Interesting times. Or something like that.

/me flips back and forth between this and the irc window, typing bits and pieces into each every little bit.

I did manage to get a hold of Jaeger on Rage after work today. Turns out poor old Ganges has been cracked and his telnit login disabled, but ftp still works. How wierd is that? Just wierd enough to make trying to crack back in an interesting, if frustrating exercise.

Since the only person with keys to the colocation cabinet is out of state until the end of the week, it's especially interesting. Annoying might be a more accurate word.

Well, anyway, he, bouncing, and myself have been basically hanging out in irc for the last 2 hours trying to devise a solution to this vexing obstacle. And so, here I sit.

Well, actually bouncing left a few minutes ago. Seems he's actually having more luck at a topic I yakked about way the hell more than I should have here last weekend. Kind of pathetic. I mean, me, that is. I want to be happy for him, and I am. At the same time, I just look at myself, and say, "What the fuck?"

I don't spite him. That would be... low. I just don't know how to deal (in Buffy lingo), I guess. I look at him, and then I look at my... situation, and it's like "Oh shit." Not because he's doing well, but because I'm doing so poorly. Thou shalt not try to compare. Yeah. What's reality?

I'm writing this with the near-certain assumption that he won't read this, cause if I thought he were going to, it would almost certainly affect what I write, whether I want it to or not, consciously or unconsciously. Which nicely leads us into tonight's cozy little topic. :)

Philosophies of online journaling -- which, even if this isn't, it takes on many similar traits, so I'll apply the term.

What I write here. Who do I write it for? What exactly is the point? Given that, on many occassions, I have written thoughts so private that I probably wouldn't even tell closest friends, what is this all about? Does it even make sense to be writing what I do here, since I have good reason to believe at least two (or more) co-workers from the good ole' office regularly peruse these ... ... ... ... pages?

Long pause before the end of that sentence. Long, long pause. Ok, maybe this multitasking thing ain't such a hot idea. First I stop right in the middle of a sentence I'm contemplating how to finish here to go chat with Jaeger. After a few minutes of that, I go to Everything to look up something he mentioned, and from there, I get distracted surfing to various nodes, then back to irc, to attempt to continue that thread, and back here. Insane.

Alright. Serious topic. Since I've managed to tear myself away from the mighty hypertext repository of insanity, and there's a lull in the irc conversation, maybe a little of the serious writing I intend to attempt will become doable. Or not.

Ok, before delving back into it fully, I'll just insert a side comment that I meant to include earlier, but got distracted from with all the other topics swirling around. The nasty wave of guilt, mentioned last night, that was bogging down my brain earlier seems to have mostly dissipated. For that, I'm glad. It was really bothering me for a while. The proverb is true: When we hurt others, we actually hurt ourselves the most. We cool now? :)

Alright. That brings me nicely back into the main topic: What -- more specifically, who -- is all this -- this that I spend all these collective hours typing on -- for? What is the point? Is there a point? Do I even want to know? Does anyone else want to know? By this point, is everyone who reads this totally bored out of their mind? :)

First, a little history: Way back when, about a year ago, when I first got underway with the insanity that is Random Ramblings, no one was reading it. I was basically just typing to myself, and putting whatever came out of my brain onto the web server on my dorm room computer.

Since the page really wasn't getting any hits, it started to feel like I had a sort of virtual privacy by obscurity, and I began writing more things -- ideas -- that were being kept from virtually everyone I knew. This window became my most trusted confidant

The first news of my contemplating departure from ucollege.edu was broken on that page. I didn't exactly plan it that way. Heck, I didn't know how I was going to inform people. One of my biggest obstacles, actually. I remember considering the sending of a mass email. Of course, reality is always different.

Someone did eventually read everything that had been written (the same person I happen to be in an irc session with right now, incidentally), and word got around. Not the way I planned (or really didn't plan) it, but it happened. God, that was a painful time. Anyway...

The obscure point being, that when this first got going, it built momentum under the assumption that I was typing things nobody else would probably ever read. Ramblings weren't even posted on the main part of my page, like they are now. It was under a subsection, which the user actually had to expend a click's worth of effort to get to. A subtle difference, but significant.

Back then, the first impression of someone who had never visited the site before would be the cheesy, carefully constructed little paragraph of gobbledygook, accompanied by the hopelessly amateurish looking Gimped up image for Bitscape's Lair. Ramblings required a small bit of digging.

Now, random wanderers who happen to surf in get my latest brain spew, whatever that happens to be. Sometimes, it isn't exactly flattering. However, I did the Lounge that way for a reason (the ever-elusive Version 2 is very similar in that regard). The reason being: I realized that the real content of this page, the thing that attracts those who do come back -- few as they were at the time -- were the ramblings, possibly my movielog, and the links.

Things that were updated regularly and frequently

The more frequent the updates, the more important. The driving philosophy behind the design of Bitscape's Lounge Version 1 was such that someone -- a regular reader -- wanting to drop by and check for new content could do it all in one stop. Ramblings. Movielog. Links. If there was nothing new in any of the major sections, they could know it instantly without having to click anywere, or even scroll to the bottom of the page. (This was before the links to static content, which is occassionally, but very infrequently updated, were added as an afterthought.)

The point? I later decided that I actually like having people read what I write, even if I do sometimes make an idiot of myself. :)

The truth is, as much as I might be embarrassed to reveal some things, the slight risk that the "wrong" (or right) parties might read it is what gives it the edge. Keeps me interested enough to keep going. Every time I say something about someone here that I would be unwilling to say to their face, it's like Matrim Cauthon and the dice rolling in his head. Dare I say it almost constitutes a high?

With that, we move to recent developments. This month, for the first time in Random Ramblings history, I actually wrote an entry, or, depending upon interpretation, multiple entries, directed at a specific individual. Note that it wasn't about someone, it was to them. A significant departure from what has always consisted of me writing to nobody in particular about the oddity that appears to be my life.

Setting aside the personal ramifications, events that followed, and other affected items, I believe this was a stylistic mistake. In and of itself, the specific rambling I'm thinking of (Confessions of a...) probably wasn't such a bad thing (again, we're talking in terms of "good web content" only), but it became a precursor to a near-avalanche of progressively deteriorating crap that was targeted primarily toward one member of the Bitscape's Lounge readership. That would be fine if the person it were targeted at was me. But it wasn't, so we have a problem.

This isn't to say that I haven't thrown in offhand references -- practically from day one -- to things I believe only certain reader(s) or non-readers will recognize. But it's always been there as fun on the side, never the main focus of a rambling. There have even been occassions when I talked about someone, with a fair degree of certainty that the person I referred to would read. But never, NEVER, has a rambling been addressed to a particular reader. Am I repeating myself? :)

Ok, past my bedtime. I'll wrap up soon.

So anyway, even though I know the audience is growing (by exactly how much, I'm not sure. I refuse to read my web logs at all now, cause doing so is just too irksome on my nerves), I think this whole thing tends to go best when I'm writing as if to myself. Pretending it's just me in this dark room with the windows completely covered, the glass obscured behind blinds, the blinds behind black plastic bags, with the self-modified-by-spraypaint lightbulbs on the walls casting a slightly off-color illumination on the various posters of heros past, present, and future, as I sit and type to the peaceful sound of a Tori cd, secure in the knowledge that this is my place. Better to think of it that way.

Now, off to read a quick salon article before I go down for the sleep I planned to enter much earlier than now.