For the last couple of weeks I have struggled with an obsession about wanting a Powerbook G4 Titanium laptop from Apple. I have learned some important lessons about myself along the way. In a way these new understandings have eased my craving for this laptop, as I better understand some of the emotional motivations behind the need. On the other hand my desire has been strengthened because this laptop would always represent some significant and important growth milestones in my personal development.
Yesterday in a long discussion with my wife and partner, Michele, I came to the understanding that my parent’s paradigms for making purchases are very different from each other. The two methods are diametrically opposed and often at odds with each other. Being the child of both parents I have some of each paradigm, and therefore I am often in conflict with myself when making purchases. One paradigm is logical and emotionless; it is about minute detail and mastery of knowledge about the purchase. The other is centered in frugalness and in denying desires that may not be worthy. Neither of these processes works for me, and yet I try to force myself into some hybrid paradigm combining both.
I have strong intellectual and emotional centers to my personality. The logical mastery paradigm appeals to my intellectual center, but it creates conflict with my emotional center. The frugal denial paradigm creates conflict with my emotional center as well. For most of my life I have strived to be only intellectual, I have suppressed my emotional center to the point that I have manifested some physical aliments. In the past few years I have focused heavily on my emotional center, learning how to have balance between my intellectual and emotional centers.
The Powerbook search initially followed the logical paradigm. I was collecting facts and figures, comparing it to other similarly equipped machines. However, even this initial stage had some emotional conflict, as the whole reason for selecting an Apple is emotional ~ I like the way it looks and feels. When I reached the stage where I was seriously ready to purchase the whole frugalness/worthiness paradigm raised its head. Even considering letting myself have something this good was incredibly difficult; actually making the purchase was beyond me.
Added to this turmoil was a situation involving a prolonged physical ailment my wife and I have faced together for the past 4 years. It had been very pronounced for the past few weeks and we were both stretched pretty thin emotionally and physically as a result. I was feeling very helpless and out of control and turned the Powerbook purchase into my own personal grail of release and relief. If I could just get this machine in the manner I wanted everything else would be okay. Only I wasn’t dealing with the fear and upset from the physical situation and I was trying to use the purchase of a new laptop to make myself feel better.
The real conflict was the building need to release my pent up emotions about the physical situation and not giving myself permission to do so. These retained emotions added tremendous content to the heretofore-intellectual pursuit of a new laptop. But the now tremendous need for completing the laptop purchase triggered my guilt over letting myself have good things. In the end I was an emotional wreck.
It took a couple days to decompress and sort out all that stuff that I had wrapped up in a seemingly innocent desire to buy a laptop. I was able to express openly and honestly all the pent up fear and anger I had about the physical issue my wife and I are dealing with. Then I was able to understand that my mother and father have their own unique ways of making purchases. Neither of these paradigms works for me. Finally I was able to see that I hadn’t done anything wrong along the way that I was just being human.
Today I still want to have a laptop, most preferably a Powerbook G4. I delight in objects that are aesthetically appealing, and also in new (to me) technologies. It also satisfies my logically constructed list of requirements. Having this laptop would please me and reward me for some hard growth work well done.
Today I also see, once again the power of emotions, and the damage that can happen if they aren’t openly and honestly expressed in a safe place. I am truly blessed for I share my life with a woman who is my safe place. She understands what it is to be human and gives me the room to explore my emotions and my intellect openly and without fear of judgment.
Today I see that I am moving even farther out of the shadow of my parents. They have habits that work for them. I am developing habits that work for me. I am becoming my own man. I am proud of myself for the new understandings I’ve gained. I am stronger and healthier today than ever before.
I have been struggling with allowing myself to have a new laptop. This is not something I need to have. My wife and I already own three desktops and an IBM ThinkPad. We are not lacking computing power.
The ThinkPad is a fine machine, and since it only cost the price of a new hard drive ($90) to have, it was a perfect machine. However it wasn’t new, and it isn’t sexy.
I want something new, sleek, and sexy. I want something light and portable, that does all the new computer things. I want an Apple Powerbook G4.
When asked about my reasoning behind this need I was unable to define a good reason. I have been battling a depression for sometime now and I want this new toy to bring me up again. I know that putting responsibility for my happiness on something external like that is not a good idea. The up turn in emotion is short-lived, and often followed by an even deeper depression; as now you’ve added a potentially ill-conceived choice to the mix.
I want it because no one else I know has one. While many of my peers have laptops, they don’t have this one. I want it because it will make me feel better or more special than them.
What really threw gas on this particular fire was seeing a listing on an online auction site for a new Powerbook at a fraction of the new price. In the end I decided that the person selling was running a scam and I didn’t follow through. I felt helpless in the process, and I felt as if I was losing my dream machine.
My depression lately has been due to a feeling of helplessness at long-term physical issue my wife and I have been dealing with. There is nothing either of us can do about this situation except hang on had ride it out. There is a light at the end of the tunnel but for now we both feel depressed and out of control. Getting this Powerbook, and moreover, getting it the way I wanted to get it, would go a long ways towards making me feel in control again.
I know that there is nothing wrong with wanting a new toy, even it that toy costs many hundreds of dollars. There is nothing wrong with wanting it to impress other people or to make myself feel special. What is wrong is expecting the purchase of something to meet emotional needs that aren’t expressed or understood.
Michele and I had a very long discussion this morning about my obsession this week with getting a Powerbook. In the end I had discovered that I was trying to address my fears and depression by buying something. Better to express those fears, and cry the tears of depression openly and honestly with my wife, than to suppress them and make a purchase that will be forever tainted by the emotional memory I’ll associate with it.
I am going to sleep on my decision to make this purchase now. I need time to reassemble myself after the hard emotional work I did uncovering the real needs behind my obsession with getting this thing. Even though I can now separate my reasons for needing and wanting a laptop from my emotions about our situation, I am still vulnerable and need to be cautious so that I don’t set myself up to be hurt again.
I am starting to develop a complex. My luck with online auctions is continuing to be awful.
The “From Russia With Love” Powerbook auction continues to be a source of amazement to my wife and me. The seller claims, in his words, “to be in the bussines trip in Ukraine” and refuses to use an escrow service. All I have to do is Western Union him the money and his wife here in the states will “shipp” me the Powerbook. His latest offer was for me to send half the money now and half after I got the package.
There was another Amazon auction with over a week to go that looked promising, but yesterday that one dropped of the list. I am assuming someone made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Yesterday morning there was a new Amazon auction from Atlanta with a low take-it-now price. I contacted the seller via e-mail to see about using the escrow service and after several hours got a reply stating that the item had already sold.
This morning I found a Powerbook auction on eBay with a low buy-now price; the laptop had been at a failed dot-com so the seller didn’t need much to part with it. I sent an e-mail asking for purchase directions (per the site) and was waiting for an answer when I discovered the auction had been pulled by eBay since “an unauthorized party had accessed the account.” I was told to stop any payments I may have already made and contact my credit card fraud department if necessary.
If I hadn’t actually held one of these beautiful machines in my hands at the local Apple store recently I would start to think they were mythological and that I was bidding on a dream rather than reality.
I am seriously considering changing my persona on these two auction sites. It seems that bidding as me is the kiss of death.
Sigh.
Ever since I was a child I have felt a tremendous stigma about asking for anything for myself. As a child when I was at someone else’s house, my mother would get upset if I asked for something. If a drink was offered I could accept but it was bad form to ask first.
One of my childhood buddies could have friends sleep over at his house. When he called to ask, sometimes I could go for the night. If I asked if I could go the answer was always no. I learned to use the phone in the basement to call him first to get him to call me and ask if I could spend the night. Later I realized that at least part of the reason I couldn’t go was my mother felt she would then have to return the favor and allow him to stay the night in our house.
As an adult I still carry around this idea of don’t ask. Even when things are offered to me I have a difficult time allowing myself to enjoy what was freely offered. This has become punishing in that the message I am giving myself is that I am not worthy of having what I desire.
For some years now I have wanted a wiz-bang laptop. One with all the bells and whistles, one that no one else I knew owned. I wanted to feel special in this regard. Now, thanks to an auction on Amazon I am within hours (maybe) of getting just such a machine. I have struggled since last evening about letting myself complete this purchase. I even dreamed about it during the night.
In the end it boils down to letting myself ask for a glass of water because I want it and because it will make me feel good. I can choose to deny myself this pleasure once again, but I now understand that is punishing myself for no good reason. No one is going to pat me on the head and remark what a good little boy I am for denying myself things that I truly desire. Or I can choose to act on my desire and allow myself the joy of having something new.
I choose joy.
It appears I narrowly missed getting scammed on my online auction bid. At noon time today I went to check to see if I was still winning only to discover that the auction had been cancelled. Furthermore, when I checked the other 4 auctions “lisawarren” had listed, they were all cancelled as well.
Oddly enough just last week I read the account of a teenaged boy who, after scamming dozens of auction buyers before getting caught, explained the things to look for as signs all is not as it seems.
I asked about the payments and got no answer. I also asked about using an escrow service and got no answer. Well, no direct answer. Within hours of my escrow e-mail all the offerings from “lisawarren” were cancelled.
So, I am glad not to have been scammed, and sad to not get a Powerbook.
For some time now I have lusted for an Apple Powerbook G4. Even though I am a die-hard PC user I can’t get the form and function of this laptop out of my mind. I’ve gone to the local Apple store and touched one. This only made my desire stronger. The switch commercials on TV haven’t helped either.
Tonight on Amazon Auctions there is a G4 for sale. 800 MHz, 1 GB memory, 60 GB HDD, and so on. There is no reserve and the take-it-now price is only $1100. This baby sells for $3900 from Apple.
Is this one hell of a deal, or my dad’s warning that you don’t get something for nothing coming true. I haven’t pulled buy it now trigger, but I have bid up tp $425. The protection plan that Amazon has will cover this amount and more if I use their Amazon Payments option. So basically I am covered.
And if I have it for a couple of weeks and don’t like it, I can always sell it very slightly used on Amazon and recoup my outlay.
The development work I perform as a consultant involves a shared code-base. All the work done by all the developers here is kept in a central repository. Each of us has one or more workspaces where we can check out code, make changes to it, and later integrate our changes so that the other developers have access to the latest version.
Over time, due to constant changes being made by developers the central repository grows in size. Once it reaches a gigabyte bad things start to happen. The way to restore order is to export all the code to a file, destroy the repository and then build a new repository in its place. Once the new repository is in place all the work is imported from the file. This usually reduces the size from 800~900 meg to 200 or so.
It is critical that each developer integrate his or her work prior to this cleanse process, otherwise it will be lost forever. Once that old repository is deleted there is no going back. There is no undo.
Last night there was a cleanse and I was certain that I had integrated all of my work. This morning, however, when I opened my workspace in the brand new repository none of my recent changes were there. In fact it appeared that none of the work from the past month was there.
I freaked out. For a few moments I thought I had screwed up my integration or forgotten it altogether. The past month has been extremely busy and productive in terms of new code for me. I had created dozens of new windows, and written hundreds, thousands of new lines of code. All seemingly gone.
Friday the 13th indeed.
In the end the problem was larger than just me. The process to import the backup file had used the wrong version of the backup file. Everyone had been reset to August 15th. Simply by re-running the load process with the correct file order would be restored.
For me the worst part of the experience today was the few moments when I first discovered all my code was missing. When I was worried that I had screwed up. It was a major “oh no” second.
My lapse of reason has passed now.
It has been a rough couple of weeks. Michele, we believe, has finally entered menopause. This is a relief as the pre-menopause condition she had is finally over. However the final round of DUB left her very anemic and this has resulted in the worst case of edema she’s experienced yet. The excess fluid in her body is making it very difficult for her to breathe. I have been doing chest and back percussion several times a day to help her clear the congestion from her lungs. Neither of us is sleeping well as a result, and we are both scared of the change in her condition.
I like to think that for all its discomfort this is a good sign, a sign that she is coming out of the DUB. But after 4 years of expecting one thing, to have a whole new set of symptoms is frightening at times. We have done lots of reading on the internet, comparing her symptoms to those of many scary diseases. Fortunately we have been able to eliminate all from the list of causes. Each time we come back to the fact that she is anemic, and as a result has edema. As her body catches up and rebuilds its blood supply both of these conditions will go away.
Emotionally we are both wrecks. Adding in a unhealthy dose of not enough sleep we are given to huge mood swings. So far we have managed to talk out our feelings and express our fears. I know that after 4 years of battling the DUB she is bone tired physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I know there are times she considers what it would be like to end it all.
Part of me shrieks inside when we talk about her ending her own life. Another part wants her suffering to end so she can rest forever. We are skating along a very thin piece of ice; our balance is delicate these days. Our talks have helped us to stay on the solid side of the ice, but my greatest fear is that some new physical torment will present itself and push her beyond her ability to cope.
I want to believe that she will be okay, that in a few weeks her blood volume will be normal again and that her body will recovery. But I would be lying if I didn’t say that my fear is she is dying, and that these are our final days together.
Comedian trailer
001 ~ My favorite dessert is New York style cheese cake 002 ~ I like that I am getting white hairs 003 ~ I am afraid of open closet doors in the dark 004 ~ I dislike people who are overly familiar 005 ~ I am fascinated by patterns that repeat or are palindromes 006 ~ I believe in reincarnation 007 ~ I like technology better than most people 008 ~ I understand the difference between masculine and macho 009 ~ I am masculine
010 ~ I am a sucker for come-from-behind-against-all-odds stories 011 ~ I love the feeling of driving fast at night on a dark road 012 ~ I love baking cakes and breads 013 ~ I hate people who don’t listen to what is being said 014 ~ I used to be outwardly stubborn, now I am inwardly determined 015 ~ My favorite color is red 016 ~ I like being in my forties 017 ~ I find making a list like this one difficult 018 ~ I am comfortable being alone, but I do not like being lonely 019 ~ I believe I have an ancient soul
020 ~ I want to be remembered as a gentleman, husband, and true friend 021 ~ I believe in living for today 022 ~ I am endlessly fascinated by observing people 023 ~ I will leave this lifetime on my own terms in my own way 024 ~ My middle name is ‘Hanford’ after my great-grandfather George Hanford 025 ~ I got my college degree 13 years after completing college 026 ~ My greatest fear is losing my mind/identity 027 ~ I am proudest of my relationship with my wife 028 ~ I like James Bond movies, but only with Sean Connery 029 ~ I had a crush on my 8th grade mathematics teacher, Mrs. Johnson
030 ~ I never had a date in high school or college 031 ~ I think the Survivor television series is the best television ever 032 ~ I have always wanted to sail around the world 033 ~ The most profound book I ever read was ‘Illusions’ by Richard Bach 034 ~ I don’t understand people who think hunting is a ‘sport’ 035 ~ I believe we are wrong for not giving boys the chance to be emotional 036 ~ I believe in evolution 037 ~ I believe in karma 038 ~ I believe the new millennium started on 1.1.2001, not 1.1.2000 039 ~ I think a woman without makeup is far prettier than one who has to hide her features
040 ~ I am unhappy with my body 041 ~ I never thought I would be happily married 042 ~ I am the 13th and final generation of my family in this country 042 ~ I have ADD and some OCD 043 ~ I don’t believe it when people tell me I am good 044 ~ I have never gotten over my sister’s death 045 ~ Hearing ‘Amazing Grace’ on bagpipes always makes me cry 046 ~ I have been to all 50 states except Alabama 047 ~ I believe you should give money to homeless people 048 ~ My favorite food is chili 049 ~ I like cats better than dogs
050 ~ I like to sneeze loudly just because I can 051 ~ I have an ornery streak that I don’t indulge 052 ~ I think the world would be a better place if we all did what made us happy 053 ~ I like the feeling of being awake late at night when my wife is asleep 054 ~ I like the smell of fresh asphalt 055 ~ My favorite season is autumn 056 ~ I have always wanted to be able to play the cello 057 ~ I love thunderstorms 058 ~ As a child I thought the radio station could tell when I turned my radio on 059 ~ I have always wanted to learn to fly
060 ~ I hate it when people tell me to do something because it’ll be good for me 061 ~ I have a Shotski’s ring 062 ~ I got my ear pierced because I like the way it looks 063 ~ I love long hot showers or baths 064 ~ I can juggle 065 ~ I have skydived. Once. 066 ~ I once drove my motorcycle 135 miles per hour 067 ~ I love cold weather because I like wearing oversized warm clothes 068 ~ I used to be embarrassed by my quality of life 069 ~ I am glad that I peaked in my forties and not my teens
070 ~ I find people who talk about other people, tedious 071 ~ I hate call waiting 072 ~ I once held a second degree black belt in karate 073 ~ I am fascinated by all the wild animals that live among us 074 ~ I can pick things up with my feet 075 ~ I love roller coasters 076 ~ I think puns are the best kind of joke 077 ~ I love to read 078 ~ I love going to movies 079 ~ I am afraid of crawl-spaces
080 ~ ‘The Exorcist’ was the scariest movie I ever saw 081 ~ I think governments spend too much money on technology and war, and not enough on people 082 ~ I love to have my calves scratched after wearing socks all day 083 ~ I love veal 084 ~ I loved living in the Pacific Northwest better than anywhere else I’ve lived 085 ~ I believe that dolphins and whales are at least as intelligent as humans. Maybe more so 086 ~ I don’t like dogmatic religion 087 ~ I think all history is revisionist 088 ~ I like snow 089 ~ My favorite flavor is grape
090 ~ I don’t care what people think of me 091 ~ I think selfishness is a good thing 092 ~ I like who I am 093 ~ I like 4th of July Fireworks 094 ~ Golden Cadillac’s are my favorite after dinner drink 095 ~ I am not afraid of heights, nor do I suffer from motion sickness of any kind 096 ~ I believe the mind is infinite in capacity 097 ~ I think emotional balance, and a full range of emotional expression is key to good health 098 ~ I think people are their names 099 ~ I make instant judgments on people and rarely change them
100 ~ I like being self-reflective