2/8/2001

Oh, now this is brilliant. Apparently, the folks at Amazon haven't read my article on Cross-Site Scripting.

posted 4:08 PM

2/7/2001

Whee. The nice folks at Blog you! Blog you! Blog you! think this site has "unnotable content"! I'd agree. Thanks, and good day. I suspect they only bothered to review this site because they couldn't find another J. (Besides, my favorite feedback of this sort came a few months ago, from someone who simply wrote "no". Why say anything else? Why say anything at all? People talk too damn much anyway.)
posted 10:50 AM

2/6/2001

Saw The Big Kahuna yesterday (and the day before - I watched it twice). Excellent movie. It has me thinking about life... and death. While up on the roof yesterday, picking pecans and leaves out of the gutters and sweeping the leaves off the roof, I thought about nothing but sweeping and pecans. It was a sort of bliss I hadn't felt in a while. Pure action, no thought. As close as I've come to zen in quite a while, I'd say.

I came in to move the webdesign-L list to a new server and a new domain, and was told by an unsubscribing member that they were leaving because I was "petty". This on the heels of another member crowing that he loved spam and that he'd do it again. I don't know. I've been giving of myself for almost four years, spending time I could be spending doing instead of thinking, being instead of worrying about who I have become or who I want to be, giving instead of taking. Sure, I've benefited from it, I think - I know more than I did, I'm far more tolerant than I was, I care more about people, real people and their problems, than I ever did. All I ask is that they don't make it harder on me as a result, that they think and try and achieve.

Some have, so I can't really complain. I only wish the others would leave quietly and save their ignorant, hurtful comments for their cube-mates and others, and recognize that if they don't find what they're looking for, if they find what they didn't want, that they leave quietly and peacefully and understand that every time they refuse to take a more difficult, but more rewarding course, they sear something inside of me. Every time I have to deal face to face with someone's ignorance and they cover it up with a closing remark that makes me question why I bother, it hurts those who really care.

In less than two months, I will have put four years of time and effort into something that anyone can ruin for me in an ill-worded sentence. What's the point in that?

Perhaps that's my lesson - that it shouldn't have to ruin anything, that I should move on and see these ignorant bastards for what they are, and get over it. But it still hurts. And if I didn't think that fifteen hundred other people still had a chance to learn and to prosper as a result of something I nurtured into being and sustained, I'd give it all up in a heartbeat for a day on the roof with no thoughts at all.
posted 3:03 AM
Sore from yesterday. I forgot to mention that someone stopped me on the way out of the rent-a-movie place and asked me for directions to a church. That's, what, ten people in two weeks? I've gotta start spending more time outside to get my average up to one per day, I guess. And no more time in the backyard.
posted 12:19 AM

2/5/2001

Good weekend. Furnished the house, mostly. Swept the porch. Met a neighbor (Benny) who is painting his house grey. Cleaned the glass in the lamps on the porch and front storm door. Cleaned the gutters, which is to say I restored them to service as gutters, from their (apparently rather lengthy) hiatus as pecan and leaf traps. We now have two rather large baskets and half a brown paper grocery bag (the big ones) filled with pecans. Raked nine-tenths of the backyard before it started to really rain. Swept the leaves off the roof in the back. Prepared for the final onslaught of pipe insulation (we needed some 3/4" insulation for the sinks) and generally played handyman. Removed old switch for flourescent lamp above countertop in kitchen, the lamp having been removed last weekend. Replaced switch with outlet. Learned valuable lesson in trust when Heather reminded me to check the wires with the voltage meter before grasping a hold of them, then spent ten minutes trying to figure out which breaker it was, anyway, that turned off the juice to that particular receptacle... I can hardly feel my thumbs. (Not from the shock, which I avoided, but from the raking, which I did not.)
posted 1:09 AM