appendix: software

having finished my rant, I am moving to the top of the journal entry to write about software, so that you can read this first.

python: began gre software today. must pick up schminderwender soon.

europa: wrote journal entry after thursday meeting. Spent 2 hours today researching large-number classes (like gmp) and methods of calculating pi.

web: I have been very happy to finally have a web page up and running. I am using the osuoss server. I think that it's very important to have one's own website.

community: I had a meeting with my mom aunt and brohter today about software and community. I taught my aunt some html.

Other: I began reading about databases in the WROX book by stones, (programming on the linux platform). I'm glad that I found that chapter, I have been trying to learn about data bases, and the friendly, tutorial style of this book means that I will only have to make time. I am spending too much time on software, and too little time on my courses. balls hurt -- laptop radiation? Who knows.

rant: I'm quite tired.

I let my roommate talk me into staying up to watch a movie on thursday night, and then I went to a kick-ass party on friday night.

The party I don't regret, except maybe that I could have left at 2:00 instead of 3:30. The party was at my friend Alejandra's house and it consisted of rooms full of latin and other international people dancing very much. Just another window into the imagined world.

I'm all confused for a bunch of reasons. reasons = [depression, health, ambition, girls, family/community structure, internet]

I just sat in front of the internet for three hours. It is unintuitive that the internet can ever be as disempowering as the tv, but you must be careful. It can suck you in.

The party had me thinking about community. It feels good when you socialize in the right way. Maybe socialize is not the right word, But certainly, for me, all of the joy of living comes from sharing and from being with other people. Yet I am with the people that I care about far too seldom, and I share with them far too little.

I am not trying to complain, and I'm happy enough, but I'm looking for solutions. We modern people, and americans in particular, live in a time of severe cultural displacement. We could think of this as a totally disempowering situation, or we could think of it as an opportunity.

If we could recognize the need and build a sense of community for ourselves, that would be quite an accomplishment.

So how can you start? a few ideas:

• the three most important ideas for community, and for relationships in general are: communication, communication, and communication. It would be difficult to overemphasize this point.
• Use all of the problem solving skills that you know from other areas, like business or art or math.
• listen to as much music as you can get your hands on.
• keep learning all of the semi-obvious shit that any good religion will tell you, like being humble, and being respectful and reverent. I'm not an expert on this one, but syntaxpolice is, if you need to ask somebody.

So I think that my journal entry turned into a rant again. Good enough.

other items of note:

• puia called today
• studying with isabela at Brennen's tomorrow.
• parents visited today.
• back hurts today
• ran yesterday
• reunited with old friend yesterday.
• fell in and out of love. Turn-around time = 1 week.
  
  changed forever

  made up with a girl whose feelings I hurt. happy now. </ul>