Rage's connection being down, one can only wonder when this rambling will see the light of day. (Times like this make the thought of getting Argo's apache and Loung scripts configured and acquiring a domain name all the more appealing.) Actually, according to unofficial unwritten schedule, it's nearly time for the Louisville Compound line to experience another outage. This weekend, perhaps. Of course, I would have no objection if US Pest were to break the trend, surprise everybody, and (gasp!) actually keep the lines working for more than one straight month.

After arriving home from work today, I immediatly went down for sleep for a couple hours. Tired, I had been. Good, sleep was. Today was sexual harrassment day. Errr... Yeah. Something like that. If it weren't so stupid, it would almost be comical. Heck, it was comical.

Don't get me wrong. I think that if and when people actually are being harrassed, then it's a real problem. But the idea of herding every single employee through "training courses", in which we "learn" how to practice basic human civility and decency seems utterly ridiculous. We're adults, for crying out loud. These are things to be taught by parents to their children, not imparted by corporate/government institutions. Oh well. It keeps the idiot lawyers off their backs, insurance rates down, and the bureaucrats at bay. So be it. If I wanted to be positive, I could even say it was mildly entertaining. A break from the usual humdrum.

So anyway, after waking up, I wandered arround, attempted to scrounge some food from the refrigerator, and did a bit of surfing. Rage's lack of up-ness was annoying me. I decided to try to get to Ziyal, which is on a static IP as of late last Saturday night / Sunday morning, and successfully extracted the IP by fingering Jaeger's account on Argo and checking the IP he last logged in from. My guess was correct.

Talked Jaeger, where he informed me that it's almost certainly rockynet's fault. While they may be slightly more reliable than US Pest, that isn't saying much. You get what you pay for. (Which, in the case of my account on Rage, would be US$0, although there once was a time long ago when I helped write some code on x13, and apparently one or more members of the current x13 "senior staff" (lol) find my so-called content entertaining, so... onward we go.)

Talked with Jaeger about various events for a while, and was somehow lured into reading ancient year-old journal entries of his on Ziyal. He made cryptic references in conversation, the answers to which he claimed might be found during that time period. I gave up on trying to figure out his mysterious talk, but found the journals entertaining enough to continue reading for over an hour (or something like that; not like I'm looking at the clock much). Tis interesting to see the events of those times through the eyes of another, and occassionally consider what was happening in my life in parallel to those events, especially when I see the name "Bitscape" making a cameo, and remembering how it was from my perspective as opposed to what I'm reading. What a run-on that was.

[Bitscape relays a message from Jaeger in the xterm to bouncing up the stairs. Grabs leftover Halloween candy on the way.]

I swear, I am going to make myself sick if this continues. Candy at work, candy at home. Heh. Yeah. As an added benefit, as of a few weeks ago until January, all items in the vending machine are now free of charge to engineers. Not only that, but a few weeks ago, the individual known as A brought in a large basket filled with assorted treats and placed it in a publicly accessible area. Afterwards, she stated that once it was empty, she would not refill it.

Since then, various people have contributed to the pot. It has yet to empty. (I did my part an threw in a bag of starburst hard candies earlier this week, as I felt that while chocolate-based things are yummy, it was getting overrepresented in comparison to other sugary delights.) Then.... was it yesterday, or today? The days are running together. Anyway, he who is known here as H came in with a huge stock of Halloween candy bought at clearance prices. So now everyone, myself included, has been gorging. And now, I get home. More candy. So much for a healthy diet. :)

Like I ever eat healthy anyway. s/greasy dead animal fat/sugar calories/ Heehee.

Anyway, mid-way through my talk session with Jaeger (which has yet to officially end, although we're in a lull right now), I learned that a package had arrived for me today. From Robin Wood. Woohoo! From what my mentor has told me, and based on the website info, this is really one to savor (and perhaps endure). "When, Why, ...If"

Quite a beautifully laid out thing, if I may say so upon initial perusal. Nice artwork. Both the cover and on interior page borders. I shall begin traversing tonight. (Assuming I ever get done with this rambling and conclude the conversation with Jaeger.)

I was also informed I had a message on the answering machine regarding another pending shipment. Apparently, the shipping company fatbrain sent through.... (you won't believe this)... Didn't think I had a valid address. Say WHAT? In the message, they read the address they had on record over the phone. It was correct. This was neither UPS, Fedex, nor the U.S. Postal Service. A company called Airborne Express, I think it was. Very very strange. Nobody I have ever ordered from before, be it the pizza delivery, cd shipments (on the rare times I order online), or anything, has ever had trouble finding my street. I will most definitely be giving them a call tomorrow.

[The conversation migrates from talk to irc, with bouncing also in attendance.]

[Bitscape fires up some Live on the cd player.]

Content ideas...... Ideas have been floating around in my head about this (as they often do).... During the conversation, I commented that a search feature in Jaeger's journels could be useful. He replied something along the lines that it was a good idea. And that was exactly why he wasn't planning to impliment it. (Although pointed out in passing that those with accounts can always try some good old grep fun.) Strangely enough, I Jaeger's comment made perfect sense to me.

I've sometimes thought that a ramblings search feature might be interesting and useful to readers. But my reason for not implementing one goes beyond laziness and lack of time. For me, it's some belief along the lines that if people want to find out everything about what I've said on one or more given subjects, they should have to take the time to dig for it. Don't make it too easy for people to just pick any random topic, and then instantly schlep every word I've said about it in five minutes.

(And yes, far from impossible to do so. I imagine that anyone proficient with the right search engine queries, or the ability and willingness to write a few scripts could have keyword search ability. But that, too, requires some effort. If you feel like doing so, go right ahead.)

But anyway, this prompts the question: What are we really trying to do here? Publicize our content, or obscure it? I'm not sure I even know. Publishing in obscurity, perhaps. Relative obscurity. Private thoughts posted online for the whole world to see, but in actuality, our lives probably aren't really that interesting to all but a select few. Somewhere, I think there's an underlying belief that the only people to have access to such details over a long timespan should be those willing to take the time to pour through all of it. The irrelevant, the whimsical, and the mundane. Those willing to endure should be rewarded with the juicy bits. Everyone else -- the casual guests, the occassional visitors -- don't deserve it. Or something like that.

At the other end of the spectrum, an idea I had not so long ago for a someday-to-be-implemented Lounge feature: Something like guided tours. It would be simple, really. An opportunity to take old content, and freshen it anew. Take a subject, or event for which several ramblings apply. My Atlanta trip, for example. (That's where I got the inspiration to dream up this plan in the first place.) Include in it all the ramblings which apply, which would be manually selected by me. Users could then traverse through ramblings selected for this topic or event set in the order specified.

I could even include after-the-fact rhetrospective commentary about the subject matter. Kind of like a text version of DVD director's commentaries. A rambling about the rambling. You could call it a meta-rambling, I guess.

In theory, this should be fairly simple to implement. (In theory. Hahaha.) Just make a couple postgres tables, called rambling_tour, and rambling_tour_item. Each row in rambling_tour_item would consist of a reference to a primary key from rambling_tour, an sequence order number, and a reference to a rambling primary key. rambling_tour would include the title of the tour, some random bits of info (maybe each tour could have a special color scheme, background image, and stylesheet), and the meta-commentary. (Or should that go in a separate table? Hmmmm.... I guess it depends whether we want to only have one meta rambling per tour, or multiple points of commentary throughout the tour.... hmmmmmmm.)

Yes, I'm sure that all made perfect sense. I can just envision all the readers scratching heads over that one. "Sure, it makes perfect sense. Not." Well, it makes sense to ME! If only I ever get around to creating a workable implementation. Likely story.

Imagine the possibilities. I could make a "tour" of my final days at ucollege.edu. Bring all that fossilized content back to life. Add in thoughts about what I wrote then, now that some time has passed. A separate table. Definitely a separate table. Ahem.

For this year, I could potentially create a New Year's Resolution series, in which all the ramblings about my New Year's resolutions (most of them occuring on the first of given months), could be read in direct sequence, and compared in a new light. The sky's the limit.

Yes, I seem to have a knack for coming up with all sorts of wonderfully wild ideas for things to put on this web page. And if I'm lucky, I get them half-implemented. At times when I'm very lucky, and allow my grades to drop through the floor, my employment situations to languish, and my social life to drop even lower than its standard state of nonexistence, I might actually get some of these ideas up and running. Like the ramblings / movielog engine itself, for example. hehee. Yeah.

Well, I would say this rambling has droned on more than long enough. I want to get into my new book, which my mentor has so strongly recommended, and the irc conversation is next to dead. So.... here's to fossilized content, and all that other yummy stuff. My throat's dry. I'm getting a drink. Lexical parser to be exercised.......