friday.

It's Friday, and I have so much work to do.

Like, an oh-my-god-that's-a-lot-of-work amount of work to do.

But I can't do it till I've eaten, which won't happen for another four minutes, when helix90 and I make a run to Subway.

I am flipflopping back and forth between manic (very manic -- I actually sent someone an IM saying "G1v3 m3 m4d f00dz0rz n0w, foolish human!$%$(%@(&$!!!!") and depressed (very depressed, in a why can't she be here? I miss her so much sort of way). I am never this flipfloppy. It's very strange. Ugh. I need food, clearly. I think I'll get more jalapenos than usual; that'll release more endorphins.

My reward will be ... hmm. I need to figure out what I'm going to do tonight. Expect a poll later.

And today I am going to self-medicate for fast coding, you bet.

In other news, I got a good and peaceful night's sleep last night, after a brief, sleepy, happy chat with Selena, after which we both passed out. Which is probably why I'm so wired right now. And the weather has cooled off, so my brain has returned to normal operating efficiency, and is happy.

Now, lunch. And then a large amount of CGI programming.

do stuff with bjorn!

When I'm done with work this evening, I'm going to very definitely be in a mood to go out and Do Stuff, i.e. go clubbing.

If you're reading this and you'll be in the Seattle area tonight, you're welcome to join me.

I can provide transportation if you need it.

preserving the freedom of the internet

Recently, the South African government voted to establish absolute government control over the assignment of .za domain names -- essentially, they would be able to dictate who got a domain and who didn't. In any nation, particularly one as fraight with racial strife as South Africa, this could lead directly to supression of speech on the Internet for that nation's people.

Then -- in a rather revolutionary move -- the administrator of the .za domain, a private South African citizen named Mike Lawrie (who helped get South Africa on the Internet in the first place, and is not paid for his administration duties), moved the .za zone file (which defines the structure of South African domain names and is necessary to alter, add or remove .za domains) offshore, where the South African government couldn't get at it. This basically renders the South African legislation useless -- they are literally fucked.

The intent is to leave control of the zone file in the hands of the people of South Africa as a whole, and of the Internet Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the authority which parcels out top-level domains.*

This is an excellent example of ways in which we, the users, can keep the most democratic source of information in the world out of the hands of national governments, which are rapidly growing more and more repressive. Mike Lawrie is my new personal hero.

* ICANN is supposed to be made up of a mixture of people from the public, private and educational sectors, but it's rapidly turning into a puppet of the American government. We're going to ignore that fact for now -- Mr. Lawrie probably isn't aware of that, and there isn't much he could do about that anyway.

mundanity

It seems like the only personal conversations I hear going on around here are on the topic of houses bought and sold, kitchens remodeled, cars purchased. They speak of things with real care, real vehemence, like they were talking about the fate of their life and freedom.

The idea of having a serious emotional investment in the color of my kitchen counters is really foreign to me, almost repugnant. It just seems so... horribly dull and meaningless. I don't want to fritter away my private life with "home improvement" and having a deck added to the house. I want to live and dream and write and enjoy the company of my friends and loved ones.

These people need bigger dreams. *sigh*