Gurugrrl thinks I should register virtualexecutor.com. I can't decide if she's being silly or not.

I told her about a spot I heard on a program called "Marketplace" where a woman did an editorial spot about being a personal ethicist, and somebody, upon hearing that, has registered the domain, filed to be a corporation, and supposedly has clients now.

"Has somebody registered virtualexecutor.com?" she asked me.

I was puzzled, because I'd forgotten all about it already. "Registered what?"

"You know, that thing you wrote about..."

Oh, I thought, that. I thought you were being serious! "Oh, I don't know. I seriously doubt it, sweetie."

She told me that she actually wanted me to do a whois on it, and since then has suggested I register it.

Seriously, would you use a service that would take care of wrapping up your online affairs and manage your online presence after your passing? (No, really, I want to know.)

I feel competent.

During my nocturnal meanderings I happened to run into Yaddaness. She's a fellow Diarylander who's been busy setting up her new website to get free of the shackles of her Geoshitties existence.

Well, being the paranoid sort I am, I had figured several days ago she was mad at me, since we hadn't really been speaking. Apparently this isn't the case, however, because she asked me for some help installing an Ultimate Bulletin Board on her site. I am a little dumbfounded why she asked me, being a geek of the failed variety, but far be it from me to tell anybody I haven't logged into a proper Unix box for longer than thirty seconds in a couple years, so I set about trying to explain what to do, without much avail.

(I think the problem of my not being able to explain what to do with a computer is illustrated well by the situation when I was Benevolent Dictator of Technology.

You see, people would ask me questions about Windows or MS Office or how to email a couple megs of smut to his girlfriend in Argentina (it was an all-male office, okay? Well, 'cept for the receptionist, and she was "one of the guys"). These questions would interrupt my work, or even worse, aimless web surfing or my lunchtime game of Quake. I would be annoyed, and try to explain the answer to the question, at which time said person would wander back to their office and give it a go. No problem, right?

Well, usually, that didn't solve things, the people came back with more questions, thus disturbing me again. This wouldn't do because I am not a natural teacher, at least, not with regards to technology (people used to tell me I was pretty good relating mathematics, though), so I took to just doing things for people.)

Well, Yads really wanted her board up (not that I can blame her; interaction with your readers rocks!), and I can't go into deep detail about how to install a CGI script when I can't even see what the setup is like, so I did the obvious thing, asked her for her login and password, and went to work. Anyway, it was the principle of the thing. I think she kept telling me she'd just pay them for the "professional installation" to taunt me into doing it.

So I guess I'm her official CGI-installer-type-guy. It's actually nice to be useful.

I just hope she gets around to deleting those test threads off the message board. [smirk]

I haven't been feeling very creative lately, as I've lamented before. The juices don't flow, and I just sort of sit staring at a blank screen.

Part of that is the depression. That's a given, really. If I can overcome that, I'll get that bit back at least, and I look forward to it with great anticipation.

Part of it is that, in most of the areas I used to be creative, I am desperately and hopelessly out of practice. With time, I can get that back. Part of the fun in helping Yaddaness get her board up is realizing how quickly I got back in the swing of working in bash (even though my favorite shell is csh) and realizing that all the minutiae regarding strange weirdnesses that can happen in doing such a thing, like line ending conversion, file permissions, vagaries about web servers, etc., is still up there, it just needs to be jostled loose. So maybe I can get that back, too.

But, for the life of me, I don't feel as smart as I used to. I feel like there is a part of me that is gone forever. Perhaps it's an opportunity cost, or just the confidence of youth that makes you try to do the impossible simply because you don't know that the task is impossible. I used to thrive on that part of my psyche, and I feel naked without it. I don't know if I can operate without it.

restlessmind