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Here's a photo of the reason why I'm getting rid of the previously-pictured computer desk. ( Pic behind cut. )
This time, candles. I bought these candles a few years ago for a project which never came to fruition. Free to a good home -- one of them, all of them, or anything in between. ( Pic behind cut. )
A keyboard (music, not typing). A clock radio. A twin cassette deck. I know they don't sound like much, but having these things gone from my room would be SUCH an improvement.
I want to give away my old computer desk now that I have a new one. It's very basic and kind of small (about 40"x21"), but it has served me well in the few years since I bought it at a garage sale for $10. It has an aluminum frame and a wood (okay, probably particleboard) surface. It's in good shape except for a small amount of surface damage on the right side near the front (a result of superglue spillage and a subsequent attempt to remove it). The last person who was supposed to come and take it away bailed on me a few weeks ago, so here it is... their loss, your gain, right? Come take it away from my house in Sunnyvale (near Evelyn and Mary). ( Pics behind the cut. )
One of the things I've been able to do since I've been self-unemployed is to go through my boxes of things that have been packed away for many years and figure out what to do with them. Many of them, such as this essay, are going to be transcribed so that I have an electronic copy. This is an essay I wrote in June of 1997 for my English class during my junior year at Middle College. The assignment asserted that "many critics have said that an important way to measure the value of a superior work of literature is its ability to produce in the reader a healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude", and then tasked us with evaluating the book we'd just read (F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby) by this criterion. Someone in the class asked (quite rightly) what to do if we didn't think that was the appropriate way to judge a work of literature. The teacher told us that if we felt that way, we could write an essay describing what we DID think was the appropriate way to judge a work of literature, then use our own criteria to discuss the book. I, as usual, did the assignment late, and when I did, I chose the second option. What follows was the result of that decision. ( Pleasure and Disquietude: What a Crock. )
Social media are frequently criticized for keeping us "trivially connected all the time" -- for making our interactions constant and shallow. Blogs are much maligned for being places where people write about nothing, Facebook and MySpace profiles are often characterized as nothing more than places to swap photos of pets and let people know when we're eating tuna sandwiches, and Twitter is characterized as a forum for vapid 140-char units of meaningless expression. But I think all this focus on the medium is missing the point. It's not LiveJournal's fault if I post something superficial that people don't care about. It's mine. Your Facebook account isn't responsible for your decision to post about the trivialities of your life, you are. Social media are not to blame if we are writing about nothing -- we are, for consenting to live lives that aren't worth writing about.
Jobs, like wars, should never be entered into without a solid exit strategy in place.
Somebody fix it.
Seriously.
Yay! That means I'm done with the NES titles and can move on to the SNES ones. Since I already played through FFIV in the past year, I will skip it/replace it with its sequel, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, which I downloaded on WiiWare on Tuesday. I'll also play FFV concurrently, I think. :)
New post on my web site: http://www.davidsafar.com/What Keeps You Busy? The random basic "I ate a tuna sandwich" type updates will remain on my LiveJournal, but the longer, deeper, navel-gazing posts will go on my web site. Like this one.
GTA4 has two endings. Both of them are depressing. That is all.
(Brought to you by rummaging in boxes.) Dear David, The Society for the Prevention of hearty candles is currently having a drive to raise -2 dollars to build an up-to-date bubbling pool of spam. We urge you to reach down into your bone grease and give. With your help, we can stamp out bastards together.
I have things to say but I am too tired to state them eloquently, so I will state them plainly instead. My wound is healing well. As of today I no longer have to pack it with gauze ribbon. It is now merely covered with a spot Band-Aid. I am hoping I will be able to swim again soon. My bike is way frickin' borked. I managed to BREAK the axle some time last week. Not bend, BREAK. Awesome. Apparently I'm really good at trashing bikes, 'cause my bike expert friend Phil says that rarely happens. I got a new computer desk from Ikea this week and assembled it yesterday. It is awesome. I like it a lot. I will try to get pix and post them soon. In related news, I have an old computer desk that I don't want anymore. It's in my way. Please come and take it away and give it a good home. I paid $10 for it over three years ago and it has served me faithfully since then, so if I give it away free I will still come out ahead, having profited from its use. I will try to get pix of this too and post them soon. Tomorrow I am going to stay home and assemble the file cabinet that matches my new desk. I am hoping that I can get rid of some boxes of stuff as a result of having these pieces of furniture. Aside from having a place to put things so that they don't have to live in boxes, having things out and visible on the furniture will make it easier to figure out what can stay and what I can get rid of (a lot, I hope). I think that's about all my news for now. Other than that, it is late and I am tired.
After a long time of inactivity, today I've posted a new article on my web site! :) I've been thinking a lot lately about expertise and how work places can encourage or discourage its development. Check it out: http://www.davidsafar.com/
I went to the farmer's market today with a short list of items I wanted to pick up: 4 Bartlett pears 3 apples 2 nectarines Apparently it is neither apple season nor pear season, as I found precisely zero of these fruits there. Nectarines, peaches, apricots, plums, and pluots were EVERYWHERE, tho'. I wound up buying my nectarines (and getting upsold to four) there and going to Sunnymount Produce for the rest of them and some green grapes. So now I have my fruit fix (read: a sufficient dose of fiber to last about a week).
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I came home to an insect plague -- I'm not sure if this is what I had, but they looked quite a bit like Master Blister Beetles. I read a description of their behavior that said they appear in spring in large numbers and then vanish abruptly, which pretty much describes my invaders -- I caught five before I went to Portland, one or two more upon my return, and haven't seen any since. However, last night I discovered a new invader in my room, a fat round orangey-brown beetle that flew clumsily around my room for a moment before crash-landing on my keyboard tray. I captured him in a nearby empty Slurpee cup, and have some photographs. The pics are clickable for a larger version. ( Photos cut for the insect-averse )Anyone care to venture a guess what I've got here? I have larger copies of the pics, and still have him captive, so could take more at closer range -- he doesn't seem to be able to fly anymore, so I don't think he'll be getting away. I'll probably either set him free outside or feed him to my roommate's carnivorous plants -- what he is may play a role in that decision. ETA: Here's a photo of one of my suspected Master Blister Beetles. Photo quality is poor, and I don't have the specimen anymore, so no way to get a better one. ( Cut again. )
I spent most of this week at home, for a couple of reasons: A) Now that I have food in the house, I don't really need to go anywhere. and 2) My sleep schedule has been uncooperative on the "being awake when everybody else is" front. So I find myself asleep in the daytime, and awake and lonely at 4:30 AM. That's always been the way with me -- I don't miss people until the time of night when they're unavailable. Anyway, I'm glad I have plans tomorrow. I tried to reset my sleep schedule, and was half-successful. As in, I've now only been up since 11:15 PM, instead of the usual window of 2-4 PM. Having a full-time job and having no job are equally bad for me in different ways. Perhaps a part-time job would be a happy medium. Too much structure and too much time commitment are draining and exhausting, whereas too little structure and no time commitment put me at the whims and mercy of my non-24-hour circadian rhythm. Working 10 AM to 3 PM daily would probably do me some good. Get me out of bed in the morning so I'm on a schedule that vaguely resembles other peoples', put some money in my pocket, get me out of the house... I've actually flirted with the idea of getting a lame retail or food-service job, simply because they'd put me around people more, as opposed to the insular software jobs I've had where I was part of a small team and pretty much didn't meet anyone outside it. It's a thought, anyway. Then again, freelancing in technology could help too if I went all-out on professional networking and avoided getting into long-term contracts where I'm working with the same people all the time (like I did a few years ago when I was working for Footwear etc.). I'm looking at sites like elance.com, guru.com, and rentacoder.com. I might try them out to see how they work. Has anyone here used them? |
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