Well, my mom's house (which is where I currently am) is in the middle of a brownout. Hooray for laptops. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my PCMCIA ethernet card with me, so this update (or even the one before it) won't be posted for some time, unless I can find a floppy disk to use. I'm going to be here until Thursday; my dad's down in New Jersey.
With the help of a book, What Emotions Really Are (which I unfortunately don't have with me at the moment, and of which I can't remember the author), and some discussion with Charlie, I arrived at a definition of the term "emotion" which is acceptable to us both (and a vast improvement on our previous paradigm, "sufficiently complex thought" plus something that we hadn't yet figured out. :-) The new definition is as follows:
Emotion - a motivational state towards conscious action with unconscious causes.
Not a whole lot has been happening in my real life or even in the various activities I pursue online. I got my program for organizing my photos into a state where I actually consider it usable, so I put tags (embedded into JPEG comments) on all the pictures I've copied onto my hard drive. I'm dubious that anyone else would be interested in my script, since it's fairly customized to my purposes (and relies on things like t11, the minimal image viewer which I wrote and of which only I currently have a copy). Still, it's a load off my shoulders to have something I can use - I really didn't want to accumulate a huge pile of pictures without storing some kind of metadata with them.
The current brownout, combined with another which I believe occurred over the weekend, almost has me convinced to buy a UPS and leave Ragnar hooked up to it here. The power at my father's has been solid so far since we got a couple of new sockets on a new circuit installed in my room. Now I can run all of my devices (including the new air conditioner!) without really worrying about blowing the circuit breaker.
It occurs to me just how dependent on electricity I am. A lot of people can just keep going about their lives when the power's out as long as they can see, but I'm effectively stalled, and the only reason I'm able to do much of anything right now is stored power in Robert Jr.'s battery. I suppose that like most such observations, in the long run I'll just arrange to have reliable power in whatever way I can and not worry about it too much (just as I won't live somewhere that doesn't have broadband, pretty much regardless of any other factor).
Wiki page for this journal entry
I'm not going to make this entry in chronological order, because I don't feel like it. First, I want to mention that I had a very interesting conversation with an evangelist at lunch today. It started when I sat down in the park and he attempted to hand me some literature. I said "No" (in some way or another), expecting that to be the end of it, but instead, he started an actual conversation with me. I was as honest as I could be in answering all of his questions, but I strongly suspect that he failed to notice that the God in which I believe isn't at all like the Christian god. I didn't try too hard to point that out to him, though, as I was enjoying the conversation, and I did come up with what I think is a pretty good definition of religion, in response to his claim that it was a set of restrictive rules (which is largely true in our culture, but I don't think is a defining aspect of religion): religion, n. A system of beliefs held on faith. He also handed me a piece of literature which, by a massive coincidence, was written by someone whose name is phonetically the same as mine, although spelled "Ken Ham". If I were a bit weaker-minded and didn't have prior religious convictions, it's not impossible I could have been convinced. :-)
The 4th of July was okay. I spent it at my mom's house and didn't really do much of anything. I did end up buying a UPS for Ragnar, frustrated by the quality of the power over the past week or so at my mom's house. I've always sort of wanted a UPS anyway, and the prices weren't really that bad - I paid $130 for a 900 volt-amp model. (The ones at work range from 600 to 1400, I think.) It can probably give Ragnar, in his current incarnation, an hour or more of runtime, and when I have them both in the same room, I intend to connect both Laura and Ragnar to it. It's more of a stress reducer than a practical benefit - it's always just irritated me that the power might go out at any moment and I might lose what I had been doing.
Over the weekend I went to Charlie's house and we went to a Rush concert. I had only ever heard one song of theirs before - Nobody's Hero, which Charlie sent me - but he had an extra ticket which he had been kind of vaguely intending to find someone to use on but never got around to doing so. It seems that I'm often the beneficiary of such tickets - aside from this time, I've been to Bush with Charlie and Moxy Fruvous twice with Ed, all times due to Charlie or Ed's giving me a ticket. So, my return on investment in concert tickets is infinite, even though my total attendenceship is low. :-)
I ended up staying an entire day longer than I had planned at Charlie's place. I got to see his kitties, play Chrono Cross some more (and I finally got unstuck), talk about philosophy, have dinner with his family (his parents, and an aunt and cousin who were visiting) and watch Mallrats, which was quite good. (I have a long-term goal of seeing all of the Jay and Silent Bob movies, although so far I've only seen Dogma and Mallrats, but I figure it will happen eventually whether or not I try too hard.)
I've been in kind of a weird state over the past few days where I'm quite thirsty and very tired but don't sleep very well or for very long. It's kind of aggravating, but it's happened before, and I'm sure it will go away of its own accord. On the plus side, it does mean that I have more waking hours.
Wiki page for this journal entry
To anyone who has been trying to view my page recently: I apologize for taking so long to post these updates. A bunch of stuff has gotten in the way.
I went to see a play, Once In a Lifetime, this afternoon. My sister wanted to see it because one of the actresses in it was also in a TV show she likes, and I just kind of went along. Recently I've been "going along" less and less, but this time it was all right. The play wasn't spectacular, but I don't regret going to it.
On Thursday I got my copy of Project Majestic Mix: A Tribute to Nobuo Uematsu. I haven't even listened to it all yet, but it's really, really cool. My copy is number 0048/1500 - I was an early sponsor. :-) I also heard from Stephen Kennedy that my second check did arrive, so I can stop being anxious about that.
My project to process district attorney's requests for license abstracts is actually moving forward at a somewhat reasonable pace. I've finally managed to establish a medium of sorts between work and... other stuff.
I haven't made much progress in Chrono Cross, but I guess I'm not really concerned about it. I know that I'll play it when I feel like it, and that eventually I'll finish it and move on to Final Fantasy X, and by that time maybe Xenosaga will be out, and so on.
Wiki page for this journal entry
Well, I've let myself go just about as long as I ever have since I started this journal without an update. So, to partially make up for it, I'm writing in the morning rather than the evening as I usually do. I slept for about 12 hours last evening/night, excluding the times when I was woken up by my father to let me know that he had arrived home and was leaving for Nance's, and the times when Clyde woke me up to let me know that he was hungry.
I've had a couple more very interesting phone conversations with Charlie. I feel that our philosophy (to the extent that it's shared, which is largely, although not completely) is starting to largely converge on the truth, although there are still certain areas we really haven't covered at all.
I still haven't listened to all of Project Majestic Mix - I've been putting off listening to the last batch of songs on the second CD for no particular reason. I've found the red, green, yellow and blue dragons in Chrono Cross, but am now stuck on the black one - I know where he is, but he doesn't seem to react to me there, and although I found a clue as to what to do, I don't know what it means. I'm sure I'll either figure it out or give up and go to a FAQ or someone who's played it for help, but I haven't been playing nearly as much recently because of being stuck. It's kind of a vicious cycle - whenever I get stuck, a game becomes boring, so I play less, thus making it harder for me to get unstuck.
There's been a very interesting thread of emails going on the Schlag3a (that is, mostly people who were in Hamerschlag 3a their freshman year, although I was not) mailing list, about philosophy. I think I've scored some points, but I also think I may be developing a reputation as intolerant. :-) I guess I am intolerant, but mostly in the context of a debate - during normal life, I won't bother most people no matter what philosophy they follow as long as they don't bother me.
Well, I'm almost sure that doesn't fully summarize the past 11 days, but I honestly can't remember at the moment what I might have left out. It's kind of a scary thought that in almost exactly a month, I'll be going back to CMU for my final year. I'll really need to get going on figuring out what I'll be doing after I graduate.
Wiki page for this journal entry
Kenn Hamm
For copyright and other information, click here.
Last modified: Wed Jul 24 20:31:31 2002