•
The possibilities of what showing up for that colonoscopy next Wednesday could have on my future has taken to dominating my thoughts presently. The fact that the surgeons might find some sort of cancer there, and immediately determine that it's too late to do anything about it. Admittedly, that's the extreme case, but my doctor at the VA scheduled me for a colonoscopy directly because she wanted to know if that situation exists in fact. She also tentatively made me an appointment with the eye clinic, but that's put off until after the colonoscopy. Everything is. My life is on hold.
Presently, it seems futile to read about events that will happen after June 17, 2009. There is a real possibility I might be well on my way outta this world in a relatively short amount of time from a pain in the ass. I wonder just what kind of reaction I might have if they tell me I'm in dire straits and about to croak. It's not like if I am, that I'll have to live with the shame of not "taking it like a man". My relatives might be embarrassed if I act cowardly, but I'll be gone to the sweet bye and bye. I don't care, at least at this juncture, I've been there many times even while occupying this body.
I watched this TEDtalk video again:
http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html
I didn't start out to hear it a second time. I just responded to the title about learning to listen and figured I probably couldn't ever know too much about that, and clicked to see whatever came up. As soon as I saw the woman demonstrating 'how to listen', however, I was very happy to sit down and watch it again.
There's something about her presentation that makes me weep with joy for what she has accomplished as a deaf person. It also makes me feel ashamed that I really haven't tried to accomplish anything with whatever musical talents I may have. My take is that I never attracted the right teacher. Either that or my fate wasn't supposed to take that particular primrose path.
This Evelyn Glennie has taken percussion to an end I can't even imagine was/is possible. I've realized in the past that I needed to know more about percussion and counting rhythms. Five or six years ago I bought a professionally made djembe drum and began playing what for me was in earnest. I felt emotionally met in some ways, but not inspired to sit and play hours on end.
I found it impossible to feign dedication and devotion simply because I mentally keened that's what it took to get where I might wanna end up at, if I had my way. After a couple of years I drifted over to trying to learn the various scales on the piano, and found out by the difficulties I began having that I have rheumatoid arthritis, and I'm lucky I can still type.
Writing stuff is what makes time fly for me. It's no struggle at all to get lost in saying what I see for hours on end. It's not just creating the images I like to conjure that is even the most of it, but editing what I create from attempting to capture drifting thought is what make time evaporate.
That's a big deal to me. I searched all my life for an activity that was so interesting to me that I'd get lost in the very doing of it. It only happened when I bought my first computer in 1988 (or so), and then got an online account with the local ISP. I was literally convinced to get an online account by having it proved to me that I could join a discussion group about NLP. I live in a small rural town in the Bible Belt of the Old South. There wasn't many books about NLP in the local libraries, and there wasn't gonna be any.
I only discovered that I could write for hours on end and lose track of time when I had the chance to exchange e-mails with people who were much more familiar with NLP than me. Even after my lust to understand NLP abated, I still liked the idea of belonging to e-mail discussion groups, especially after I started keeping a blog.
If I were use my daily writing habit to describe Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey", I might describe the editing of what I attempt to capture with words the part of the journey that happens after I get back from the dreamtime and am trying to manifest what I brought back from the pearl of great price in my hidden wallet into the sensory dimension.
I don't seem to get so infuriated with myself as much anymore when after I've worked for hours on capturing and editing for prime time the drifting thoughts I've encountered as a vagabond and passerby, then discover after I've published online that my editing itself was flawed.
I wrote about something yesterday that I spent entirely too much time editing to screw it up with typos or omissions. I worked and worked at it. Thought I had it down pat. Published it. Then, when I was re-reading it here, I realized that I had forgotten to re-insert an "I" that I intentionally erased, but I forgot to go back and re-insert that "I", and the whole piece didn't make any sense. "For loss of a nail... "
_
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Look At The Birdie
I don't know how to make the web links I publish here active. You might have to cut and paste the address below into your browser to get it to work, but the link below is worth the trouble if you like to look at pictures of owls. I somehow managed to find and get a RSS feed to this site in one of the old USSR countries and they regularly post interesting pictures. I don't know who runs this site, but they're very talented.
http://halbot.haluze.sk/images/2009-06/4998_sovy15.jpg
If Jung had a leg to stand on with his statement , "Religion
is a defense against the experience of God.", then I must
admit that you people have gone to fanatical extremes. How
on Earth has it gotten to the point where you BELIEVE that
memorizing this old crap will make your experience with God
null and void?
_
I arrogantly posted the above remarks to a group of people who only exist to take my abuse. They don't seem to know that. From my impressions they appear to think I'm here to take their's. No blame.
It's the term "against" in Jung's quote that I'm currently exploring. I appear to have pretty much ignored it's implications when I first became fascinated with the quote:
"Religion is a defense against the experience of God." ~ C. G. Jung
http://www.minnesotareads.com/2009/04/the-power-of-myth/
The reason this quote interests me is because if there is any value in it, then it's in the possibility of discovering who God is for the initiate by the observable defense they put up to stop the "experience of God" from doing whatever it does if one doesn't defend themselves against whatever it is.
For me, the experience of God is some extreme awareness of paradoxical terror. I use the term "paradoxical" because when I am IS the terror itself I am is not afraid. It's only in my contemplation of or reflection of BEING inside the terror that I'm not aware of (or any "thing" else).
This brings up an old dilemma to me. Being, and where and how it occurs. Being is a posited situation. It's an impostor. It's imposed and deposed. Sometimes it's just not there. As if it's got other fish to fry. How rude!
A week from today I've got an appointment to go to the Veteran's Hospital in Fayetteville and have a colonoscopy performed. Thinking about it has been a real wake-up call. I've started remembering things. Particularly what happened to my old friend Noel Carter. Noel and I had two things in common. A genius IQ and a penchant for being a pain in the ass to other people. Noel died of colon cancer. He lived by being a pain in the ass, and he died from a pain in the ass. Selah
It absolutely would seem like poetic justice if I go get that colonoscopy next week, and they tell me the cancer is so far progressed they have to remove it like they did with Noel. Then, send me home to die with plastic bags and tubes for guts, like they did him. At least his family came to get him and helped him pass. Amateur.
My ex-wives and children could testify to how I've only been a pain in the ass to them. Mostly from pure selfishness. It only seems fitting as my true fate. I tried to do right by them and give my children a legitimate name, but they act like it was a curse instead of a blessing. No blame.
If I go down there's one thing I will not depend on. My siblings. Except for my older sister they acted like our parent's dying was a plague to be avoided. I gave up everything to go stay with them so they wouldn't end in the local death camp like castaways, and my siblings hardly ever came to visit them. They won't visit me either. C'est la mort!
_
http://halbot.haluze.sk/images/2009-06/4998_sovy15.jpg
If Jung had a leg to stand on with his statement , "Religion
is a defense against the experience of God.", then I must
admit that you people have gone to fanatical extremes. How
on Earth has it gotten to the point where you BELIEVE that
memorizing this old crap will make your experience with God
null and void?
_
I arrogantly posted the above remarks to a group of people who only exist to take my abuse. They don't seem to know that. From my impressions they appear to think I'm here to take their's. No blame.
It's the term "against" in Jung's quote that I'm currently exploring. I appear to have pretty much ignored it's implications when I first became fascinated with the quote:
"Religion is a defense against the experience of God." ~ C. G. Jung
http://www.minnesotareads.com/2009/04/the-power-of-myth/
The reason this quote interests me is because if there is any value in it, then it's in the possibility of discovering who God is for the initiate by the observable defense they put up to stop the "experience of God" from doing whatever it does if one doesn't defend themselves against whatever it is.
For me, the experience of God is some extreme awareness of paradoxical terror. I use the term "paradoxical" because when I am IS the terror itself I am is not afraid. It's only in my contemplation of or reflection of BEING inside the terror that I'm not aware of (or any "thing" else).
This brings up an old dilemma to me. Being, and where and how it occurs. Being is a posited situation. It's an impostor. It's imposed and deposed. Sometimes it's just not there. As if it's got other fish to fry. How rude!
A week from today I've got an appointment to go to the Veteran's Hospital in Fayetteville and have a colonoscopy performed. Thinking about it has been a real wake-up call. I've started remembering things. Particularly what happened to my old friend Noel Carter. Noel and I had two things in common. A genius IQ and a penchant for being a pain in the ass to other people. Noel died of colon cancer. He lived by being a pain in the ass, and he died from a pain in the ass. Selah
It absolutely would seem like poetic justice if I go get that colonoscopy next week, and they tell me the cancer is so far progressed they have to remove it like they did with Noel. Then, send me home to die with plastic bags and tubes for guts, like they did him. At least his family came to get him and helped him pass. Amateur.
My ex-wives and children could testify to how I've only been a pain in the ass to them. Mostly from pure selfishness. It only seems fitting as my true fate. I tried to do right by them and give my children a legitimate name, but they act like it was a curse instead of a blessing. No blame.
If I go down there's one thing I will not depend on. My siblings. Except for my older sister they acted like our parent's dying was a plague to be avoided. I gave up everything to go stay with them so they wouldn't end in the local death camp like castaways, and my siblings hardly ever came to visit them. They won't visit me either. C'est la mort!
_
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
"... What Careless Love Has Done"
I used to get excited when new technology showed up. Now most of the new hardware and software is designed for big corporations and enterprises, and the stuff made for individual consumers is made to appeal to those who have oodles of expendable cash. No blame. It's just that being able to go with the flow of how technology is opening up the world was very exciting, and now it's calmed down to the same ol'/same ol'.
Like many other Mac users I've been waiting for the big announcements from the Apple executives about what's new, and yesterday was the big day. They came out with a new iPhone, but I can't afford AT&T prices for their services, so that meant nothing to me. I don't read anything about the iPhone because the cost of doing business with AT&T make me feel like the lowest of the low when it comes to my limited income. My bad. I should have tried to get rich rather than understanding the world. I try to regret taking the path with heart that sot itself before me, but I get the giggles instead.
There was more information about the new operating system they're calling Snow Leopard. It's the 64-bit system I've been eager to purchase and use. The $24 price tag couldn't be much better. I paid $124 for the upgrade to the 32-bit Leopard system I'm presently using. As I've mentioned though, my Mac Mini has a dual-core Intel processing chip I'm fairly satisfied with, it's just not a 64-bit processing chip, but a 32-bit one.
In other words, I can't just pay $24 and get the new 64-bit operating system without either upgrading my processing chip to the 64-bit one ($400-500) or buy a new computer that has a 64-bit chip. upgrading might be a good deal for me if my Mac Mini motherboard had the Nvidia chip set instead of the slow, unimproved Intel chip set. But, from what I've read, my upgrading the processing chip I might have to pay even more than for a new computer.
One thing is for sure, I'll never go back to using a Windows box unless they made some real changes about security. I don't care whose fault Microsoft's security problem is or for what reason. I'd rather pay the higher initial price of one of the less expensive Macs because I know it's gonna be cheaper to own and to use in the long run than anything Microsoft has out on the market.
The 2 gigabyte DRAM upgrade makes my Mac Mini run as smooth as butter. I'm still tempted to buy an SSD to replace the spinning hard drive I use now, but the new memory has made a significant difference in a good way to my computing needs. Besides, I still haven't run across exact information about which SSD Apple offers with it's expensive models, and I gotta know that for my own satisfaction.
I just wrote something that came out exactly like I wanted. There is this guy who makes a habit of attacking everything the group moderator says and appears to do it to make her look less than his equal. Discussing it openly doesn't phase him. He reminded me of people I've known who got off on pain. They're constantly trying to piss people off so they'll hurt them. I've called it a form of rape. She has repetitively and explosively denied interest in being his bitch.
She commented earlier today about whether I think he realizes how obtuse and redundant he is about his obnoxious behavior and I found myself writing this:
"The paradox of it is that he seems to want to weaken you in order
to protect you from people like him."
Writing this was doubly meaningful for me. The statement appears to indicate a deeper understanding of the concept of "paradox", and I wrote it to this woman who first made me realize I didn't understand the term paradox deeply enough to carelessly use it. Hah! I guess I showed her! '-)
Like many other Mac users I've been waiting for the big announcements from the Apple executives about what's new, and yesterday was the big day. They came out with a new iPhone, but I can't afford AT&T prices for their services, so that meant nothing to me. I don't read anything about the iPhone because the cost of doing business with AT&T make me feel like the lowest of the low when it comes to my limited income. My bad. I should have tried to get rich rather than understanding the world. I try to regret taking the path with heart that sot itself before me, but I get the giggles instead.
There was more information about the new operating system they're calling Snow Leopard. It's the 64-bit system I've been eager to purchase and use. The $24 price tag couldn't be much better. I paid $124 for the upgrade to the 32-bit Leopard system I'm presently using. As I've mentioned though, my Mac Mini has a dual-core Intel processing chip I'm fairly satisfied with, it's just not a 64-bit processing chip, but a 32-bit one.
In other words, I can't just pay $24 and get the new 64-bit operating system without either upgrading my processing chip to the 64-bit one ($400-500) or buy a new computer that has a 64-bit chip. upgrading might be a good deal for me if my Mac Mini motherboard had the Nvidia chip set instead of the slow, unimproved Intel chip set. But, from what I've read, my upgrading the processing chip I might have to pay even more than for a new computer.
One thing is for sure, I'll never go back to using a Windows box unless they made some real changes about security. I don't care whose fault Microsoft's security problem is or for what reason. I'd rather pay the higher initial price of one of the less expensive Macs because I know it's gonna be cheaper to own and to use in the long run than anything Microsoft has out on the market.
The 2 gigabyte DRAM upgrade makes my Mac Mini run as smooth as butter. I'm still tempted to buy an SSD to replace the spinning hard drive I use now, but the new memory has made a significant difference in a good way to my computing needs. Besides, I still haven't run across exact information about which SSD Apple offers with it's expensive models, and I gotta know that for my own satisfaction.
I just wrote something that came out exactly like I wanted. There is this guy who makes a habit of attacking everything the group moderator says and appears to do it to make her look less than his equal. Discussing it openly doesn't phase him. He reminded me of people I've known who got off on pain. They're constantly trying to piss people off so they'll hurt them. I've called it a form of rape. She has repetitively and explosively denied interest in being his bitch.
She commented earlier today about whether I think he realizes how obtuse and redundant he is about his obnoxious behavior and I found myself writing this:
"The paradox of it is that he seems to want to weaken you in order
to protect you from people like him."
Writing this was doubly meaningful for me. The statement appears to indicate a deeper understanding of the concept of "paradox", and I wrote it to this woman who first made me realize I didn't understand the term paradox deeply enough to carelessly use it. Hah! I guess I showed her! '-)
Monday, June 8, 2009
Multitasking And Art
"It's impossible for me to read this post, and these picayune
judgments of the supposed sins of mysterious others without alarm,
when all you seem able to do in this lengthy post is to project your
own stinted childhood beliefs of what your own jaded fate might be...
if you acted out the thoughts and acts you accuse THEM of performing.
I'd like to know why you are placing the innocent others you accuse
of bearing your own judgment of yourself (thereby creating them
in your own image via insensitive, crude, born-in-a-barn implications)
between you and your blown-dry, patronizing blasphemy of the spirit, as if
to use their purported, worst-case sins as your defense AGAINST your own
experience of God... because your own sins by comparison... are lesser?
This gruesome chiding of the spirit forces me to disavow you (well, at
least for an hour or two) in case whatever it is you got is contagious
over the internet."
_
I wrote this response to one holy man in the Thomas group, but then, used it exactly so in response to the very next post it seemed so appropriate and tersely to the point. Too bad I'm not immoral or unethical enow to publish their posts so you, dear reader, could see how your own professions stood up to it.
I don't actually care much what I write, but sometime pride takes over when I think I've gotten it just right. That I've written exactly what my muses told me to in order to make them happy they selected me to punish the world through via "neti-neti" (denial-not this/not that). LOL
I've just finished reading this article which is really about the memsistor:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/shuttle_nanotube_memory/
The real story of the memsistor is here or one of the links found at this Hewlett Packard Lab web site:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2008/apr-jun/memristor.html
Honestly, I'm amazed to consider that I feel like I understand this discovery a little deeper than your ordinary bear because of sheer, random coincidence. This really is the the most astounding discovery in my life, as far as my interests are concerned, since the transistor back literally when I was a boy. I studied vacuum tube electronics after I joined the Navy at eighteen.
It startles me a little to realize how learning to weld pressure vessels using the TIG process allowed me to understand how they created this stuff in a chamber backfilled with argon. Argon is used in the TIG welding process to keep oxygen away from the molten metal of the weld. It's apparently used the same way here.
I can visualize nanoscopic levels of matter since I received my remembering vision, since it revealed to me how I evolved from a teeny tiny bejinning. In the vision I serendipitously found suddenly intriguing (but not on my way to the forum), the basic element which resembles an oyster pearl in my imagination might find a nano sized object to appear like boulders or at least huge building blocks from which it was to populate the Earth.
This seems like an appropriate spot to insert my disclaimer that I don't know or particularly care what "the truth" is. I don't write to discover the truth as much as I write to see what flows out of my arthritic fingers before they rebel against being forced marched this way. I try to capture drifting thoughts with words. I can't do that and verify the truth or falsity of what pops up alluringly in my mind's eye. I mingle joyously with the lower classes.
judgments of the supposed sins of mysterious others without alarm,
when all you seem able to do in this lengthy post is to project your
own stinted childhood beliefs of what your own jaded fate might be...
if you acted out the thoughts and acts you accuse THEM of performing.
I'd like to know why you are placing the innocent others you accuse
of bearing your own judgment of yourself (thereby creating them
in your own image via insensitive, crude, born-in-a-barn implications)
between you and your blown-dry, patronizing blasphemy of the spirit, as if
to use their purported, worst-case sins as your defense AGAINST your own
experience of God... because your own sins by comparison... are lesser?
This gruesome chiding of the spirit forces me to disavow you (well, at
least for an hour or two) in case whatever it is you got is contagious
over the internet."
_
I wrote this response to one holy man in the Thomas group, but then, used it exactly so in response to the very next post it seemed so appropriate and tersely to the point. Too bad I'm not immoral or unethical enow to publish their posts so you, dear reader, could see how your own professions stood up to it.
I don't actually care much what I write, but sometime pride takes over when I think I've gotten it just right. That I've written exactly what my muses told me to in order to make them happy they selected me to punish the world through via "neti-neti" (denial-not this/not that). LOL
I've just finished reading this article which is really about the memsistor:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/shuttle_nanotube_memory/
The real story of the memsistor is here or one of the links found at this Hewlett Packard Lab web site:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2008/apr-jun/memristor.html
Honestly, I'm amazed to consider that I feel like I understand this discovery a little deeper than your ordinary bear because of sheer, random coincidence. This really is the the most astounding discovery in my life, as far as my interests are concerned, since the transistor back literally when I was a boy. I studied vacuum tube electronics after I joined the Navy at eighteen.
It startles me a little to realize how learning to weld pressure vessels using the TIG process allowed me to understand how they created this stuff in a chamber backfilled with argon. Argon is used in the TIG welding process to keep oxygen away from the molten metal of the weld. It's apparently used the same way here.
I can visualize nanoscopic levels of matter since I received my remembering vision, since it revealed to me how I evolved from a teeny tiny bejinning. In the vision I serendipitously found suddenly intriguing (but not on my way to the forum), the basic element which resembles an oyster pearl in my imagination might find a nano sized object to appear like boulders or at least huge building blocks from which it was to populate the Earth.
This seems like an appropriate spot to insert my disclaimer that I don't know or particularly care what "the truth" is. I don't write to discover the truth as much as I write to see what flows out of my arthritic fingers before they rebel against being forced marched this way. I try to capture drifting thoughts with words. I can't do that and verify the truth or falsity of what pops up alluringly in my mind's eye. I mingle joyously with the lower classes.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Hypnogogic Vs Hypnagogic Visions
I don't think what I "see" as a dreamscape with familiar beta brainwave characteristics is there for me all the ti-me. It sags into a Jackson Pollack painting until inspired by hook or by crook into "jumping out at me" as a comprehensible, well-shaped form that I can react to as reliably cogent. I don't feel forced to make it real with volition and curiosity (i.e., belief) if I'm not in the mood or for any number of other reasons that don't have to make sense except in a sensory dimension.
I'm referring to the hypnogogic stuff that dreams are made of, and I'm calling it hypnagogic material for lack of more revealing or appropriate descriptors. There may have been a nayme for it on the tip of my tongue once, but the cat got it. That damned felix. "Whenever he gets into a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks..."
The characteristics I keep associating this hypnagogic stuff with acts quick like mercury, but just as quickly, this stuff gels into what seems like a solid when an abstractly constructed force like self-generated insight deactivates it via undirected conscious awareness that's scattered about by the solar wind like neutrinos newly released into the wild. Like the MM experiment where mere consciousness of the goal of the experiment alters the results. Movement and rest. Mulberry bushes. All fall down.
Sometime when I think I see something out of the corner of my eye in my
peripheral vision, and when I turn to look at it directly, it becomes an immovable object instantly. Like in the time it takes to shift from peripheral focusing to foveal focusing in the center of my power of comprehension. That's probably quicker than stopping on a dime or a New York Minute. '-)
All of this and that, and despite my distinct impression that this docetic force truly doesn't know of or emotionally invest in the notion that I am is has created a persona for the soul purpose of intently, pedantically, and persnicketibly observing it's unhidden, yet unperceiveable mechanizations, in order to mimick it's bold and unchallengeable non-decisions.
I finally made a decision about what I'm gonna do about upgrading the RAM in my present computer up to deal with the bottlenecks that have gotten more pronounced lately. I upgraded from 512 Megs to 2 Gigs. Fortunately my youngest brother next door helped to make it happen. I unsocketed the cables that make things go on the Mac Mini, took it over to his house where we could consult with the online tutorial at the web site I bought the memory chips from using his computer,
Neither one of us had cracked open a Mac Mini before. By following the instructions on the web site we got the job done in about an hour. We had a problem with one bent pin that was fairly simple to fix after we recognized what had happened, and when I brought it back home and hooked it back up to the peripherals, it worked like a charm. I won't hesitate to crack it open again.
The SSD I was gonna install got delayed for a few months. I wanna see what the improvement might be with the additional RAM. It's plenty good. It's faster, snappier all around, and smoother segueing from one task to the next. I may put off buying an SSD a little while longer. What will it hurt? The prices have to go down eventually, and the size has to go up just because of the competition from the major players coming on the scene.
I have two goals I wanna realize as far as getting another computer is concerned, and these goals are not necessarily intended toward future-proofing. Apple is coming out with it's own 64-bit Operating System. For all practical purposes this move will allow for unlimited amounts of RAM to be accessed. My Mac Mini doesn't have a 64-bit CPU. I could upgrade to one, but there is another problem. The Intel motherboard graphics system is slow. That's why Apple changed over to Nvidia chipsets and motherboard graphics. Because the onboard graphics can's be swapped out I'd have to buy a newer Mac Mini to get the Nvidia graphic system. I'm not sure of the timing, but the new system called Snow Leopard is supposed to be in it's final phases.
My other goal for a new computer is directly associated with SSDs (solid state storage drives with no moving parts). They're fast and swiftly getting damned faster. Not as fast as DRAM, but they're already faster than the SATA2 bus system can handle. Recently, the SATA authorization group put out the final standards for SATA3 that increased the bus speed from 3 gigs per second to 6 gigs per second, thereby doubling the bus speed, and it's still not fast enough for the newest SSDs. What used to be one of the slowest bottlenecks on home computers is faster than it's detractors.
The better solution to this rapid and somewhat improbable situation is the newest version of USB that will arrive supposedly in a year or maybe less. There is a lotta excitement over this development. It will be 10 X faster than USB2 that presently maxes out at 480 megs per second. The USB3 transfer rate will be well over a gig per second. What this means to SSDs is that they can be mounted in a small external box like any other peripheral and will furnish data to the onboard memory controllers faster than a speeding bullet.
USB3 will have to be built into the chipset of the motherboard or it won't perform in an ideal manner. The pundits say that's gonna take some amount of time to happen. There are rumors about just how long, but nobody seems certain. SATA3 and USB3 are prototyped and on their way to the sweatshops. It'll happen when the investor groups get greedy enough to act out of the fear that their competition will get the upper hand if they hesitate, and thus lose the entrepreneurial high ground.
When it does happen, USB3 will be the quickest bus possible for optimally using SSDs, and it'll probably be the most ubiquitous solution for personal computers which in a relatively short time will be getting incredibly fast and maybe even cheaper than the current crop. Buying a SATA rigged SSD now would really improve the boot times for both my Mac Mini, and the applications used on it, but in the future, the near future as I understand it, the SSDs will be built with and use inexpensive USB3 connectors, and I'd be mad at myself if I got impatient and didn't wait it out until they do. Maybe the new RAM upgrade I installed today will stymy potential impulse buying a little longer.
I'm referring to the hypnogogic stuff that dreams are made of, and I'm calling it hypnagogic material for lack of more revealing or appropriate descriptors. There may have been a nayme for it on the tip of my tongue once, but the cat got it. That damned felix. "Whenever he gets into a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks..."
The characteristics I keep associating this hypnagogic stuff with acts quick like mercury, but just as quickly, this stuff gels into what seems like a solid when an abstractly constructed force like self-generated insight deactivates it via undirected conscious awareness that's scattered about by the solar wind like neutrinos newly released into the wild. Like the MM experiment where mere consciousness of the goal of the experiment alters the results. Movement and rest. Mulberry bushes. All fall down.
Sometime when I think I see something out of the corner of my eye in my
peripheral vision, and when I turn to look at it directly, it becomes an immovable object instantly. Like in the time it takes to shift from peripheral focusing to foveal focusing in the center of my power of comprehension. That's probably quicker than stopping on a dime or a New York Minute. '-)
All of this and that, and despite my distinct impression that this docetic force truly doesn't know of or emotionally invest in the notion that I am is has created a persona for the soul purpose of intently, pedantically, and persnicketibly observing it's unhidden, yet unperceiveable mechanizations, in order to mimick it's bold and unchallengeable non-decisions.
I finally made a decision about what I'm gonna do about upgrading the RAM in my present computer up to deal with the bottlenecks that have gotten more pronounced lately. I upgraded from 512 Megs to 2 Gigs. Fortunately my youngest brother next door helped to make it happen. I unsocketed the cables that make things go on the Mac Mini, took it over to his house where we could consult with the online tutorial at the web site I bought the memory chips from using his computer,
Neither one of us had cracked open a Mac Mini before. By following the instructions on the web site we got the job done in about an hour. We had a problem with one bent pin that was fairly simple to fix after we recognized what had happened, and when I brought it back home and hooked it back up to the peripherals, it worked like a charm. I won't hesitate to crack it open again.
The SSD I was gonna install got delayed for a few months. I wanna see what the improvement might be with the additional RAM. It's plenty good. It's faster, snappier all around, and smoother segueing from one task to the next. I may put off buying an SSD a little while longer. What will it hurt? The prices have to go down eventually, and the size has to go up just because of the competition from the major players coming on the scene.
I have two goals I wanna realize as far as getting another computer is concerned, and these goals are not necessarily intended toward future-proofing. Apple is coming out with it's own 64-bit Operating System. For all practical purposes this move will allow for unlimited amounts of RAM to be accessed. My Mac Mini doesn't have a 64-bit CPU. I could upgrade to one, but there is another problem. The Intel motherboard graphics system is slow. That's why Apple changed over to Nvidia chipsets and motherboard graphics. Because the onboard graphics can's be swapped out I'd have to buy a newer Mac Mini to get the Nvidia graphic system. I'm not sure of the timing, but the new system called Snow Leopard is supposed to be in it's final phases.
My other goal for a new computer is directly associated with SSDs (solid state storage drives with no moving parts). They're fast and swiftly getting damned faster. Not as fast as DRAM, but they're already faster than the SATA2 bus system can handle. Recently, the SATA authorization group put out the final standards for SATA3 that increased the bus speed from 3 gigs per second to 6 gigs per second, thereby doubling the bus speed, and it's still not fast enough for the newest SSDs. What used to be one of the slowest bottlenecks on home computers is faster than it's detractors.
The better solution to this rapid and somewhat improbable situation is the newest version of USB that will arrive supposedly in a year or maybe less. There is a lotta excitement over this development. It will be 10 X faster than USB2 that presently maxes out at 480 megs per second. The USB3 transfer rate will be well over a gig per second. What this means to SSDs is that they can be mounted in a small external box like any other peripheral and will furnish data to the onboard memory controllers faster than a speeding bullet.
USB3 will have to be built into the chipset of the motherboard or it won't perform in an ideal manner. The pundits say that's gonna take some amount of time to happen. There are rumors about just how long, but nobody seems certain. SATA3 and USB3 are prototyped and on their way to the sweatshops. It'll happen when the investor groups get greedy enough to act out of the fear that their competition will get the upper hand if they hesitate, and thus lose the entrepreneurial high ground.
When it does happen, USB3 will be the quickest bus possible for optimally using SSDs, and it'll probably be the most ubiquitous solution for personal computers which in a relatively short time will be getting incredibly fast and maybe even cheaper than the current crop. Buying a SATA rigged SSD now would really improve the boot times for both my Mac Mini, and the applications used on it, but in the future, the near future as I understand it, the SSDs will be built with and use inexpensive USB3 connectors, and I'd be mad at myself if I got impatient and didn't wait it out until they do. Maybe the new RAM upgrade I installed today will stymy potential impulse buying a little longer.
Friday, June 5, 2009
The Golden Rule Is A Two-Way Street
Hi Felix,
I thought the golden rule was "Them what has the gold makes the rules."
_
The wisdom books appear to suggest it might be prudent to let them think so.
As a rule, I like to think I can back up faster than The Golden Horde can come forward. I've always liked to dance. The most troublesome problems I've encountered in this regard has to do with those dense, obtuse moments when I have taken it for granted that the male gender is supposed to lead due to his natural superiority over the "gentle sex". It has been an extremely humiliating experience to find out it ain't necessarily so.
I didn't really know what a religious fundamentalist church meant as opposed to the religious tenets I was forced to attend to as a child, much less what fundamentalist forbade. Not until I married my first wife in a church of this sort. I had only known this woman for five weeks, and didn't have a clue about the tenets of the church where she and her immediate forbearers had been life-long members. Among other sins I didn't know I was committing was the one where they didn't cotton to no dancing... no how.
This charmingly beautiful creature knew when I tricked her into marrying me that neither of us could hold no truck with no sort of fundamentalism and keep our marriage together. Her religious upbringing was what she rebelled against during puberty. Why would she not? That's what pubescent kids do in some form or fashion in a strong youthful attempt to establish their own identity apart from home and hearth.
A decade or so after she divorced me I began to speculate about whether her marrying a deliberately adventuresome nomad like me was an attempt on her part to get shed of those early fundamentalist drummers she marched to, but when a dogma like that (or any dogma, I suppose) is installed as one's psychological framework from first breath, it is stronger than a mere whim on my part to dismiss it as merely problematic. I think I figured that if I had to sacrifice my career as a homeless bum, it was gonna have to be with some woman it was okay to dance with.
To me, the Golden Rule is about how I seem to go around tediously showing people how to treat me by demonstrating what I respond to most favorably in the be-jinning. In that way I'm being respectful to the first part, literally, by doing unto others what I would have them do unto me. Frankly, I've been disappointed with the feedback contained in their tepid responses.
It appears to be a two-way street by my word. By showing other people how to do unto me, it appears to obligate me to be on the lookout for what they're attempting to show me about how to treat them. Honestly, I'd prefer to live in almost total ignorance. With the advent of old age I may not have a choice much longer. "Free at last! Free at last. Great God Almighty, I'll be free at last." Yeah. Right.
Once I grokked that, it seemed selfish to bother showing other people how to treat me when there was suddenly so much to do about them being theyself, and not knowing what being theyself is all about. It's like I'm a traffic cop with all the right moves of an artful dodger. Okay, maybe "selfish" is not the best descriptor for the dynamic I got in mind. I hate to admit it, but I'm a bit of a control freak (Oh, shut up! I heard that collective groan of "No shit, Sherlock!").
When people I open up to show me time and time again how they want me to treat them by how the way they treat me, that information presents a problem for me. The problem? I gotta interpret what I think their original intent is by referencing my own experiential database, in order to ascertain what-I-think-I-would-intend by imitating the self-same behavior in my person.
Candidly, at the end game, I usually wimp out and settle for so-me random idea of their intent, and for my reasons instead of their reasons. The content of this very unreliable channel of information is horrible for making friends and influencing people. They get all sullied out, and angry that I don't appear to be listening to how they counting the ways they want me to love them, and maybe, by God, I wasn't listening. It seems like for some people, no matter what, I don't have the ears to hear them. What a drag, man. I gotta do mo' bettah.
I thought the golden rule was "Them what has the gold makes the rules."
_
The wisdom books appear to suggest it might be prudent to let them think so.
As a rule, I like to think I can back up faster than The Golden Horde can come forward. I've always liked to dance. The most troublesome problems I've encountered in this regard has to do with those dense, obtuse moments when I have taken it for granted that the male gender is supposed to lead due to his natural superiority over the "gentle sex". It has been an extremely humiliating experience to find out it ain't necessarily so.
I didn't really know what a religious fundamentalist church meant as opposed to the religious tenets I was forced to attend to as a child, much less what fundamentalist forbade. Not until I married my first wife in a church of this sort. I had only known this woman for five weeks, and didn't have a clue about the tenets of the church where she and her immediate forbearers had been life-long members. Among other sins I didn't know I was committing was the one where they didn't cotton to no dancing... no how.
This charmingly beautiful creature knew when I tricked her into marrying me that neither of us could hold no truck with no sort of fundamentalism and keep our marriage together. Her religious upbringing was what she rebelled against during puberty. Why would she not? That's what pubescent kids do in some form or fashion in a strong youthful attempt to establish their own identity apart from home and hearth.
A decade or so after she divorced me I began to speculate about whether her marrying a deliberately adventuresome nomad like me was an attempt on her part to get shed of those early fundamentalist drummers she marched to, but when a dogma like that (or any dogma, I suppose) is installed as one's psychological framework from first breath, it is stronger than a mere whim on my part to dismiss it as merely problematic. I think I figured that if I had to sacrifice my career as a homeless bum, it was gonna have to be with some woman it was okay to dance with.
To me, the Golden Rule is about how I seem to go around tediously showing people how to treat me by demonstrating what I respond to most favorably in the be-jinning. In that way I'm being respectful to the first part, literally, by doing unto others what I would have them do unto me. Frankly, I've been disappointed with the feedback contained in their tepid responses.
It appears to be a two-way street by my word. By showing other people how to do unto me, it appears to obligate me to be on the lookout for what they're attempting to show me about how to treat them. Honestly, I'd prefer to live in almost total ignorance. With the advent of old age I may not have a choice much longer. "Free at last! Free at last. Great God Almighty, I'll be free at last." Yeah. Right.
Once I grokked that, it seemed selfish to bother showing other people how to treat me when there was suddenly so much to do about them being theyself, and not knowing what being theyself is all about. It's like I'm a traffic cop with all the right moves of an artful dodger. Okay, maybe "selfish" is not the best descriptor for the dynamic I got in mind. I hate to admit it, but I'm a bit of a control freak (Oh, shut up! I heard that collective groan of "No shit, Sherlock!").
When people I open up to show me time and time again how they want me to treat them by how the way they treat me, that information presents a problem for me. The problem? I gotta interpret what I think their original intent is by referencing my own experiential database, in order to ascertain what-I-think-I-would-intend by imitating the self-same behavior in my person.
Candidly, at the end game, I usually wimp out and settle for so-me random idea of their intent, and for my reasons instead of their reasons. The content of this very unreliable channel of information is horrible for making friends and influencing people. They get all sullied out, and angry that I don't appear to be listening to how they counting the ways they want me to love them, and maybe, by God, I wasn't listening. It seems like for some people, no matter what, I don't have the ears to hear them. What a drag, man. I gotta do mo' bettah.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Spending Another Day At The VA Hospital
I started writing this by replying to an e-mail about A Course In Miracles in the Gospel of Thomas e-mail discussion group after I got home from keeping appointments at the VA Hospital. I stopped by Rainey's house on my way home. By the time I got here it was almost darktime:
http://www.acim.org/
Here's a link to the article in Wikipedia. Sometimes Wikipedia offers a general, overall view of a topic that gives me the short version that's more useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Course_in_Miracles
I've never studied the ACIM. It doesn't make sense to me to replace one Christian dogma with another. That's for people who have not experienced gnosis, or don't remember having experienced it. A person needs something to say when it's their turn to talk, and the ACIM is as good, and probably better than most views of Christianity if you're disenchanted with the Christian culture you were raised in.
Experiencing gnosis is critical, but experiencing it was/is just the beginning. The "beginning" or bejinning for me was the unexpected occurrence of a vision I couldn't have prayed for. I couldn't have imagined what did happen could have happened. That's why I couldn't have preyed for it either. So, what am I saying?
I am saying that I consciously experienced a vision so profound it took me thirty years to figure out how that vision could have turned out to be what is historically been called gnosis. When that vision happened to me, I was afraid to tell anybody about it, but I somehow knew that if I didn't testify about what happened, then I would forget it happened. I did not want that to happen, and so I told a few people about it. I was right. Nobody believed me. They thought I was crazy and didn't hesitate to tell me as much, unfortunately, in a very public way sometime.
It was fortunate in the long run. I had the vision when I was 30 years old just after my first Saturn Return. By that time I had already been called crazy so many times I agreed to volunteer to commit myself to the State Hospital a year or so before I saw the vision. Calling me crazy after that was useless as a tool for refuting my sanity.
I worked at being able to explain what happened for a long, long time. I began to study the occult. First by following this guy I met in Boulder to learn the Tarot spreads, then astrology and palmistry. I needed something to say when it was my turn to talk that would help me understand this vision, but I didn't even know that it was the vision that I needed to understand. I thought it was more important to understand jumping off cliffs and leaving my body standing beside the road hitch-hiking while I explored outer space.
Eventually I ran across Pagels' book about the gnostics. Reading her book was what started me thinking about how that vision of singularity was what she was writing about. That was previous to the existence of personal computers and later the internet and this discussion group. I subbed to the group when I connected reading Pagels' book to the Gospel of Thomas.
When I read about a discussion list about the Gospel of Thomas, it was the scholars group that I read about, but by the end of the paragraph that was a mention of the non-scholar's group. I clicked on the link that got me here and never felt the slightest interest in the scholar's group, and still don't.
One thing led to another, and I begin to take Klaus' argument for doceticism serious. I began researching doceticism and realized doceticism has it's roots in the same experiences as Kundalini. You see, experiencing Kundalini was what caused me to check myself into the insane asylum, not gnosis. My vision that brought gnosis to me happened five years after I experienced Kundalini, and I"m fairly convinced they're connected and part and parcel of the same experience.
http://www.acim.org/
Here's a link to the article in Wikipedia. Sometimes Wikipedia offers a general, overall view of a topic that gives me the short version that's more useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Course_in_Miracles
I've never studied the ACIM. It doesn't make sense to me to replace one Christian dogma with another. That's for people who have not experienced gnosis, or don't remember having experienced it. A person needs something to say when it's their turn to talk, and the ACIM is as good, and probably better than most views of Christianity if you're disenchanted with the Christian culture you were raised in.
Experiencing gnosis is critical, but experiencing it was/is just the beginning. The "beginning" or bejinning for me was the unexpected occurrence of a vision I couldn't have prayed for. I couldn't have imagined what did happen could have happened. That's why I couldn't have preyed for it either. So, what am I saying?
I am saying that I consciously experienced a vision so profound it took me thirty years to figure out how that vision could have turned out to be what is historically been called gnosis. When that vision happened to me, I was afraid to tell anybody about it, but I somehow knew that if I didn't testify about what happened, then I would forget it happened. I did not want that to happen, and so I told a few people about it. I was right. Nobody believed me. They thought I was crazy and didn't hesitate to tell me as much, unfortunately, in a very public way sometime.
It was fortunate in the long run. I had the vision when I was 30 years old just after my first Saturn Return. By that time I had already been called crazy so many times I agreed to volunteer to commit myself to the State Hospital a year or so before I saw the vision. Calling me crazy after that was useless as a tool for refuting my sanity.
I worked at being able to explain what happened for a long, long time. I began to study the occult. First by following this guy I met in Boulder to learn the Tarot spreads, then astrology and palmistry. I needed something to say when it was my turn to talk that would help me understand this vision, but I didn't even know that it was the vision that I needed to understand. I thought it was more important to understand jumping off cliffs and leaving my body standing beside the road hitch-hiking while I explored outer space.
Eventually I ran across Pagels' book about the gnostics. Reading her book was what started me thinking about how that vision of singularity was what she was writing about. That was previous to the existence of personal computers and later the internet and this discussion group. I subbed to the group when I connected reading Pagels' book to the Gospel of Thomas.
When I read about a discussion list about the Gospel of Thomas, it was the scholars group that I read about, but by the end of the paragraph that was a mention of the non-scholar's group. I clicked on the link that got me here and never felt the slightest interest in the scholar's group, and still don't.
One thing led to another, and I begin to take Klaus' argument for doceticism serious. I began researching doceticism and realized doceticism has it's roots in the same experiences as Kundalini. You see, experiencing Kundalini was what caused me to check myself into the insane asylum, not gnosis. My vision that brought gnosis to me happened five years after I experienced Kundalini, and I"m fairly convinced they're connected and part and parcel of the same experience.
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