a barbarian journal

October 30, 1997 it is said that there is an instinct to self-presevation, but how is it encoded in the genes? It might be a consequence of positive desires, in order to want to do anything, you logically have to want to be alive to do it, self-preservation really isn't a separate thing apart from all desire, it is a just a way of speaking. Coming out of nowhere like that is what is meant by emergent properties. October 29, 1997 i got home late after work, and i had to be at work early, so i didn't have a real dinner. And really, not eating wasn't so bad as the sort of fear of not eating. I could go with out eating but the sense of lose was worse than the hunger, or maybe just not following the routine. I guess dinner is too much of a habit. I started a fire today, since its been getting cold. the first of the season, and it started amazingly fast, much faster than im used to, with just a little paper to ignite the pine kindling. and that's all it took. I used three logs to make an little burning chamber, a configuration i've had luck with. But it burned fairly anemically for a while, until i moved the bottom two pieces so the burning surfaces where up against each other, and it really started flaming well after that. I guess more hot burning gases stuck together worked a lot better. Uh oh. Cliff invited me to a halloween party. I don't think i want to spend two hours of halloween on the road between here and oakland, especially since i have to work in the morning. But i may fall off the invite list. Those guys really didn't appreciate my alcohol induced altered state of consciousness experience i had there. I have trouble explaining it, i guess. Whatever. people can have surprisingly limited imaginations. and excessive tendencies to worry. October 28, 1997 If have started eating raw potatoes. Previously, i had only tried the big bakers and didn't like them so much, but i have found that the little white ones are quite tender, and a lot like fruit, like an apple say. I think you can understand music a lot better when to try to play it. It really is an entirely different level that a lot of people experience. October 26, 1997 Here's an interesting calculation i did, and i thought i had done it before but i don't remember getting this intriguing answer. A food calorie is the energy used to raise a liter of water one degree Celsius. So raising a liter of ice water to body temperature would take about 35 Calories. That's a lot of Calories. A liter of a typical sugary drink though might have as much as 400 Calories, so it easily makes up for it. But if you stick to ice water, it might be a significant difference. And probably though, this body heat energy is already generated through a normal metabolism, so the 35 Cal will just come from normal activity and won't be anything extra, but it you get the point where you are shivering, then certainly you are using more calories. Just in general, shivering and dressing so that you are mostly cold seems like a fair way to use a few extra Calories. Good news i guess for skimpy women's fashions (I never could understand those). I heard about a practice that disturbs me. In the Gulf, they catch stone crabs and cut off one claw and through them back. They grow the claws back. This seems to me strangely cruel, but crabs aren't really very smart, so they don't know any better. One aspect is that they try to breed for docility be killing crabs that pinch. But I'm not sure they can realistically breed that out of crabs. Just how many Hendrix tunes are about his love for music, and his guitar? Certainly all of his music has that element, but some specifically like 'little wing' and 'manic depression' and (i'm guessing) 'angel' are actually about his love of music. And concerning 'castles of sand', does the girl actually kill herself? i had always that that the golden winged ship that passed and didn't stop meant that she didn't feel she had to do it, but now i'm thinking maybe it was actually life passing by. I really shouldn't expect a happy ending in a blues song. Halloween is about deception. Little play deceptions as if tricking people could become a good thing. I think waiting for the Great Pumpkin is a much better thing to do than dressing up. What was wrong with how you normally are. One really common way to be unhappy is to become unhappy with how you normally are. Maybe we should moving on to a real holiday like Spider day, where we pull the legs off spiders. Now that'd be a cool holiday. Or maybe in addition to just wearing masks, everybody should go out and rob convenience stores. Wouldn't that be fun? I suddenly have this extra hour now, since i got ready to leave but forgot to set my clock back. The Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch and brings presents to all the good children of the world. It is very reminiscent of the myth of the Cargo Cult, which is dear to my heart. I've started reading Timequake by Vonnegut, possibly his last book I had forgotten how much i like him, but he is kind of an old fogey. I just can't agree that life is all as bad as he says it is. I'll agree that, sure, people are terrible. I mean why drop two atomic bombs? And he mentions that the guy that invented the hydrogen bomb (Sakharov) got a Nobel Peace prize. (And his wife was a pediatrician) That is silly, but we should remember that Nobel invented dynamite so the whole award is stupid. People are stupid. But they have stumbled upon some principles that are not stupid. ideas much greater than themselves, and these ideas are really taking hold. October 23, 1997 i have always tended to focus on and magnify the differences between things. It is the natural way for an analytic and a contrarian. I hate to keep dwelling on this wynne thing, but it occurs to me that she seemed to treat me just as if i was just like everyone else, and i don't know how well that worked, because i must have made a very poor everybody else. Still do. I got some bank goons after me. It went like this: at the beginning of the month i sent off a payment to a big new york syndicate/financial institution. Two weeks later, when i got ready to write another check, i found out that i had left their check in the checkbook. And then i had a bad day, and left my keys in my car, etc. I don't think i have ever actually missed a payment, and i think my credit record noted that. My whole life may be doomed from this point, since my credit record was the best thing i had going.. I sent off the check, and shortly after that i got the next monsths bill from them, and they added way too huge fees and charges, and in addition, a goon left a message on the machine at one point--just a name and number and no indication. I called the number in the morning and got the nameless, faceless customer service phone machine of the big institution. I knew enough to ignore that. But this morning, a different goon called up to ask if i had sent their money. I had sent some and that seemed to satisfy them. She told be i could have immediately called them and sent a western union thing over the phone. Yeah right, like i'm going to give them my checking acount number. And she even asked if i had given current employment information. I was already starting to regret giving them my correct address and phone number, no way would i want them to know where i work. So this probably marks the end of the bounty years, and time to move on to the lean times. There's still the great pumpkin to look forward to. I really don't like when people say "It could be worse." is that supposed to be good? you get some emotional satisfaction from that. Things could also be better, and things could be exactly the same. In fact, i think it's much more pleasant to believe in fate, that no, things can't be any different from how they are, all you can try to do is to keep making things better. And i like to think "what do you mean things could be worse? Things are pretty darned good. and you are just whining over meaningless things." I usually think things are pretty good, but some people just can't be happy. Too stupid, maybe. October 22, 1997 Some people like to believe in magic and ESP and stuff like that. I prefer having a car. Cars are a lot better than all that stuff, so there's no reason to be interested in all that stuff. Women are nice to look at, but i wouldn't want to own one. I read the ingredients to fritos. They are made from corn, oil, and salt and that it. I could probably handle that. I need to try to make corn chips some time. And maybe some potato chips. Lucy Lawless (that Xena chick) is really cute. And we have the same birthday. I'm looking for a sincere pumpking patch in which to wait for the great pumpkin. October 21, 1997 I've been wanted to get some drums. electric so they'd be quiet and wouldn't take as much space. Wailing away might even be some exercise, and beating on things is always fun. I was in the grocery store again. I bought some oranges, some orange kool-aid, and some chicken pieces. And i kind of wandered around looking if there was anything else i wanted. It was kind of an eerie feeling, all this weird stuff and none of it remotely enticing. I am really having trouble with the gluttony of this society. So i was listening to a spooky instrumental beatles thing on anthology 2. that is, it was a song that i knew well with the words, but this version didn't have them. something from sgt. pepper, maybe within and without you. Not quite like the thing with the messed up adapter, because with that you could usually hear the vocals very weakly. Actually something like that because i felt that i could barely here the words, even though they weren't there. (Beatles' tunes are very ingrained in my brain). It was like a dream. Another dreamy thing is how these mnemonic images i'm using to remember these ideas kind of fade and are fairly weak. Things really sort of slip away. And i'll sort of remember a piece of it, but i can't quite remember what it was really supposed to be about. My recall rate is still bad, because the things are usually so abstract and i don't use good enough cues to bring the stuff back. Memory is strange. I'm finding that the problem now isn't that i'm too busy to write stuff. The problem is that i'm to absorbed in work to think of anything to write about. I'm considering getting a new computer, since there are some programs that my computer is just to slow for, some video graphics stuff, and speech recognition stuff. I sort of wanted to get a big monster desktop pentium II 266 or 300MHz, for like $2500, But now i'm thinking it might be better to get a portable, possibly a tilamook pentium 233, so i could do dictation in the car. It would cost more, and might not have the capabilities. I'd hate to have to get two computers, and my pocket computer is getting a little old. With the list memorizing, i haven't been using it, except for the time. But i'd hate to worry about a computer getting stolen. And i would not want to be seen lugging it. October 19, 1997 Argh, so the browser on this machine is down, and i can't check if this page is displaying properly. and i can't ceck web pages. It's very unpleasant, and it has resisted initial atempts at fixing. something wrong with rpcrt4.dll, at least that's the message. who knows. a different kind of thing happened at work. We were talking about Seinfeld, and the boss wanted to do something nice for me, so he called up a friend of his, Kenny Kramer, who was the original guy inspiring the Kramer character on the show, to try to get in to see the show taped in los angeles. getting in to see the show didn't work out, but i did talk to the guy for a minute. He seemed like a nice guy, but i think we were definitely from different universes. And i think we woke him up (california/new york time difference). He tried to engage me in small talk, but im not that kind of person. He told us about his website which has a link from the kramer.com (a page devoted to several kramers) So that's the kind of place i work at. Im doomed. I have a lot of sypathy for the great pumpkin myth. It actually fits pretty well in with the cargo cult, which i consider the only true and appropriate modern religion. I mean, you've got the great flying object delivering presents to the sincere followers. I wouldn't be surprised if the cargo cult was actually the inspiration. So maybe i need to find me a good pumpkin patch. I still wonder how professional writers use so many words. I guess i am not following all the subtleties of what they are saying. And i guess i have to admit that probably what i'm writing only makes sense to me. And maybe that was my plan. I don't usually have nightmares. The closest thing i have is dreams that somehow wake me up, and i can't go back to sleep, not because they are scary, i don't think, but i guess because they remind me of something i'm worrying about. usually wynne. Well in this one, i, like, called her and she asked me who told me i could calll her. Irritating. I have always made mistakes in everything, just careless mistakes, in high school, i would always just have a little mistake on a test where there was just no reason for it, i really knew what the answer was, but i would put down the wrong thing. So one of my goals, i thought, was to find out how not to do any of those silly mistakes. Lucky for me, i think, everybody else was having a harder time with the problem, or somehow not quite learning everything completely. The way i deal with it today is by having fairly easy ways to find mistakes and go back and check them, recovery mechanisms. And i think of it more as an inevitable consequence of a strategy of wandering for new ideas. You have to make mistakes to stumble on new things. But it would still be nice to be able to do things flawlessly. And that was the thing about Wynne. That was probably the thing that first intrigued me about her, that she didn't seem to make careless mistakes like that. Maybe because she was just a more caring person, or could happily accept things. I don't know. And i didn't really get the chance to find out, but i guess it's one of the reasons that I'd like to see her again--to see what it was that made her so perfect. Maybe i could get some tips. October 17, 1997 People have a kind of impersonal way of being nice. i don't usually get the kindness actually from me being me. I locked my keys in my car today. The last time i did it, they used a rake pick on the key hole, but this guy just hooked the cable. He had a whole set of different shaped coat hanger things. I need to make me one of those things. I need to get some exercise. maybe i should find some aerobics class somewhere. Or just do it. This memory thing isn't too reliable yet, but there's a reason why we have paper. There bards used to learn really long songs, which must have had imagery and flow, and rhymes were helpful. Practice, that's the thing. October 16, 1997 Confidence we have in ourselves is to a certain extent learned from the reactions of others. Not a lot of confidence comes internally. The best thing that could happen in the future would be an end to the pessimistic beliefs, that life is terrible, because at some point, life has become pretty good in general, even though a lot of cultural beliefs haven't caught up to that fact. People must need to think that things are bad. and the expectation that they are bad, thinking they are bad, can make them bad. belief is the first step to making something true, and i believe that i will never be anything. October 15, 1997 in bakersfield, most of the radio stations are oldies. I've been looking for a good title. 'Mr.' is too bland. I used to fancy 'Supreme Overlord', but just recently i've come across one that i like--"Third". there is a third in ender's game, but recently on DS9 there was a JemHadar soldier whose tile was 'third', even though first and second were dead, also there was third of five, whose was later named Hugh. And it's fairly short, and could even be shortened to '3rd'. Third Andi Babian. It was funny, because today i was in an office and there were two other people named andi. I was listening to edie brickell and new bohemians, and it got me thinking about wynne again. I was thinking i would call her, and apologize for being so terrible, and i didn't mean anything by it. And when i said i wanted to be friends, i was probably thinking something different than what she thought. I have a bunch of friends that i don't really see much, maybe a couple of times a year. And i wanted her to be like that. I thought for a while she sort of was like that, but i guess she wasn't into that. I'm sure she's very nice and wouldn't be too upset with me if i called. But without really understanding what the deal is with me, i am probably too terrifying. that is, it would be pretty scary as a romantic obsession, and maybe there was some of that, but there was a lot of other stuff. And why can't i just like someone? most people are disgusting pigs. what about innocence? why is it good for young people to live in ignorance? I guess the assumption is the the wide world is cruel and cold, but i've already written that these days the world is a pretty good place, and there are only a few party-poopers with bad attitudes. October 14, 1997 My brother Fred and i went to LA to pick up his boat. and i was a little busy before that so i didn't write in this journal. 50 e-mail messages. L.A. was pretty nice. warmer, i like that. i might go down again and stay on the boat but freddie moves it on thanksgiving. The water at the hotel was terrible and the air was pretty nasty looking from out on the water. Lots of california girls. my car turned 97k. it's getting pretty creaky. There was this surfer babe working at radio shack. She was dressed very seriously this time, i thought i remembered that she wasn't quite so formal last time i saw her, and this time she was very hot. And she was wearing an ankh on a necklace. I asked her if she was a runner (Logan's run) but she didn't know what i was talking about. She was just into Egyptian stuff, and it was a gift. I officially became a runner myself earlier this year, so the idea of seeking sanctuary was fairly recent in my mind. Sometimes people have nothing better to do, so they just get angry, instead of, say, doing something about the problem. The water at the hotel was amzingly bad. it tasted and smelled of sulfur and i really didn't want to be covered with it. In LA, there was this blond chick that turned left way in front of us, blew through what must have been a red light or something. not even close, we were moving before she clearer the intersection. I get she must have felt privileged. It made me want to get a cheap car to go driving around and bashing people that drive stupid like that. In mind design, some guy, it might have been turing, wrote that deciding whether machines can think requires you to define machine and think. I think i'll define 'machine' to mean 'ball' and think to mean 'bounce'. In that case, machines definitely can think. freddie's boat is very nice, a 44ft norsewind. People walking by the slip kept saying how nice they thought it was. (not to me, but to whoever they were walking with). It's big and all the boats around it were smaller. One lady said how she thought it had a great shade of green for a boat (the stripes, it's mostly white). The cabin is very nice too. You go in, there a biggish bunk on the left and on the right there is the bathroom, and sink is painted with an ocean scene. Next on the right is the control center, with lots of little electronic gadgets and radios, and a little radar screen. On the left is the kitchen area, with a microwave and a gas stove, and refrigerator and freezer, and the sink, which was mostly turned off, but i did turn it on to make some gatorade from power.. The ceiling on the cabin brushes my hair so freddie will probably stoop a lot. A step down and there's a little area with a big folding table and some kind of lamp suspended over, with benches on both sides. There are little cabinets with stained glass for doors. A kerosene heater is in the far right corner. Through a door there are some short bunks. The thing seems really made for little people. We took it out 4 miles to take possession of it, and then motored back. The cockpit is in the rear, and it has a big steering wheel, like real boats should have. I got to steer once. The water was totally calm, like a lake. I saw a really cute chick working in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, maybe a little fat. I must be hard up. October 9, 1997 so mike has moved on. He's staying with cliff i guess, then going back to mempho. whatever. Now i have my free time to myself. I learned about using native methods in java with the JNI. Those are functions written in c or something, external to the java. So i can access a lot more hardware and stuff. I'm thinking of doing a little sound processing thing. My interests are a lot different from other people. So i proably just sound boring to must folks. I wonder if they realize that they are just as boring to me as i am to then. Mostly though other people just don't say anything. which is really boring. Why complain? do something else? nobody likes a whiner October 8, 1997 the adapter connecting the cd player in my car through the tape player to the car stereo is malfunction in an interesting way. Somehow it removes the lead singer and just plays the background. i think its in stereo and its some kind of phase problem. I remember there used to be stuff you could buy to get that effect, but now i get it by accident. people have different reasons for helping. some people help because it feels good, but this approach will reach its limits when it isn't pleasant to help people anymore. Or maybe if it becomes inconvenient. To me it seems a better policy to help people out of some kind of abit or rational decision, rather that just to do it for some feeling. i had another dream about music and it was really intense. i just can't imagine music the way i can dream about it. I was doing some kind of wild variations on beatles tunes. I really need to work on that. epic. i saw star trek voyager. im having trouble believing seven. her breasts. they stick out way too far and are like rock hard. They really seem beyond silicone. mike suggested ceramic. i think she has some type of wire frame or something. really nice. October 7, 1997 Today was my dad's birthday doing new things is tough, but staying in known areas and doing well known things is pretty easy. Various combinations of these things can make life hard or easy. with so many new things, one would expect people to think life is hard. some people do nice things because it makes them feel better than other people. It is a subverted form of aggression. feeling sincere about helping has got to be part of the game. those last two entries i remember using mnemonic techniques and not by writing them down. I certainly would have forgotten them if i had not taken some time to translate them into a kind of pictogram associated with a known sequences (of number pictograms). I have a way of encoding numbers as sounds. Numerals are consonants and i can add vowels to make real numbers. the code is 1=t,d; 2=n; 3=m; 4=r; 5=L; 6=j,ch,soft g; 7=k or hard g; 8=f; 9=p,b; 0=s,z. For example, 27 could be 'neck' or 'knock'. Then i just construct a picture scene with the number word that indicates the thing , and can get it back with just the number. 2 was gnu (not quite right but i used it) for it i had the gnu stomping on a kid smiling (new things are tough) with an old women getting an easy riding on the back. 3 was 'home' and i had a really big maid (helping makes people feel big). At least it's a system, and it's better than forgetting. And something i can use while driving October 6, 1997 i've had some goals (the intelligent machines thing) that i didn't really have any chance to get, so i've been mostly waiting. for the technology to be around. I'm not sure if i was ever really interested in doing much of the detail work. i think i need to get with it. what did liz really think of bob in that sonnet up there? I'm not sure if she really loves him or is just zoned on brain chemicals. I mean there is nothing about bob, it's all just about her. she probably doesn't even need him to fell that way. It could be about anyone. And it sort of seems to have the hollowness of a drug reaction and not a way of living. Maybe she really believes these powerful feeling have some substance, but i don't see anything but vaporous dreaming. Love? or confusion. a form of self-absorption and not devotion. im not so sure about happiness. i think i can be happy whenever i want to, but i don't really see the point. happy or not happy, it doesn't make that much difference. pursuit in general is much more important. October 5, 1997 so mike is an ISTJ. inspector type. fairly different from me. A couple of people replied about my site. On of them, gianna, actually mentioned my thing in this journal about nobody replying. She seems very nice. I'm glad there are still nice people out there. she seems very visual, such that i have to admit that i am not very visual at all. I need to start working harder. Maybe i'll get to work on that big project i was planning. or maybe all the little projects i've been putting on my list. And maybe i should start applying to graduate school. Cramming for that graduate school amission test. Something. I don't think we should should have money. i think machine should do everything that must get done that people don't want to do themselves. And people can do what they want. Figuring what you want to do is in itself a challenge. But generally people do what they want. "Follow your bliss" as joe campbell put it. October 4, 1997 A longish day. washed some clothes. short tour of the outside. looked at the milling machine(s). drove down to the san jose arena to pick up sharks tickets. Went to stanford and the traffic was terrible. mike slept in the car, didn't go in even though he was thirsty. I went to the bookstore and got a couple of AI books. Mind design 2 and software agents. Then on to San Francisco. I really totally hate that city. At on of the view over the city, it made me think of a grabage dump with trash everywhere. Too crowded. Rode down market street, with the trolley lanes. Incredibly slow, and the lanes were nutty. We went to fisherman's wharf. And had lunch at swiss louis. I was explaining the personality type stuff to mike, especially the main categories. NT (me,munch,roy),NF(cliff),SJ(mike). We went down lombard street. We went out to a mensa meeting for an hour, really kind of boring, i guess, but at least mike did get a chance to talk to someone. I really only goto those things because i talk on irc so much, that i don't that much conversation qualia, the sounds and sight and feeling of people, instead of comunication substance, of which i get plenty. Stayed an hour. somebody ask mike, i think, if he and i were a couple, and that's happened before, ick. We went to downtown Mountain View. and mike got a massage for an hour while i got to wander. I found an interesting used bookstore that had textbooks and things, some weird AI stuff like old conference procedings. Across the street was a weird and sad new age bookstore. I was wondering if there were any books i could stand, it was so full of pyramid power and strange indian religions, and then there was a bunch of jung stuff. And i found some books i actually had and liked, complexity theory, hawking. A serious babe yoga instructor. Castaneda tensegrity videos. Weird. Hit a boston market. $6 for half a chicken? i couldn't believe it. what i think is really sad is that some people are lazy enough that it would be worth it. Went to a lucky's for food for mike so he wouldn't have to eat every meal out. But it looks like he's going to do that anyway. The desire for success is related to the desire for sex. Not so much that people compete in order to be more attractive as some kind of conscious or subconscious reason (although that is a factor). But being a provider and competing over mates was part of what determined who had kids, so it has been selected for. The aggressiveness and domination is related to sex drives. i have run into this problem in writing notes for this journal on my computer, now i have hit it again as i am trying to use memory technique to remember topics. I will think of the topics as one word and record the one word, but as i try to remember the whole idea, the one word just isn't enough to remind me of the whole thought. So i need to watch it and do better. And the simple one word link association isn't enough habits(?) i'm not interested in seeing anything once. if i'm only going to see it once, it seems like once is already too many times. So i hate touristy thing. I prefer long-term relationships. I don't mind trying new things, but if it isn't at least an attempt to begin a relationship, i don't really care. I have to really contrast this with mike, who is really into the new sensation and experience of newness. Wants to do everything at most once, seems like. I guess people are different. October 3, 1997 Hi this is Tark. I am Andy's first guest journalist. I am here from Memphis, because a certain Memphis hotel sucks. I am staying in the same room as Andy's ironing board. I left the cob-webs. I like Andy because he fufils my need to feel stupid. Just for the record, I've never met a certain resident physician at Stanford. California is definately where Andy belongs. I knew it when I got to the boardwalk in San Jose. Except for the restaraunt on the pier, when we were too low on the food chain to appreciate the over-priced gruel, everyone looked, well different. I was the only normal one there. Andy turned me on to "titty-bars". We decided that going there was the same as actually burning money, & so he actually burned some twenties. He says it had roughly the same effect, but I haven't been able to force myself to burn money. In return, I took Andy to the pistol range for the first time. It is a wonderful concentration exersise, and a great way to releave stress w/o actually burning calories. Andrew just tried to explain a poem to me. I remember one he wrote in high school. It was about being attacked by refrigerators. Being the sensitive guy I am, I recognize poetry, along with the Greek language, Shakespeare, and wiring diagrams. The refrigerator poem always reminds me of the times he says, "you don't really understand this song untill you hear it when you are insane." I don't really remember being insane. So if we are tryibg to understand what makes one intelligent, I would also like to find out what makes an alledgedly intelligent person be a security guard. Well on that cheery note, we are going to try to get Sharks tickets on the computer. If you want to proposed an answer to that question, I am at miketark@mem.net. October 2, 1997 If drive reduction is what motivates people, that people seek to eliminate their feelings of need, then the desire to be intoxicated or distracted makes a lot of sense. People just want to be able to stop feeling their problems. I finally put my cd player in my car. It' a sony, so it really skips, and i need to find a place to put it so it wouldn't constantly skip, as it would just sitting on the seat. putting it on its side, vertically, helps a little, and now its sitting on a towel by the handbrake. that works pretty well. I was going to hang it by a rubber band. I used to have a player that had a hook for a strap to hold it by, but this one doesn't have that hook. I have it plugged in through the tape player, and now the little fake tape thing is messing up. the roller isn't spinning smoothly and the player thinks its hitting the end of tape and is reversing. I really need to get some dictation stuff. i need a new computer for that. rod serling. now there was a guy with ideas. a real writer. His war experiences were a real inspiration. And his working too hard occasionally added a strange kind of nostalgia. Twilight zone were interesting, but i now find some of the sensibilities to be old-fashioned. He has a strange sense of justice. and cold war stuff. Im a lot more optimistic now. Optimistic or maybe just unlikely to worry. October 1, 1997 i like the feeling of triumph, not necessarily defeating someone, but success over some goal. I was listening to some devo which i find quite triumphal. I had a strange dream with a cameo by Susan Stimbert. I didn't really know her, she was just a person in high school, the kind of outgoing type of person that i really didn't like. i think i heard she was a consultant out of college. And i expect that she is almost certainly married with kids. but there is the possibility that she could be one of those lonely career women. Well, anyway, in the dream it was some type of classroom, with desks and such. And im sure i wasn't specifically thinking about her, but while dude was lecturing, she was kind of talking, she asked about one of the additional reading books, and the guy in front of me let her see his copy, i was trying to ignore her, but she keep talking to me, and even asked me out. And i feel sort of sympathetic. I guess i should wonder who i really was thinking about. i got find a better way to remember things for a day. associating with certain standard objects in a list is one technique. I thinking the index is going to fall behind a little. I need a better way of doing it. i wanted to write a program, but i don't know what it would be like. sounds like an excellent project to do in perl.