and I live like this is a house, parking just outside, front facing out on the street. We deal with the rest of the complex as little as possible. We know of a couple places, but for the most part, the rest of the parking is perpetually filled by others.

I got a space because I made a point to get home early to get a space. I guess I better plan on that again tomorrow.

Marilynn got mad at me because I called the complex (mis-)management about this to find out if the little bit done was all they were going to do, and when I got a general "fuck you" response from them I let my frustration out and just ended up hanging up on them. (I had high hopes that the management situation would improve when the complex was bought by a new company. So far, so bad.)


The keys are that I just want life to be simple, I don't want to worry and I don't want to have to solve the same problems all over again. I don't want to have to constantly recompute the tiny details of everyday life, because the details of everyday life are uninteresting. Once they're considered a solved problem, I want to be able to ignore them and ride the coattails of my previous work. Ditto for worry - once I put resources and effort into not having to worry about something, I don't want to have to worry about them anymore.

I don't want to have to deal with the details of finding a parking space and worrying in the evening what's going on with my car. I can rest easier knowing it's right there. I feel like I am being robbed of that, and it raises my anxiety level.

I know it's unrealistic to want to get rid of all worry, have life be perfectly simple, etc. It's more like the sense of the TIAA-CREF sponsor messages that used to be on Nova, back when I used to get to watch it regularly; paraphrased, roughly, they said, "we worry about the financial future of great minds, so they don't have to."

Not being a "great mind" aside, I wish I didn't have to worry about the little details so I could worry about something more meaningful. I am an idea guy, an introvert and most definitely live inside my head most of the time, so petty details from external reality really imposes on the time I spend with my own thoughts and ideas. I feel like I have so little time for them sometimes.

Where is the killer app that manages my life?

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



<< Before nowAfter now >>