Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
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stupid cable modem was down again. maybe my system messed up, because i couldn't
telnet to my server from my laptop. or it could have gotten gunked up. took
hours to get it all together. turned out that the ip address changed and
the dns server, which i had hard coded (windows is able to query this automatically,
but i haven't gotten linux to do this). boo i had a long marketing survey call from some diana about credit cards. i'm not a very good user. it seemed like they might have had my credit report and that they were actually from one of my credit companies, getting info from me. yoga class with mistress veronica was easier. i think she lightened up on the time in the pushup up position. she's only been doing it for about a year. i should break out my old manual. one of the main reasons i didn't keep it up was that i thought it said i was supposed to rest for a couple minutes in corpse pose between each posture. and that made it take way long. how brains make up their minds is pretty interesting. it does talk heavily about how brains use dynamical systems. it also takes a different perspective that materialists and the information processing view of the mind. instead of just taking in data and processing it, we start with an expectation of what is going to happen, the senses cause the dynamic state of the system to fall into a known pattern if something is recognized, or if something new happens, a new basin of attraction is added for the new sensation, and the old basins get shifted around. what is important is not particular neurons but 'populations' of neurons which can reach states of activation or oscillate. expectation, realization, learning. one neat thing was how important it is to have a constant low level of randomish noise. neurons need to get pulsed like every second or so to stay alive, but in addition, this means that the inhibitor neurons are able to cause activation to go below normal or negative, sort of. because it would naturally bounce back from the negative level, it becomes possible to have an oscillation. that's where the gamma 40Hz brain waves come from on EEGs. Freeman lists like 10 dynamical system principles that form the basis for mind function and intentionality. we have a lot of chaotic background stuff that helps us move into new states, and more generally makes us creative, but also makes our minds wander around like a crazy bee-stung monkey with st. vitus' dance (as i've heard it described in relation to how hard it is to meditate). the mechanism isn't too complicated really, and we have lots and lots of the basic material. lots of feedback and stuff for reliability. on thursday i went to the more advanced yoga class. it was way more adavanced. almost everyone did headstands. a huge class, too lou was always telling me to do other stuff and there were no other men, though there usually were. and there was a party afterwards at shogun. japanese. santa claus. that down the chimney thing comes from how st. nicholas ("santa claus" is from a poor pronunciation and misspelling) dropped gold coins through the chimney of some poor people. it's not magical. it's very real. if people would talk about the real story, maybe they would think about how they could help, too. first, get your afairs in order, then help others. i still need to get my act together. another temperance. big crowd. ike kullman came. he remembered me from before i moved and came back. lost of oldsters. bill nancy and dick, a couple of wives. dick brought his daughter. she asked me my sign. she's a sagittarius. there was a band that i stayed around to watch after everyone left. and there was this dark haired lady at the bar that was grooving in her seat and i could see she wanted to dance and i thought about going over there. dennis (ex-marine, now married to susan, who was there) actually did, and got her and her blonde friend dancing, but the blonde dropped out. later, the two ladies were dancing together, as happens too often. i got my handgun carry permit. i need to get a gun to carry, and a carry system. and take some more of those classes. and practice. i still have a lot of christmas shopping to do i just got a bunch of stuff to read in the mail. magazines, discover sci am, skeptical inquirer, a stack of science, and a book- how brains make up their minds. i feel horrible about work. so much wasted the world is overpopulated with cute women. and lots of them hang out at the Q. i went to the monday night yoga class led by the sadistic mistress Veronica. pain in muscles you didn't know you had sort of thing. And i thought their dress code was supposed to prevent clothes where the nipple shows through. not that nipples are bad. shows what i know. anyway, when the class started, it was wall to wall women (except me) and all in pretty good looking, it being yoga and not for the timid. there actually is a yoga class for the timid on friday; they call it "yoga and relaxation". it has frequent declared breaks, unlike the dragon lady's class (though to her credit she is constantly saying take a break if you need to, but there it is clearly a matter of weakness and a reason for embarassment. the typical aerobics class mentality). The old guy on friday is more gentle and probably a better yoga teacher, but not nearly so nice to look at, and i won't be as likely to go to those classes (plus it conflicts with the mensa beer drinking meetings (temperance)) a couple of really cute blondes on the right of me. it's nice to see long blonde hair hanging to the ground. too bad it came at the cost of having to stay in the push up up position for really excessive lengths of time. i was really surprised that i wasn't ready for that. i've gotten 3000 push-ups behind me, but i guess i don't hold them in the up position long enough. my form hasn't gotten very good really, oh well. and with my sweat pants on, my feet got all sweaty and i would slide and not be able to do the poses. ick. i was sitting behind this girl in some alpha sigma something or other sorority (heck, it could have been a fraternity one i guess) sweatshirt. she was way amazingly limber. the instructor was too, but you expect that from an instructor. there was an odd stretch that got thrown in, that isn't really yoga, but is used in about all aerobics classes, where you spread your legs and bend forward. they would bend all the way forward flat. i think i used to be able to do that, but i forget. well, i was hanging around after class, loitering as it were. and super yoga student babe comes up to me and asks me if i have been going to t'ai chi. golly. i didn't recognize her, but she had been in the tai chi class a few weeks before. i mean there's only been about half a dozen people in that class. and she's definitely the cutist. i guess the cute ones kind of all look the same. anyway, she asked me about tai chi. i've been going. she said she missed a couple weeks and is afraid to go back because they finsished it up. but stupid me, i don't say anything. she says she'll get the instruction sheets. and she goes back over to her friend. i do go over and ask her how long she has been doing yoga. a year and a half. (!). about once a week. she likes the friday one better. have i gone to it? yes. he tells them how to do the shoulder stand. i just started here. i go to eastern sun. (the beginner class) they are a lot more detailed. she says the Q can be so detailed because they have a lot of people coming and going. it's a bad habit that i didn't ask her her name or tell her mine. where are my manners? was i raised in a barn? maybe i just never learned no good. so i apologized to aimee and she seemed nice and all, but really it's all broken. at the ai meeting stan talked about an experiment about the attractiveness of faces. actually the theory is a lot more general, that the most successful traits are the average ones, since we all are descendents of successful breeders. in the specific example of womens faces, it turned out that the average face (using digital image averaging) also was the same as the most attractive (found by taking guys and a genetica algorithm face generating program), except two traits. the ideal woman has fuller lips and a less protruding jaw, traits that also correlate with fertility. the playing by ear seems to be coming along getting the christmas blues aimee told me off yet again. it sounded pretty final. definitely some words that can't be erased. but i was a little manipulative. i kept pushing at stuff to make her angry. if you love someone, set them free. i told aimee's e-mail addresses (home and work) out of my address book, though maybe i should say something like "don't be such a baby" i found my yak backwards pen. it has a message on it from some woman in a sultry voice "I don't want to", must be andrea went hunting again with dave. i saw a deer driving up, but nothing when i was waiting for them. the big christmas party on saturday. lots of people, and new people i didn't know. there was this one girl, kelly, really tall with long sort of reddish blond hair (i get it now. irish.) and glasses. thing for michael douglas. flew to LA to see the pet shop boys. needs a piano in january so she can learn "come sail away" for some styx concert at a casino coming up. cute enough to afford many quirks. she sat next to me to help me with my poem (there was a poem writing contest, you had to use 7 given obscure words). i asked her about herself. a gun person by association, knows tom wolfe, owner of rangemasters. no football. i asked her if she danced. (joey liked the boldness of that approach) nah. there wasn't any dancing at that party. boo. anyway, i shooed her away, telling her she should mingled. but she came back and sat down in that room again, though not next to me this time. so i went and sat next to her. she arranged to read someone else's poem that left. didn't talk to her any more after that.
my poem: i decided to try to get 5000 push-ups in. i'm shooting for 10 sets of 50 per day for 10 days, though my first day i only got 6 sets. my push ups aren't very good yet, but i'm hoping the will get better and i will be able to do more. aimee actually suggested it. finished the book on web design. have another one on being a webmaster. i little more programming, with javascript, php, perl decided to skip november. i went out with aimee to see fight club. i was surprised when she agreed to go at the last minute. like fifteen minutes before it started. i liked seeing her smile as she was watching it. she has a nice smile. just barely could pay my bills this month. i need to go work with doug on some web stuff. i'm reading the o'riley book on web design. the weasel book. i finally learned about frames and forms, though i need to add some. maybe some form for comments. read a book on intelligent agents with java. it has a cd-rom and some tools i need to try. plus with the servelet server going, i should be in business. i found bruce a place to host his site for $5/month ($40 setup was pretty steep). with free ssl.
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