I'm writing this while sitting in the Baltimore airport (BWI). I'm writing it in Notepad because there
appears to be no wireless service that's available here. I can find a network, but I can't connect.

I'm also waiting for my battery to die. There are no outlets anywhere to be seen. So... here I sit. I have a two hour layover in Detroit next. I'm hoping that I can find an outlet there. I know there's wireless--even though I have to pay for it. But I think I'm willing to pay the $6 for the two hours I'm going to be stuck there.

Anyway... This is the first time that I've flown since the inception of all the new security stuff.

There are two things I notice about it all: 1) how amazingly annoying it is, and 2) how easily people accept it. People are now removing shoes and belts, opening bags, pulling out laptops... all without being asked. We, as a society, are letting ourselves become sheep. This, the land of freedom, is handing over our privacy without a second look.

Part of that acceptance is the almost surreal presence of signs and announcements that are almost directly out of an orwellian movie. As you enter the airport, small signs adorn the posts of the corral--courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security. They spell out, in catchy slogans, the process you must travel, and how it will keep us all safe. Across the aisle from me is a large, illuminated sign--the kind of sign previously reserved for advertisements for telephone companies or retaurants in the airport. This one states, in big letters: "Unconditional Support" above the image of a civilain morphing into a soldier in full dress. It's the word "unconditonal" that strikes me.

Government propoganda in a prominent and expensive place. From the overhead speakers comes the calm voice of a man telling us how dangerous it is to leave your luggage "...unattended bags will be confiscated and may be damaged or destroyed." The voice is straight out of every dystopian movie you've ever seen. It could easily say "The government is your protector. Listen to your government. We will tell you what to do."

It's... creepy.

I sit here, in the light of the propogandist sign, with the 'voice of authority' droning calmingly in the background, watching an elderly man putting his belt back on, while his wife tells him about taking off her sneakers to defer the threat of "additional scrutiny", and I wonder where we're going.

A secret told for the first time.
Emotions expressed.
A possibility admitted.
An offer implied.
A terrible threat shouted to the world.
A voice against the wind.
A recanting.
2 friends.
1 encompassing love.

24 hours.

2020. That's my prediction. By 2020 there will be a revolution in the US. Not a civil war kind of revolution, but a major political change. A revolution in the way that women's sufferage was. Or Brown v. Board of Education. Or the power of MLK.

Something will break. The tension is just getting too great. The sides are getting too far apart and too locked into their mindsets. Civil rights are being eroded, both by the trickle of a thousand little streams, and the might force of floods. The citizenry are becoming suspect. Innocence is becoming something to be proven, not something assumed.

Take a look at our nation: Citizens are stopped at checkpoints where they must prove their citizenship. They are required to carry identification at all times, and produce it on demand. They are required to prove they are "clean" before being employed--and then are subject to random, invasive, mandatory testing to continue to prove their innocence. Testing which is rife with false positives. They are subject to searches without cause. They may be imprisoned without formal charge, without access to councel, without due process, and without limitation, on the word of one of a handful of people--including the President.

Aren't these the things that angered us so about our communist enemies during the cold war? Aren't these the things we pointed out to our children and said "That is why they're evil. That will never happen in our country, because we believe in truth, justice, and the American way."

Folks, to quote Pogo: "We have seen the enemy, and he is us."

It will break. It has to break. There will be change. Powerful sweeping change. It may come as a slow rising of the tide, as a series of waves crashing against the shore, or with the devestating and deadly force of the tsunami. But it will come. It has to come. For if it doesn't, we will choke on the dust of our ideals and wither into nothingness.

Today was a monday.

Not just on the calendar, but metaphorically as well. It was a stereotypical Monday.

I won't go into details, but it was a day of being nibbled to death by gnats. And yet... I'm doing okay. Not wonderful, but not terrible. I kept my calm, I progressed through my day. I stayed within 10-Ý of Zen.

While nothing about this day was independently significant, the entirety of the day, in a way, is. It's reminded me how far I've come. Even 10 years ago, a day like today would have sent me over the edge. I'm learning peace. I'm learning control. I'm learning... Zen.

"Those who are alike in both pleasure and pain ... are truely wise and fit for immortality."
--Baghavad Ghita 2:15

I'm not to that point yet, but I can see the progression. People who know me, people who have turned to me to be their teacher, remark that I am in control, that I know how to weather the storms. On one hand, I think they are blind, because I have seen the raging waves within me. On the other hand, I look around at others and how they react to events, as compared to how I react, and I see how much more in control I am. On the gripping hand, I know that, regardless of perceptions in either direction, I still have far to go.

Though it sounds arrogant to say it, understanding that last statement is what makes a person more than just a teacher, but a master. A true master knows that there are always those who are better; there is always farther to go. A master is eternally the student. No one knows all there is to know. Anyone who says otherwise is either a charlatain or a fool. Either is dangerous.

In all my life, no one has ever seen me truely angry. People will say that they have, but they don't know. They have seen me upset, pissed, ticked off. They have not seen me truely angry. For as long as I can remember, I have had control over that. As far as I have gone down the path of anger, I know that it's but a few steps. The concept of my anger frightens me. It's that fear that keeps me in check. I know what I would be capable of were that fear to be taken from me. I keep that fear close to me. I hold it in respect.

And I continue to learn patience.

The only path to learning patience, is to be patient. The only path to learning control, is to be in control.

Perhaps some day I will have the time and patience to write down my philosophy. I wonder how well it would be understood?

It's happened again. And it's something that really pisses me off: People who don't answer the question that's being asked. I'm not talking about people who fail to give any answer, I'm talking about people who ignore what's being asked and give an "answer" that doesn't pertain to the original question.

It happens most often (in my observation) with technical questions. For example, someone will ask "How do I do X in program Y?" Invariably, the majority of "answers" will be "Don't use program Y, it sucks. Switch to program Z." The question was not "which program should I use?" It was "How do I do it in this program?"

Is it really that hard to read the question and answer what's been asked? Doesn't anybody stop to think that maybe--just maybe-- the person asking the question had a specific reason for asking what they did?

People: READ THE DAMN QUESTIONS!

If I ask which of 3 Dell computers is best for playing games on, I don't want to hear about Alienware. If I ask how to do transparencies in Paint Shop Pro, I don't want to hear about how Photoshop does things. The issue that triggered this rant has to do with buying some hardware. I asked what features to look for. Not one single reply has answered the question. I've gotten a whole bunch of "here's the system you need to buy" or "you can't do that" ... which I'm rather sure I can, since at least 4 different vendors are selling products that do it.

GRRRRR.

I know, I know. I haven't posted anything in ages. Well... there's good reason for it.

1) I've been unbelievably tired this week, and have been going to bed by 9:00 at the latest--as early as 7:30 some days!

2) I've been working on a new project, and all my spare time has been devoted to it.

A new project? Yep. And it's an utterly overwhelming one (I've discovered now that I've started it). I'm publishing a novel. Well... sort of. I have a novel that's 75% written and 50% edited, and I'm going to finish it. It's only been about 12 years since I started it. But that's not all. I also have a couple of reams worth of notes, pictures, sketches, vingettes, and random "stuff" associated with the characters and world that I created in order to write this novel. So, I'm putting all that up here, too.

Here's the way it works: I'm going to attempt to post a chapter a week. Along with the actual text, I'll be scanning in pictures and sketches, and typing in all the hand-written notes I have. These will all be filed in some appropriate directory in the Appendix. But some of them will also be available in the main text.

If you're using any browser other than Internet Explorer, you can place your mouse over any of the formatted text (it's blue) and see either a picture or a text block pop up over on the left. If you don't want to see the pictures or background information, just ignore the links.

As for the IE thing? Talk to Microsoft. The code I'm using works in Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, and Konquer. At first, I was pissed off that I'd have to find a different way to do what I wanted--which would me rebuilding everything I'd done so far. But then I decided to say "fuck it". If IE can't do what everyone else can, too bad. I'm not going to code for the lowest common denominator. If you're using IE, I strongly encourage you to get the Firefox browser. But the choice is yours.

So....

The site is:

snow.dragonflydreams.org

Even the parts that are up are still a work in progress. I expect there to be a lot of changes and improvements made over the course of this project. I'm open to suggestions and other feedback (email "snow" at dragonflydreams dot org). Check back every week to read the new chapter and see what else has been added.

And wish me luck. This is *amazingly overwhelming*.

(With Rosana Rosana Dana?)

Fun weekend. Sarah came up from Milwaukee on Friday night, and we trekked off to Green Bay for the 11th annual tattoo convention. It was smaller than I'd expected, and I was disappointed that the lectures were all for tattooists that day. I was hoping to sit in on a couple "history of" lectures. Oh well. Sarah took the big leap and got her first tattoo. She's been planning it for a long time, and this just seemed like a good time to do it.

Between being up early on Friday morning, staying up late on Friday night, getting up early no Saturday morning, and doing the whole convention thing, I was wiped out. Yep. I'm an old man. So I spent Sunday doing easy stuff around the house: I did some web-page work, watched some DVDs, and (mostly) finished work on my custom desktop (a 'shell' that replaces the regular Windows desktop, taskbar, etc.) The program is from Litestep . I found a theme I liked, and modified the heck out of it. So, now... this is my desktop.

There's a few more tweaks I need to make before I consider it finished, but it's about 90% done. Pretty soon I can start plugging in optional modules to tweak it even more. What can I say? It's like an addiction. It's getting to the point that this coding stuff is starting to make sense. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

And now it's time to get back to work.

On a post script: I never do this, but this one and one other are important.
Happy birthday, Miss A.

Captain: 213:10:42:36

Balthezar, Malchior, and Caspar.

Yesterday was Epiphany--the feast of the Three Kings.

We all know what they brought, but how many of you knew what their names were? I learned back in college. But it took 3 very intelligent people, 2 Bibles (one with a comprehensive index), 1 thesaurus, 1 dictionary, and a liter and a half of whiskey in order to find the answer.

Ahh..... the joys of education.

I've done something new.

I've written a little application for websites, and tweaked it so that it's an installable application. I know. Not a huge thing, but it's still something new for me. I'm going to try to take some of the other things I've done for my site and implement them the same way. After all, I own geekniche.org I figured that it's about time I started to submit some stuff to it.

So... Go check out what's on the programs page

For this next one, I'm going to have to clarify one definition. For this plan to work, "president" has to be defined as "benevolent dictator with complete control". Think.... Augusto Pinoche--only without all that torture and corruption and stuff. This post deals with Congress. And, in the real world, there's no way that these changes could be made. In our world, in order for Congress to change, Congress would first have to change. See the problem?

Anyway....

Congressional changes.

First: One Vote, One Law. No more 'riders'. No more tacking something that has nothing to do with the matter at hand onto the bottom of a bill. If the bill deals with restrictions on steel imports, there would be no tacking on a rider that gives extra money to district 23 in Texas. If it's a bill giving extra punishment to people who beat up on santas on Christmas eve, there would be no tacking on a rider that makes it illegal to pay abortion clinics in anything except nickles.

Second: Congressional Pay. Congress would no longer have the power to vote themselves a raise. Talk about a sweet deal. They get to vote themselves a raise anytime they want. No longer. Congressional pay would be based on the average income of the constituency. The formula would be designed by an independent mathemetician, but it would be simple. It would also exclude the top 5%. No figuring Bill Gates and Ted Turner into the mix. Congress would get a raise when they promote, and successfully implement, plans which increase the income of the general population.

Third: Campaigning (including Presidential). Campaigns are restricted to 6 weeks prior to the election.

Fourth: Attendence & performance. All members of Congress are required to be present for all votes (This is their *JOB*). They are required to be at all full sessions. They are required to keep specific office hours in their home districts. Like any other job, they will receive vacation days and sick days. If they miss work, they don't get paid. If they fail to meet certain, clearly-definable, standards of performance (such as attendence) they will be ineligable for re-election.