V for Vendetta is a very good movie, especially when you juxtapose its theme of control, propaganda, and truth in the news against current events. The best line in the movie goes something like, “We don’t make up the news - that’s the government’s job.”
Rating: V Stars
16 Blocks is surprisingly good, for an action film. Mos Def carries the show with a stream of dialog that starts as annoying but morphs into endearing.
Rating: Worth a viewing in the theater and a reviewing when it comes out on DVD
Grief slinks along in the shadows, waiting for you to drop your guard before grabing you, dragging you back into the darkness you were trying to leave. Grief hates the light, and hates you for being able to survive in the light. Grief is a demon that only knows darkness, despair, pain, and suffering. This demon exists between you and the world of light you lived in before, and the only way back to that world is by crossing through grief’s territory.
Because our world of light is filled with shadows and dark places, grief can sneak up on you unexpectedly and suddenly. In a moment you come crashing down from the heights of normalcy into the muck and mire where grief lives. Wrestling with grief doesn’t work, you both get covered in the slimy emotions of guilt and despair, and grief likes it. Instead you must embrace grief, accepting it with understanding and concern. For only through love of yourself can you wash yourself clean of the slimy tentacles darkness uses to drag you under.
You must accept that life goes on, and that you are caught up in the current of life, unable to remain in the spot where you last existed before grief plunged you away from the light. Instead you must ride the torrent down into darkness, husbanding your strength so that when the cold undertoad lets go you can rise back towards the light of normal life. You must be wary of the false roads towards light that grief uses to trick you into even deeper pits of darkness. Anger at nothing only begets more anger. Anger expressed appropriately, that constructively moves you towards understanding and acceptance is good; unfocused rage is evil.
Grief lives with me now, dogging my every step, chasing away memories of a time without despair, and ridiculing thoughts of being happy again, It would be so easy to allow the voice of grief to override my own true voice, to allow grief the demon to consume me forever. Tenacity alone prevents me from letting go and falling forever into emptiness. I will not go quietly into the endless night of grief, instead I will pass though a nighttime of grief, believing in the dawn of happy life that awaits me.
In setting up the ThinkPad one of the first pieces of software I installed was Adobe’s PDF reader, now called, simply, Adobe Reader. With the proliferation of PDF files on the web and at work, having the reader installed is essential. I have a gripe, however, it displays ads in the toolbar area by default.
Thanks to this posting I learned how to turn the ads off forever.
No more ads.
Today was one of those mornings where I was startled awake by the cat at 3:30 am. Her cold wet nose, followed by a raspy tongued lick was sufficient to bring me to full wakefulness. My mistake was in opening my eyes; once she saw that no amount of lying still and play possum worked. She-who-must-be-played-with would not be put off.
As long as I was up I decided to run a full virus scan of the ThinkPad. I’ve been downloading a fair amount of software recently and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t infected myself. All I can say is, it is a good thing that the pause feature works, as the scan was still going strong at 5:30 when I was ready to leave for work. In all, it took 263 minutes (4 hours and 23 minutes) to scan 3,150,983 files and folders on my hard drive.
The best part? She-who-must-be-played-with went back to sleep in the warm spot I left in the bed after I got up. Apparently I never was in charge of my life.
Lately I’ve been starting to think about things I want to do, projects with my websites, cleaning out the storage lockers, or cleaning this apartment. Thinking about things to do is as far as I get before indifference and apathy take over. Being indifferent is actually a good thing in this case, as it means I don’t have the spark to get down on myself about not following through.
Thinking about things I want to do is a bit of an improvement. Until recently I was just operating on autopilot. Don’t expect a new look-and-feel for zanshin.net any time soon, but I have been looking at the last partial redesign and thinking I should apply it here. I am also feeling the urge to dust off the long neglected Partition Software site, perhaps even converting it to a two-column format with development related blog entries on one side and static Partition Software information on the other side.
But first I think I’ll go to bed and get some sleep. Being up at 3:30 this morning has made me bone tired on top of not really having any ambition. Never a good combination.
For the past several months I have struggled mightily to keep the flood of grief contained within the levees that define my personal life. For the most part I have managed to keep my professional life high and dry, as it were. There have been a couple of minor breaks in the dike, but nothing that was really major.
Recent events, however, are conspiring to overwhelm my meager defenses, and I am afraid that my professional persona will suffer as a result. Specifically the impending death of my mother has overloaded me. What little patience I was starting to develop with myself and issues in my personal life is once again gone. And the reserve of patience I was utilizing for work is gone as well. Events and situations that should be like water off a duck’s back are now setting me off. Combine this with an atmosphere of retribution and knee-jerk reactions and I am in a dangerous position. As much as I hate to admit this, I have come to the end of the rope and, in order to hang on, I have to jettison anything that might weigh me down.
Being in charge of the project at work is something I always wanted for myself. I am proud of my leadership abilities, and it makes me feel good to have been selected. The reality, however, is that I can’t function at the level I need to perform this assignment adequately. I am able to perform my individual assignments as those require minimal interaction with other people and their agendas. Being in charge means accepting those agendas and molding them into a cohesive force that moves the project in the right direction. I simply do not have that level of patience and caring within me now.
In a few minutes I am meeting with the project manager to inform him that I feel it is in the best interests of the client, the project, and all involved, that another resource be given the leadership assignment. On the surface this feels like a cop-out, and I am fearful it will hurt me in the long run in the eyes of the management team. At a deeper level I know I am doing what is best for me, and that any short term impact my stepping aside has on the project, will be more than offset by removing any threat my emotional health might have on the success of the team. Arriving at this decision has been extremely difficult but, having reached it, I am feeling a sense of peace I haven’t know for several weeks now.
Peter Drucker is quoted as saying that management is doing things the right way and leadership is doing the right thing. Stepping aside is doing the right thing.
From iWalt (and Google Video) comes this amazing display of juggling.
Search: How Google & Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business & Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle is a very interesting look at the short history of search on the Internet. I particularly found the author’s ideas about where the Internet might go as a result of revenues made from click streams and search keywords interesting. While Google is the central theme to this book, considerable background information about the search industry is provided which should be of interest to any one who has been online for the past ten years.
Rating: Perfect for your next long, cross-country drive.
The follow up book to Monkeewrench, Live Bait is just as good and shows that the mother / daughter team known as P. J. Tracy is no fluke. Great characters, good humor, and some nice plot twists combine to make this a great read.
Rating: Don’t start it on a work night, you’ll be up all night trying to finish it.