My Apologies...
I am duly sorry about not posting quite so much these past few days. I have been busy with work, which has, believe it or not, taken up a good portion of my time. I was amazed myself to find out about how much time it was taking up. :) Truthfully, that is not the whole story however. I have been doing a good deal of playing around, and since my system was re-installed and I was playing around with games and music, I suppose I just neglected to post something up here about what I am doing.
On the bright side, I had a wave of inspired vision come to me with regards to my stories, and I have managed to weave them all together into one ultra long story plot. I don't know how I will manage to make something of it, but I am hoping that along with my language work, I will be able to hammer something out tomorrow. I am dedicated to completing my homework assignment for SLI tomorrow, but I must admit that it is going to be difficult. I missed my first two days, so I have been trying desparately to catch up. The next few lessons have been very difficult, so I don't know how I am going to do with that. I will have to complete more than two lessons tomorrow, and, as you can see, it is already late, and actually, it is tomorrow, so I am more behind than I though. :( Well, I hope to work with it. I have also managed to make a few cosmetic updates to my website in a few small sections, and I have another book review on the todo list, with a few more changes to be made. Other than that, I am considering programming a standalone blogging software, which would generate a finished product in XHTML 1.1 + CSS2, but instead of the software being run on the servers, it would be run on my machine, with a small comment system built into the system. I am not sure how it is going to work, but I could see myself using it, and it would be a neat programming challenge. Who knows, I might create it, I might not.
Today was a rather interesting day at work, as I spent most of the time setting up all the computers for Monday's demonstration. I think it was done in the best manner possible, but I still have not solved the little issue of my buffer overflows yet. I'll be working on those some more tonight, I imagine, and then I should have them fixed by the time I finally get to work on Monday.
In other thoughts, I have a question for any of you who have had more than passing contact with me. Do you think that I show genuine interest in you as a person? Do you feel like you matter to me when I talk to you? I ask because I want to give people the same thing I want from people in a relationship. That is, when I am intending to maintain something of a relationship with a person, I want to receive something that shows both concern, dedication, and true interest. It's hard to show that for me, but I have tried. What I don't know is whether or not it is working. Some things that come to mind are such things as consistent, heartfelt and meaningful correspondence, timely reaction, and showing consideration, interest, and concern for you personally. Do you think I do this?
You may rightly ask why this has come up. For the most part, it has come up because I have to question whether or not it is my response to people that generally seems to ellicite situations which are less than longstanding. Sure, I have a few good friends, and I gain new acquaintances everyday which I sincerely hope to, and generally succeed in maintaining contact with them, and feeling like I am on a somewhat good level. However, with a lot of other people with whom I correspond, sometimes it feels as though I have just fallen through the cracks, as if those people are incapable of maintaining relationships over distance. This has always been something of a not-so-touchy-but-sounds-good-to-say-touchy subject with me. See, I have always thought that the test of a good relationship with one of your friends is how well and how intimate you can remain when there is a distance, time, and medium barrier between the two people. That is to say, it is relatively easy to just pop up and say "Hi," to people whenever they happen to be on IM at the same time as you are, or something like that. For such things, you rarely have to remember anything other than their name. However, what if instead it was less than convenient to talk to them? I personally consider any internet contact to be FAR too easy, but I know sometimes it is not about what I think, but what other people think. For some people, I imagine, it is inconvenient for them to communicate outside of one particular internet medium, such as Chat, or through Blogs or forums, for example. (I should also mention that I am not aiming this at anyone in particular, and I am not thinking about anyone in particular when I write this; in fact, if you are reading this, you probably have nothing to worry about, even if you read it months later.) I suppose this is a leftover from my old days when I loved to test relationships. I suppose I still do this a lot: not taking phone calls, not staying on the same internet social networks that most of my friends are on, preferring long and detailed letters, emailing long emails to people, etc. The questions about whether or not this is wrong aside, it does seem to bring out the fact that most people do not contact me when it becomes inconvenient. I find this disconcerting on two counts. First, it makes me wonder if I did not make the relationship valuable enough to that person to warrant them putting the time and effort into maintaining consistent and meaningful contact; two, it makes me wonder whether or not those people really cared all that much about what I was saying.
Yes, I'll admit, I am a completely insecure individual. :p Really, I would love to receive more handwritten letters, especially long, well thought out ones; the sade reality, however, as I am well aware, is that my relationship is only so strong with a very very few amount of people. It really seems as though taking the time out of a person's day to do something like that is asking far too much of them, and makes me feel slightly selfish. So of course the other option is consistent and detailed, well written correspondence over such mediums as email. Why not blogs? Well, blogs are great, but inevitably, blogs are not meant to make up for email, and forums and forum like features (LJ's threaded comments), are very inadequate when it comes to such conversations.
So really, while most of you don't seem to have a problem with this at all, which is why I think I should be asking you all, seeing as how you are sure to give me an honest answer about where my social failings are, I do feel like there are things missing which I would love to see more of in people whom I have known:
Now, when I look back at that list, that just feels like it is being very self-serving and overall just plain greedy with people. I realize I am not at the center of the Universe, and I realize also that I am usually incapable of providing such a level of correspondence myself; I am not so naive as to think that something like this is reasonable at all. My question however, is whether my desires are unfounded, whether you think that the things I bring to the table in friendship in general are valuable enough to warrant this level of attention, whether I make you feel like you are receiving this level of attention, and whether you think that such a thing is even reasonable today at all. A good portion of my conversations are fairly publically available online, so I would really like to ask you all whether or not the way I interact with people is displaying my genuine level of concern, appreciation, dedication, and interest; am I making them feel loved and cared for?
Now, the final question, are all these questions just plain unmanly to begin with??? :p
On the bright side, I had a wave of inspired vision come to me with regards to my stories, and I have managed to weave them all together into one ultra long story plot. I don't know how I will manage to make something of it, but I am hoping that along with my language work, I will be able to hammer something out tomorrow. I am dedicated to completing my homework assignment for SLI tomorrow, but I must admit that it is going to be difficult. I missed my first two days, so I have been trying desparately to catch up. The next few lessons have been very difficult, so I don't know how I am going to do with that. I will have to complete more than two lessons tomorrow, and, as you can see, it is already late, and actually, it is tomorrow, so I am more behind than I though. :( Well, I hope to work with it. I have also managed to make a few cosmetic updates to my website in a few small sections, and I have another book review on the todo list, with a few more changes to be made. Other than that, I am considering programming a standalone blogging software, which would generate a finished product in XHTML 1.1 + CSS2, but instead of the software being run on the servers, it would be run on my machine, with a small comment system built into the system. I am not sure how it is going to work, but I could see myself using it, and it would be a neat programming challenge. Who knows, I might create it, I might not.
Today was a rather interesting day at work, as I spent most of the time setting up all the computers for Monday's demonstration. I think it was done in the best manner possible, but I still have not solved the little issue of my buffer overflows yet. I'll be working on those some more tonight, I imagine, and then I should have them fixed by the time I finally get to work on Monday.
In other thoughts, I have a question for any of you who have had more than passing contact with me. Do you think that I show genuine interest in you as a person? Do you feel like you matter to me when I talk to you? I ask because I want to give people the same thing I want from people in a relationship. That is, when I am intending to maintain something of a relationship with a person, I want to receive something that shows both concern, dedication, and true interest. It's hard to show that for me, but I have tried. What I don't know is whether or not it is working. Some things that come to mind are such things as consistent, heartfelt and meaningful correspondence, timely reaction, and showing consideration, interest, and concern for you personally. Do you think I do this?
You may rightly ask why this has come up. For the most part, it has come up because I have to question whether or not it is my response to people that generally seems to ellicite situations which are less than longstanding. Sure, I have a few good friends, and I gain new acquaintances everyday which I sincerely hope to, and generally succeed in maintaining contact with them, and feeling like I am on a somewhat good level. However, with a lot of other people with whom I correspond, sometimes it feels as though I have just fallen through the cracks, as if those people are incapable of maintaining relationships over distance. This has always been something of a not-so-touchy-but-sounds-good-to-say-touchy subject with me. See, I have always thought that the test of a good relationship with one of your friends is how well and how intimate you can remain when there is a distance, time, and medium barrier between the two people. That is to say, it is relatively easy to just pop up and say "Hi," to people whenever they happen to be on IM at the same time as you are, or something like that. For such things, you rarely have to remember anything other than their name. However, what if instead it was less than convenient to talk to them? I personally consider any internet contact to be FAR too easy, but I know sometimes it is not about what I think, but what other people think. For some people, I imagine, it is inconvenient for them to communicate outside of one particular internet medium, such as Chat, or through Blogs or forums, for example. (I should also mention that I am not aiming this at anyone in particular, and I am not thinking about anyone in particular when I write this; in fact, if you are reading this, you probably have nothing to worry about, even if you read it months later.) I suppose this is a leftover from my old days when I loved to test relationships. I suppose I still do this a lot: not taking phone calls, not staying on the same internet social networks that most of my friends are on, preferring long and detailed letters, emailing long emails to people, etc. The questions about whether or not this is wrong aside, it does seem to bring out the fact that most people do not contact me when it becomes inconvenient. I find this disconcerting on two counts. First, it makes me wonder if I did not make the relationship valuable enough to that person to warrant them putting the time and effort into maintaining consistent and meaningful contact; two, it makes me wonder whether or not those people really cared all that much about what I was saying.
Yes, I'll admit, I am a completely insecure individual. :p Really, I would love to receive more handwritten letters, especially long, well thought out ones; the sade reality, however, as I am well aware, is that my relationship is only so strong with a very very few amount of people. It really seems as though taking the time out of a person's day to do something like that is asking far too much of them, and makes me feel slightly selfish. So of course the other option is consistent and detailed, well written correspondence over such mediums as email. Why not blogs? Well, blogs are great, but inevitably, blogs are not meant to make up for email, and forums and forum like features (LJ's threaded comments), are very inadequate when it comes to such conversations.
So really, while most of you don't seem to have a problem with this at all, which is why I think I should be asking you all, seeing as how you are sure to give me an honest answer about where my social failings are, I do feel like there are things missing which I would love to see more of in people whom I have known:
- Long, well-written, carefully crafted handwritten letters sent weekly or bi-monthly.
- Long e-mails written in coherent, detailed language, with meaning, sent bi-weekly.
- Tri-weekly chatting or blog comments, with content.
Now, when I look back at that list, that just feels like it is being very self-serving and overall just plain greedy with people. I realize I am not at the center of the Universe, and I realize also that I am usually incapable of providing such a level of correspondence myself; I am not so naive as to think that something like this is reasonable at all. My question however, is whether my desires are unfounded, whether you think that the things I bring to the table in friendship in general are valuable enough to warrant this level of attention, whether I make you feel like you are receiving this level of attention, and whether you think that such a thing is even reasonable today at all. A good portion of my conversations are fairly publically available online, so I would really like to ask you all whether or not the way I interact with people is displaying my genuine level of concern, appreciation, dedication, and interest; am I making them feel loved and cared for?
Now, the final question, are all these questions just plain unmanly to begin with??? :p