Now the nice fantasy world I've been weaving is crumbling down inside me. The Jedi Master has taken a swift and bold strike. I stand corrected.

I had overheard talk of some little girl liking "Nelly". But now I've been corrected.

She wasn't singing this sweet, innocent music I've been listening to.

This infant was into rap music. I can't even view this ugly rapper's web page at all unless I install that obnoxious-as-all-hell pile of shit plugin they call Flash. At this point, I'm not really even interested in his music though. I've got more than enough music of my own to keep me going for the foreseeable future anyway. Maybe he's talented. I don't know. I don't care.

I have been surpassed by the next generation.

About this flash thing: I admit that there are a few pages out there which make good use of it. But certainly not enough to make me want to install it permanently. I keep a copy around, but in order to use it for one single important page, I have to restart mozilla. I don't do that very often anymore, because Mozilla never crashes on me these days.

You see, Mozilla has nice controls privacy and web experience optimization. You can tell it which websites can set cookies. You can tell it which websites can load images. You can tell it not to accept cookies or images from the same server as the html page. I like this kind of fine grained control, which gives me the illusion that I have privacy as I surf from site to site.

With Flash, there is no such control. You either install the beast, or you don't. The developers can't integrate it into the browser like everything else is, because the source is propriatary. So why even go to the trouble of using it?

Many pages that spew flash don't even make it part of the site's real content. It's just flash ads. So let me get this straight guys. Is this the message the sites who use flash in their ads are trying to send: You want me to go to extra work installing an annoying plugin so I can view the ads that fund your site. Is this the business model of the future?

No thanks. I'll find another site to visit that values me more as a "customer".

Or maybe I'm just totally delusional, and that's not the message they're trying to send at all.

scottgalvin.com may now ponder that thought as he contemplates his next marketing business seminar.

...

Speaking of ads, while I was sleepwalking last night, I took out an ad for this site. A good ad. An effective ad. Or even if it isn't effective, I'll consider it an experiement which cost me an even $10. Not bad.

/me goes to check the clickthroughs so far.

Hmmm.... So far, 63 impressions. No clickthroughs. But I still have a whopping 9937 impressions left! :)

This is fun. Actually, I'm hoping I don't get too many clickthroughs. My cable modem would melt down if they all came running in. I'd consider myself lucky if 100 out of those 10,000 people hit the link and saw the cover page once. (1% clickthrough.) If two out of those hundred who saw the cover decided to become regular readers, even if they never email me, I would consider this advertising campaign to have been an astounding success.

...

I'm having thoughts. Many thoughts. Many, many thoughts. Way too many thoughts to express on this web page. I have to regornize that I have what could be a dangerous condition; sometimes a gift, sometimes a curse. But never a dull moment as long as it's on this side of the coin.

The delusions of grandeur have not left. They grow, and they shrink, and they grow, and they shrink. They needed to be cut for a bit though, so that I could understand that I am still very much capable of feeling pain and heartache.

It hurt me to hear that this tiny little girl really doesn't like the same music I thought she liked. It damaged my delusions and imaginings of her sisterhood. I'm sure her sister still loves her, and all that, but shit. Rap music?!?

That's WILD. That's a trip. That just freaks me out, and makes me want to jump out under my skin.

Ok, so maybe I will listen to a little of this other Nelly freak, just because now the master seems think the little girl thought this was cool. But not until later. Maybe later in the weekend if I have time. Maybe by then, I'll be ready to stop my mozilla session, including all the open tabs and windows, move a library through a directory tree, start the browser up, and go to the site. Then, when I'm done visiting the site, I stop the browser, surgically take out the flash library so it doesn't pollute the rest of my web browsing experience, start mozilla up again, and surf as normal. All so I can adjust my reality of what this little girl was listening to.

And people wonder why using computers is hard.

Yes, I admit, I make it hard for myself. If I acted like a true standard issue drone, I would be using Windows. I would be surfing with IE. It has flash preinstalled, the easy way. I wouldn't even know what a browser tab is, because nobody at Microsoft had said anything about it. Microsoft is the only company I trust to tell the truth about these impossible machines. We have to put up with them. Microsoft knows how they can be put to good use.

The truth hurts sometimes, doesn't it?

I'm speeding up the pace, typing like a manic on crack, because tomorrow, I sense that my work day is going to be very, very, very, hard to get through. Today was, yesterday was. So tomorrow will be too, right? Sure, whatever.

I've been doing preliminary reconissance though. I have to admit that my plans are much more long term than even I am able to comprehend. Yeah, saying stuff like that sounds grandious. I should stick to simple concrete items.

Earlier this evening, I had beer with a man who lost his job. He was laid off from his company. He doesn't know what he's going to do for work, and he's trying to save what little money he has. I pitied him, but I couldn't extend any offers of help to him until I was certain of his intent. I couldn't even buy him a beer. I didn't want to make him emotionally dependent upon me (or upon beer, for that matter).

Lately, I've been pondering a lot about this issue known as operant conditioning. I used this term last night in an email I sent. (Was that just last night? Soooooo much can happen in a 24 hour period, it's ridiculous. Feels like an eternity since then.)

I was thinking about it earlier in the morning when I wrote. And I think I'm finally beginning to grasp the music of a group called Spiritualized, which was introduced to me a while ago, but my soul wasn't ready for it at the time. Now, it might be.

Getting back to this man I was talking about. He came and sat down at the table after the group was already talking. The Linux Users Group, that is. I think it was the empty beer bottle that did it. The one I had been drinking out of. He saw the empty bottle, and he saw a bunch of happy looking, satisfied people at the table. His mind jumped to a possible conclusion, and decided he wanted to go get a beer.

It was almost like a tv commercial, except there were not 20 girls at this table. There was one, and she was being very quiet in making sure not to attract attention to herself. She was knowledgable about Linux. She also knew that if she spoke up very loud and betrayed the fact that she was smart and knowledge, there could be a swarm of horny geek guys trying to get to know her better. But she already had one, and she was happy with him. So she was silent.

I could speak more about what happened at BLUG tonight. But I have to move on. It's now 38 minutes past what I had been for the past 2 nights as my upper limit as far as bedtime goes. I have more wetwear hacking tonight, and I need to do it quickly.

I was on Pearl Street after BLUG. My mission had been implanted, not by myself, but by someone else. I needed to get a book by a man named Heinlein. This mission had been implanted not by myself, but by someone else, because I was playing a bionic robot pretending to be human. I knew I needed to get a book with the word "Moon" in the title.

The nightlife was wild on Pearl Street. You've never seen anything like it. Jugglers, musicians, fire breathers. Was I dreaming this? Then where am I now, and how did I get here? There were people performing as sexual slaves for one another in very involved S/M games. Was I dreaming this? There was a woman standing outside the Boulder Bookstore. She was playing a guitar and singing. Did I dream this?

There were thousands of beautiful girls on the mall. Some with boyfriends, some not. Dreaming? Some in groups, letting people take pictures of their smooth faces. Dreaming? I caught the eye of a few of them, but the love of the community was much fuller than the love of a possible romantic encounter. Neither I nor they wanted to get any more involved than a few flirtatious glances.

That was all ok, because I had a mission. I was going to the Boulder Bookstore. There was a woman outside it, playing the guitar and singing. I was going to get a Heinlein book. I entered the store, and it was bustling with people. Well, maybe bustling would be overstating the word, but there were some shoppers. I needed to get a Heinlein book.

I wandered the bookstore, my mind lost. I could barely find the right sections. Eventually, I asked a clerk to help me. I said I wanted to read Heinlein. She nodded, checked the database, and led me to the liturature section, where we searched under the letter H for what seemed an eternity. She was pretty tired to. Either that, or she was just patiently waiting for me to finally figure out that E comes before I.

When it was clear that there was no Heinlein in Literature, she said she'd check the computer again. I wandered over to the scifi section, and found a book by Heinlein about The Man Who Sold The Moon within 10 seconds.

I met the clerk on the way back from the section she was going to direct me to. Then she saw the title in my hand, and was happy I had found what I wanted. I waived my hands around, and said, "Ah... scifi... literature... What's the difference?" Who knows.

While I was in the bookstore, I found two other books. Make that 3 other books. Books that I wanted. But I put one of them down, when I saw that the price was more expensive than two of the others combined. Here's a tally of the books I bought. I need this so I don't forget to read them.

• Heinlein: The Man Who Sold The Moon
• David Brin: Glory Season (used copy in good condition sold at a discount -- they had new too; someone thought I might have trouble finding it, but I know Boulder has some good bookstores)
• A Working Girl Can't Win, (and other poems), my Deborah Garrison (new copy on sale for only $4.98; I just picked this title up on the fly of my own volition because it was a new copy being discounted 66% off of the "Original Price")

My total came out to just over $15. I paid with a 20, and got change. I think I got my money's worth. Do you?

I liked the passion and freedom with which she played, so I sat down to listen. While I was sitting, I snapped my fingers to the rhythm. This woman was calm, collected, and full of music. She nodded in appreciation of my addition to her chorus. Then I listened to the words, as she made them up on the fly, and sang at people leaving the bookstore.

I'm paraphrasing the singing. "Look! It's the red white and blue! Enjoy it while it lasts, America. You're being fattened for the kill, and you don't even know it."

The people just kept walking. She was just another lunatic on the street to them. But to me, she was next morning's news.

Now I know it's this woman's job to entertain, so she might make things up and embelish. But did she know she was entertaining a button-down Oxford cloth psycho wearing a "Linux '98" T-Shirt? THIS is performance art in action.

She sensed that although I was snapping my fingers, I was needing to go, and brought the song to a satisfying finish. Did I dream this?

I chatted with the woman for a few moments, exclaiming about this newly discovered Pearl Street nightlife. She seemed very satisfied about what was going on, although expressed slight paranoia about competing performers moving in on "her territory" (in a very joking manner). Well, they were moving in. It might seem to a casual observer that there were almost as many performers as there were bystanders. Wow. (But really, the crowds around the fire breathers and drummers were very large, so there's more crowds, I think.)

Pearl Street on a Thursday night. The police, nowhere in sight, couldn't control these people if they wanted to. These people don't need to be controlled. They're free. They're happy. They understand the meaning of life that I have yet to learn. But I sure enjoyed soaking in the bagpipes on the way back to my car.

I'm starting to weave another sleep spell over Argo's speakers. It's charming me now, but I'm going to be having horrible nightmares in a few hours. And it'll be time for work before I know it. But I'll be ready to handle the challenge ahead.

Earlier tonight, I did see a cop. I was only a couple meters away when I finally noticed his speed trap. Had I been paying attention? Didn't matter. I was following the law. Almost. The limit was 35. I was running 36 or 37. The cop didn't bother me.

I had my music ridiculously loud, but it was calming me down. I don't know who is funding this siren song that they call 102.1X. A wealthy billionare benefactor who has decided to take the ClearChannel monopoly down? That's just a guess. I don't know.

What I do know is that I am not the only person at my job who can't resist the urge to turn that station up to ear-shattering volumes while I drive my car. It gets under your skin, that music. Drives you wild. Makes you addicted to base. Makes you think about strange things while you're heading out thinking you might fuck some srange woman in a southern suburb of Denver.

Mind drugs.

I've committed to celebacy until I can see her again. Not only that, but I don't jack off. Not until I've seen her.

But in order to see her, I need to do things. I need to pay the debts I incurred last month. I paid for a plane ticket on a credit card. That credit card bill will need to be paid. It will be paid with a paycheck that I will receive next Thursday. The time between now and next Thursday. That's an eternity for me. The honest truth.

But tomorrow is Friday. That's relief. Genuine relief. This work week began only two days ago for me.

Tomorrow, I will visit a night club. It's a night club I've visited a few times. [wink wink] I'm going to talk to people there. That will happen before the music starts. It will happen because immediately after work (work ends at 5:00/17:00, doesn't it? Right?), I'm gonna drive directly down to that club for the happy hour BBQ on the patio. (I theorize that they're still running those, because they were hyping them a couple months ago, but I wasn't ready.) Right? Work ends at 5? Good. This is what I want to do.

My official underlying mission when I get there will be to find out who spins the music, and meet these people. I'm going to try to use what scottgalvin.com taught me last Sunday, and listen. The deeper question beneath my irquiries will be something along the lines of, "Should a person decide he or she is utterly burned out after having worked in the software industry for 3 years, what might it take to learn a new vocation? How can one find out more about the trade of getting hired as a DJ in a club, in another town, somewhat similar to this club?"

That will be my mission, but that's a long way off. Long term planning. Insuring a little emotional security for the future. That sort of thing. I bear no delusions about DJs. (I don't think I bear delusions, but it might help me to talk to some real DJs.) I know they don't get massive amounts of money for what they do. There's likely heavy competition. But if it brings a little emotional satisfaction and well being, so be it. That's better than money. At least I'd like to think so. But I'm not there yet. Won't be for a while.

My brain keeps telling me this music should be louder, because it comforts me. But it keeps getting softer, and I keep turning my speaker up. As of a few minutes ago, I started a series of events. The invocation I used (from a shell script, so it can be re-used again later), went like this:

rexifade -fadeto 30 -fadedelay 80000 vol

Very slow.

Pretty soon, if I keep turning my speaker up, the know will hit the max. But I'm not interrupting my software. I hacked it myself. That knowledge gives me stregth.

You see, the cd I'm playing right now is by U2. It's called, "All that you can't leave behind." This is beautiful music, but the associations are very close to the intensity of Alex's learned aversion to Ludwig Van. You see, I sealed a very very painful time in my life with this loving music. I knew I couldn't allow myself to harden so hard that I would never soften up again. So this music provided a beautiful way to protect myself without becoming uncurably bitter.

It's will be time to relive those moments soon. But first, let's talk about Thomas Anderson's character. We're weaving Matrix fanfic here. That's all this is. Fanfic. Get it kids? Nothing real.

A little more background: This happened long before Thomas Anderson had ever heard the name Morpheus. The name "Neo" did not exist in The Matrix at this time at all. Moving backwards in time. Before bullet time. Way before that time.......

Yesterday, Thomas Anderson came to work a little late. Other employees were showing up late, or so it seemed. Maybe some were coming in early to work. If so, they were quiet about it. Didn't want to blow their own horn, or something.

Thomas Anderson had decided it was better to eat breakfast than show up on an empty stomach.

Thomas Anderson had been addicted to heroin, but he was overcoming his pretend heroin addiction. He was going through withdrawl symptoms though. He was jittery and appeared out of it. Wanted his next fix at every moment. But he also knew he needed to be a good boy, so he was recovering and getting into therapy.

Yes, this is Thomas Anderson we're talking about. He was very absent minded. Spinning his wheels, it seemed. Worked all morning on a couple stupid five-second GUI bugs. He was working hard though. Anyone who looked at him could tell. He hid his awful heroin pain from his coworkers.

He decided he needed a fix anyway. He wandered to the soda machine, thought, "Oops, I did it again", and bought a Pepsi. But the Pepsi wasn't helping him get his work done. He was just goofing off again. He needed more caffeine to help him think. Dollar. Quarters. Cha-ching. Another Pepsi. [GULP.]

He strained very, very hard to figure out where his mind had gone. He was trying to run verification tests, but even the simplest ones were taking many hours. You could see by the movement of his face that he needed another fix.

He tried Dr. Pepper. That might work. Yeah.

He strained his mind, trying to get the work done. Writing his name on little sheet of paper after little sheet of paper. And tacking them on a wall.

[I am laughing way to hard, and way to loud now. This isn't natural after 2am.]

Thomas Anderson got drunk on Zima. He stumbled around the office, lost in a stupor. At one point, a concerned a coworker asked him what he was looking for in the microlab. Oh, no. Not called the microlab. The lab. Yeah, that place. Just the lab.

Thomas Anderson told the coworker that he was looking for an ISDN card. The coworker calmly led him to the ISDN rack. (This was where the two hubs that had been fucking up the network and giving everyone headaches the week before were now safely disconnected from one another.)

[I am so high. I am high like a kite.]

[Jesus Christ, is this mescaline I'm feeling in my system now? I'm just laughing like never before, here in my bedroom while U2 plays more and more softly. Bono tells me I won't need anything at all, and not to worry which way the wind will blow. He doesn't want to see me cry. I know that this is not goodbye.]

[Maybe I won't have nightmares with this music tonight!]

But anyway, back to Thomas Anderson.

At one point, he was attempting with great difficulty to open a web browser. When he finally got the web browser opened 20 minutes later (you know..... old laptops with slow processors), he thought, "Why the fuck are we still running Netscape FOUR for these? Our stupid customers only run IE these days, but management wants to throw a bone to the engineers, so they can tell themselves they care about employee morale."

[Transcending Thomas Anderson again now.]

But EVERYONE with a shred of clue knows that anyone who's anyone these days runs Mozilla. Actually, my brother claims more recent versions of Galeon are better. I haven't tried Galeon. I haven't had time. But I might. When I get tired of Mozilla. I haven't gotten tired of Mozilla. It's simply a tool for me to access web pages. This tool works well enough for me.

Management are not bad people. At least they cooked us breakfast last week. Remember? Thank them for that. And don't tell them about this web page. They don't need to know right now. They knew a little about it once, and read bits and pieces, but they've forgotten. Don't remind them.

When I was in Washington last week, I spoke with other technology people about their jobs, and what they do. I gradually came to the simultanious realization that in some ways, I love my job, and that in other ways, it just hurts to be there. Deeply.

You see, I now find myself in the position to be working for a unique company. It's not a technology company, although they do let the engineers run whatever distro we want on our desktops, so long as we can get our work done. That's more than most of my copatriots in Longview, Washington could say.

But after I had gotten done bragging about how proud I am to be running Debian at work, someone smart asked what OS the managers in my company run. I thought about it for a few moments, considering the question. They run Windows. All of them. All of the ones in my department do.

This hasn't always been the case though. Those with memories, try to think back. A year ago. Two years ago. What were managers running back then? What window managers did each of them use. Remember? What OS was our lead liason to tech support running a year ago? Six months ago?

There may have been a time, way back, when we were a technology company. But somewhere along the way, the well got poisoned. What was it poisoned with? I'll leave each person who reads this to try to figure that out for themselves.

I got to know enough people in Washington last weekend who are true technologists, that when I got back, work was gonna try to drain me dry if I didn't arm myself. So I took a day off and did so. And I need to do so for tomorrow. So do you.

And BTW, I know who at my office reads this web page now. Not by looking at the logs, but by writing content designed to elicit a certain reaction, and then coming back the next day, looking at people's faces, gaging reactions to my heroin addicted acting, and leaning on my instincts. (BTW, I like working for a company that doesn't care whether you're addicted to heroin. It means they respect your privacy as long as you get your job done. Think about it.)

The reconnaissance tells me that there is exactly one person who currently works in my company who keeps up with this web page. This person, unlike others, saw right through my attempts to act like a heroin addict who was hiding his addiction, and he just silently grinned when no one else was looking.

He knew that he wouldn't bring me out of the act by directly calling me on my fakery (as I would have done if I sensed forgery... say 6 years ago, and that road ended in a cell in a mental hospital). In fact, I was planning to carry on with this act much longer before pulling out more cards.

But at lunch today, I just couldn't hide it. I was excited about what is happening in the world. So were the two coworkers I was with. In fact, there's so much going on that we can't really keep up with it. But we each cover our areas. I checkout the Cube games. Someone else checks out the Playstation 2 games. We each have our own DVD genre interests.

And who wants to give that up? Not me. I want to keep watching movies. I want to play games. I want Super Mario, Metroid, Zelda. I want to pay of my debt to... society? No, I want to pay off my debt to Chrysler Financial.

I'm going to be eating lunch out with my coworkers for a while again instead of spending that time to meditate in solitude. I probably won't be buying quite as much food for myself; maybe just a drink on some days. I liked the money I had been saving by NOT taking cash out of the ATM every week to go out to eat every day.

But now, my coworkers are more important for a while. (Just for a while.) Managers don't eat lunch with us anymore. Well, not most of the time. Instead, they often work. Occassionally, they do eat lunch with other people. When I first started working at this company, everyone would eat together almost everyday. Imagine such a time!

Gradually, though -- very gradually -- that tapered off with time. It started happening to us long before the dot com meltdown.

So what do we do? How do we save this company? These are questions that have been on my mind over the last couple days. Is it even possible?

Well, really, even if it is, that's not my job. That's the CEO's job.

From where I stand, the CEO looks like a nice man. When Star Wars Episode 2 came out, and he found out that I, and perhaps a few others from the office, had been out late to see it. He discussed the movie with me, and asked for my opinion on whether he should take his relatives. So this is a man I cannot hate.

At the same time, I don't sense him to be a technologist at all. I strongly doubt he would be able to intelligently discuss what's going on in the Linux community. Or even.... Or even.... or even.... What true innovations (not the vapid buzzwords) might be getting made in the Windows world.

How can you convince anyone who has their head so far off in the clouds that they may have forgotten how to set their own IP address? In a bakery, such ignorance would be fine. But in a company that claims to base its business on knowing about technology?

I might try talking to upper management at some point. That seems like a reasonable approach. But I'm certainly not trying yet, and not in this mental condition. You screw with someone who's powerful, they panic and get mad at you before having even heard 5 words, and you are toast. No thanks.

So yes, I'm gonna lie low. I'm gonna assume that I have an acting job on Friday. I'm gonna play Thomas Anderson. I take honor in attempting to fill the shoes of Keanu Reeves, acting genius.

Ok, now it's my head that's in the clouds. I've got 4 hours before I've got to be getting ready for work. Time to sleep with U2 on the speakers.

...

Oh, and BTW. You know that one person in the company who still reads this webpage? Last time I knew, he was a member of the Boulder SDA Church.

Yipee! We're gonna be famous.

P.S. If this does somehow get around to top management, you know MORE people will likely lose their jobs, and MORE strangers who understand how do an even better job at mindless BS evenwill get hired. I would guess. Or imagine. Or I could personally be kicked out and disappeared. Or something. I don't know.

Or it could just be that they would turn white, like seeing a ghost. Or... their jaws drop open, and they take the form of a phantom image; a vacated, disembodied soul that is bearing silent witness to the signature of its own death certificate.

So be kind. And remember. They cooked us breakfast last week. They might do so again too.