I didn't sleep too much last night, due to my nocturnal nature; sleep wasn't in the cards during the day today either, due to my trip to eSoft to begin salary negotiations. (I'm keeping mum on the details of that for the moment, for somewhat obvious reasons.) Let's just say I'll be glad when that process is over, and I can begin working on what I'm good at and what I enjoy. This haggling business just stresses me out.

First, something that's been on my mind for a few days now. The future of this site, Bitscape's Lounge.

In theory, as soon as I submit this rambling, my script should generate a shiny new rdf file. If it works, people will be able to put Bitscape's Lounge into a channel. You know, those little box-like thingees with all the recent headlines? Like they have on Slashdot, and are in the works on x13? (Actually, Jaeger successfully adapted my code and had them working last I knew, but they were still in an experimental area of the site.) Yeah, those. Fun, huh?

Alright, so today after getting up and eating some breakfast, I decided to continue my reading of The Story, which I was so impressed with the other night.

Historically, I haven't really been into such things, but I've decided to try joining up with the geek webring, mostly because somebody convinced me it would be a good idea. ;) There are all sorts of (mostly personal) pages by various geeks of every variety, so if you're bored, try clicking the random site link below and see where it leads.

I figure I better post something here soon, as half the quadrant seems to know it already anyway. The word is in. I'm going to work at eSoft. Ecstatic would be an understatement for what I'm feeling right now. Thanks everybody for your support.

Ok, I know I already referenced it in the links section, but this bears brining attention to here as well. Having just finished Chapter 4 of The Story, I am somewhat in awe. This is brilliant stuff!

Yeow. As planned, I went in for a second interview at eSoft today, where I met and talked to several more of the people who I would be working with, should I get the position.

War, international politics, personal ethics.

Although there's been more than enough material on Slashdot over the past couple days to warrant it, this is not going to be YAWRAMIEC (Yet Another Wandering Rant Against the Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex). Thank goodness. :)

Hours after my last barely coherent attempt at a rambling, Jon Katz goes and posts an article which basically hits the same issues with his usual well written, if verbose for some, prose.

The better portion of my night on Friday was spent creating some more of the Bitscape's Lounge v2 code. It's really starting to take shape. Well, some parts are. I swear I'll have something up and ready to go before too much longer.

When Amazon.com decided to piss off myself and a slew of other Slashdotters with their decision to pursue a frivolous patent lawsuit against B&N, I decided it would be prudent to remove links to IMDB, owned by Amazon, and avoid visiting their site, thereby depriving them of banner ad revenue until such time as they decided to grow a conscience. Doing my small part to be an activist and try to make the world a better place, right? It's seeming sillier everyday.

So, today I went and had the big interview with eSoft. Despite having gotten out of there over an hour ago, right now, my nerves still seem more fired up than ever. Perhaps that Sobe I drank an hour before decided to hold its full effect until after the interview. Or, more likely, my anticipation is just getting the best of me.

I'll start this by saying that I went to this movie mostly because of the thread I read about it over on good old Nutforum, where one astute person mentioned its vaguely "uber"-ish qualities. Well, they also said it was a good movie. Which it was. I don't think I would have thought, "Oh look, uber characters!" had I not been exposed to the idea beforehand, however. Oh, and subtext? Yes. Definitely there. :)

Never say never. Last night, right around the strike of 0000, I was randomly surfing the web in a bored state of mind. I noticed the Slashdot article about jobs.linux.com getting a revamp. I decided to wander over to look at what they had done (also with the distant possibility of employment swimming around the back of my mind).

Wow, I'm not sure how long I'm gonna be able to go with this, cause even though I've lowered the brightness and contrast down to threshold readability, my head is already starting to spin.

I hate the flu. Tuesday night knocked my down bad; so awful was the pain that I didn't catch a wink of sleep. You know something's wrong when you turn on the light to go take a hot shower, and find it an effort to make both eyes track to the same object. Last night, I at least got a little sleep, although it was of the light, nightmare-ridden variety, from which one wakes every 5 minutes, or so it seemed. The best relief comes during hot showers. I've probably taken around dozen in the last 36 hours. Maybe more, maybe less. I've lost count.

Well, I think yesterday finally saw me catching up on some of the sleep that was practically absent from my life last week. After the "sort of" irc fest, at which Jaeger and I were the only ones present, at least in the non-meatspace version (the real Gibsonian term has been so overused as to become a bad cliché), I went down at around 0300.

Alrighty. My sleeping patterns are finally returning to something resembling normal. Down around 0200, up at 1020. I think this is the first time I've gotten more than 4 hours straight since the multinight fest-turned-mega-turned-solo fest. Well, maybe I did Friday night. I'm actually not sure.

Given that approximately 1/52nd of the the year 2000 has now elapsed, I think I'll briefly examine my current progress on each New Year's Resolution, made one week ago.

Ok, so while I was on my way to the store circa six hours ago, I'm happily riding along, listening to what is arguably Denvers premiere rock radio station, kbpi, and I hear this nice little ad about how they're now streaming all audio content over the web. "Why couldn't they have that when I was in Lincoln?" I ask myself.

Alrighty then. Yes, I'm going for a new record for most ramblings in a one week span. (I may already have it. I wouldn't know without checking.)

Ok, I know one person writing code by themselves through the night does not a real fest make (otherwise, we'd probably all be festing every other day or so), but I just had to say it, cause of the nice ring.

If trends continue, this week could see more ramblings entries than any in history. We'll see. (Another possible idea I had after the fest was to make a program that would average all my ramblings and calculate all sorts of stats such as average length in bytes, words, and paragraphs, and also check times and determine average wpm over an extended period, and maybe a few other fun but completely useless things. My sample size is now getting to the point that it could yield a fairly accurate picture. Of course, I'd have to either correct or ignore ramblings posted in CST/CDT that to this day have the inconsistent handling of the timezone change.)

I am currently the only fester in a room full of softly humming PCs. Jaeger and Neelix departed earlier this morning so that Jaeger could get to his appointment. They will be returning sometime in the near future to pick up Humblik and their belongings. Bouncing is either asleep, or out. I haven't checked to see whether his car is here. Scott's wherabout's are unknown to me, but I figure he can't have gone too far, cause Core (or Rage, I'm not sure exactly when the official name change occurs) is sitting right behind me.

On the way to our beverage run, Jaeger and I decided that tonight's gathering truly deserves the title of Megafest. Six participants, seven computers (eight if you count the ancient Mac which provided us with a brief glow in the dark show), I have no idea how many dozens of liters of caffeinated beverages, many bags of chips and various dips, much festing music piped through Bouncing's stereo (although some participants chose do don headphones during portions of the fest), and enough geek energy aura to drive any normal person insane.

As of this writing, the commune contingent is scheduled to arrive in approximately 1 to 2 hours. Given past experience, I calculate that they will likely arrive in 3 to 5 hours. I could be proven wrong. :)

[continuing directly from the previous rambling...]

And here I stand with this sword in my hand

Alright. Kind of got cut short there, but I know better than to keep typing when the red bar gets within a couple pixels of the top.

Once again, the two festers embarked on a night of code, theory, caffeine, and fun. Bitscape, armed with the vim editor, perl interpretor, and diagramming software (don't laugh); bouncing with emacs and python. But the most glorious event was still ahead of them, as their minds made journies into the land of logic, structure, and object-oriented techniques. "The Source can be felt strongly here. So strongly, in fact, that a Jedi Master could sense it from a light year away."

Bouncing and I decided to get a jump start on festing and begin last night. After the conclusion of the second X Files rerun, Bouncing brought Scully into the living room and began almost instantaniously, and I proceeded to bring Dagobah's 34 day uptime to a close (the crashing problems appear to have subsided after I disabled the external hardware cache, at Jaeger's suggestion). Dagobah was transported it into its usual festing location with minimal fuss, and I booted for the first time to the 2.2.13 kernel I compiled weeks ago. Which is good, because I was afraid a new version would come out before I would have a chance to use this one.

In keeping with the last New Year's resolution enumerated in the previous rambling, I think it's time to lay some items straight. Items which I haven't been entirely straightforward about on prior occasions. Things I've known at some level, but been afraid to admit here, or to myself, for whatever reasons. Two issues in particular come to mind.

I'm referring, of course, to the movie I just finished watching (albeit on VHS pan-and-scan). There is no spoon.