Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Rebuilding Civilization
February 08, 2012

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a portion of a book by Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky, which describes a unique way that a civilization of interstellar traders, the Qeng Ho, deal with worlds they visit that do not meet their technical sophistication.

To quickly summarize: Imagine you are a member of a race that trades goods across stars. You set a course for where you find it likely to find intelligent life, hoping to find someone to trade good with, but are unsure exactly what you’ll find when you get there. Upon arrival, the intelligent life there hasn’t progressed beyond the bronze age. What do you do?

The New Plan
January 15, 2012

Certain external catalysts have encouraged me to change how I’m keeping things civil here. So I installed a couple of new plugins, and have a new procedure that everyone might as well know about, since it’ll eventually become obvious anyway.

I installed the Membership plugin that Mike Lietz started for me. This plugin allows me to mark certain posts with tokens that grant and prohibit access for specific users. It also provides unique feed links for each of those users so that they can use their regular feed readers to obtain access to the same posts they see when they’re logged in. Of course, those users do need to be logged in to affect this. Otherwise, they’ll see the posts that have been on the site all along – and nothing new.

Re-Diet
January 11, 2012

On Monday, the 9th, I started back on diet. Last time, I did Special K for two weeks, then switched to Weight Watchers for months, and was thwarted by holidays and special occasions. That was pretty effective, since I lost just over 30 pounds. Sadly, I’ve since regained all of that weight, and I’m thinking that it would be nice to be rid of it again, hopefully for longer.

First, some affirmations about losing weight. Sure, it’s a pain to do, but it sure feels good not to have to lug around those extra pounds. I’ve noticed that my right knee has started to pop again while going down the stairs. It’s not wholly uncomfortable, but it will be if I don’t take some of this extra weight off of it. I remember distinctly how much better my knees felt when I was lighter. Not just my knees, but the rest of me, too. I mentioned going back on the diet to Berta yesterday, and she asked me, incredulously, “Why?” With the kids standing there, I wasn’t going to say explicitly, “Sex was better.” But it was. Better, better, better.

A New Normal
January 02, 2012

Change is hard. Focus is a problem. So yesterday, much to my imagined disappointment of everyone, I shut down everything – No Facebook, no Twitter, no blogging. While I was doing it, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold out, since I’ve been doing it for so many years as a habit. But the primary reason I want to not blog isn’t to stop blogging, just to keep people from reading what I write.

So I think I’m going to keep blogging, just in private. My own little journal. That way, I can write what I think and feel, and screw whatever someone might think about it, since they won’t be able to read it.