Sustainability

Create Ramdisk, Ubuntu Kubuntu Ramdrive, Change default Ramdisk size

2010-12-13T08:12:00.001-08:00

The following script will create a usable ram disk in /home/yourhome/autotemp/ directory.

It is a very basic script and could be improved by taking parameters for the directory (/home/$USER/autotemp) and for the ram disk number (/dev/ram0). It has drive zero (0) hard coded but could use any of the default Linux ram devices /dev/ram0 - /dev/ram15 (16 disks at once with available RAM). See instructions in the script for changing the default ram drive size from 64MB to something else.

Thanks to Vane and Khattam for their prior work.

Save content between dashes (----) to a temp directory as start_ramdisk_0

to copy to system try

sudo cp start_ramdisk_0 /usr/local/.

to make runable try

chmod +x /usr/local/start_ramdisk_0

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#!/bin/bash

# Ramdisk maker

# warren jones

# www.wjones.com

# 13 December 2010

# based upon scripts from

# http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/Ramdisk/ramdisk.html

# http://www.khattam.info

# RAMDISK instructions for UBUNTU, KUBUNTU

# save this file to /usr/local/bin run as root

# Default drive size for ubuntu/kubuntu is 64MB

# To increase the RAMDISK size

# edit /etc/default/grub and append ramdisk_size=SIZE_IN_BYTES to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT within quotes

# run gksu gedit /etc/default/grub

# For 256Mb RAM Disk, run

# GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash ramdisk_size=256000"

# After saving update grub

# sudo update-grub

# restart computer for drive size changes to take effect

# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify

# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by

# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or

# (at your option) any later version.

# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the

# GNU General Public License for more details.

USER_NAME=$USER

TMP_PROFILE_DIR=/home/$USER/autotemp/disk0

RAM_DEVICE=/dev/ram0

umount $RAM_DEVICE

mkdir -p $TMP_PROFILE_DIR

umount $TMP_PROFILE_DIR

mke2fs -m 0 $RAM_DEVICE

mount -t ext2 $RAM_DEVICE $TMP_PROFILE_DIR

chown $USERNAME:root $TMP_PROFILE_DIR

chmod 0770 $TMP_PROFILE_DIR

Question: Best tool to record desktop video on Kubuntu/Ubuntu/KDE/Linux?

2010-12-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

I looked at two Options for recording a video stream of desktop actions:

gtk recordmydesktop

xvidcap http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net/

Tried both, only xvidcap worked as needed. Seems to handle full HD capture with minimal performance impact.

video capture feature will be integrated in the new Auto Mini desktops

Convert OmniOutliner Outlines to Linux and a good Linux Outlining Tool

2010-12-09T08:34:00.001-08:00

Question: How to convert OmniOutliner Outlines to Linux, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, KDE?

These are rough instructions but they work:

1. Convert the OmniOutliner file to .opml (File Export in Omnioutliner). Note you will lose all font/column formatting in this basic conversion.

2. On linux download two files:

Treepad Lite

http://www.treepad.com/linux/treepadlite/

OPML to Treepad Converter

http://www.treepad.com/download/opml2tp.zip

3. Expand all, create a new folder, i.e. TreePadLite and copy all to the new folder.

4. Place your test .opml file in the folder

5. Run

perl opml2tp.pl myfilename.opml > myfilename.hjt

6. You can now run the Treepad program and open the .hjt file

7. To wrap up the install, you should move the data (.hjt) file to where you keep your documents in your /home directory. Also you can place the app folder in a safe place ... if you are in the TreePadLite folder, type

sudo mv ../TreePadLite /opt/TreePadLite

The conversion feature will be integrated in the new Auto Mini desktops in 2011.

Warren Jones | Managing Research Director | wJones
————————————————————————
warren@wjones.com | 415-412-4131 | www.wjones.com

Podcast / Publications / Linkedin / Facebook

How to Split and Merge PDF Files on Kubuntu, KDE, Gnome, Linux

2010-12-09T07:53:00.001-08:00

Question: How to combine PDF Files on KDE Gnome Kubuntu

Found utility to do the job ... pdfsam ... simple user interface, but works great. Installed it in kubuntu with no issue

http://www.pdfsam.org/

Warren Jones | Managing Research Director | wJones
————————————————————————
warren@wjones.com | 415-412-4131 | www.wjones.com

Podcast / Publications / Linkedin / Facebook

Beyond Stored-Program Technology

2010-04-12T06:21:00.001-07:00

Stored-purpose computers will be a step beyond stored-program. But what does beyond stored-program mean? Does it mean that the new generation of computers won't leverage or include the key technologies of stored-program architecture (i.e. processor, IO handling, memory, OS Kernel, Program Loading)? The answer is no. While in the future, there may be an opportunity to redesign electronics to more directly support the processing needs of the General intelligence algorithm, but that won't occur for another decade. But even then, there will still be many applications for simple stored programs.

An analogy:

An automobile is clearly beyond walking, yet it leverages basic concepts of walking that include: 1) path/road, 2) object in motion propelled by friction when in contact with path/road

An airplane is clearly beyond an automobile, yet it leverages core concepts of the automobile that include: 1) path/road, 2) wheels, 3) engine

An automobile is not just improved walking if it uses a road and friction. Similarly, an airplane is not just an improved car if it uses wheels and an engine. In both cases the technology was able to make entirely new routes for pursuing the goal of travel.

The goal was to design a better computer, one that could anticipate needs and serve people better. So we developed a way to program understanding … of purpose and goals. Then to help a computer better anticipate what goals would lead a person to do, we developed logic for goal pursuit, goal route traversal and the ability to plan ahead. Then to make that logic more general, so that a computer could support a person or company, we extended it to understand context and developed protocols for handling changes.

Finally, so that the computer could actually help, when it knew help was needed, we taught it how to turn on the lights.

Examples

9:30 am ... ten people enter a conference room … the agenda and documents related to the meeting are on the System … Can a computer know to copy the presentation to the HD display in advance? Can it know to dim and restore the room lights, turn on and off the projector at the start and end of presentation?

11:00 am … two people enter a hospital medical imaging suite … Need a computer be asked to identify a doctor and patient ... check the doctor's file and identify the scheduled procedure … check the patient's file and retrieve the parameters … display sensible options on the image system menu … display the scan results on the suite's HD display immediately after the procedure … store the results of the scan to the patient's record?

Man's Intelligence, Unique?

2010-04-11T17:03:00.001-07:00

Man was considered intelligent because he alone used tools to build complex systems, like dams, yet a beaver was considered not intelligent, even though it was from him that man learned to build a dam. Man was considered intelligent because he could build an apparatus for breathing underwater, yet a salamander's ability to have offspring that breath above or under water ... was not.

To make such determinations seem less arbitrary, man's use of mechanical tools and his ability to create machine technology was defined as a key differentiator between him and other "non-intelligent" entities. This was so even when animals were found able to achieve similar goals with more efficiency using non-mechanical technologies. Even as man would sometimes seem the least intelligent creature in nature, standing alone in a forest vacated by animals minutes before it was ravaged by fire and smoke or swimming aimlessly in the Indian Ocean minutes before a Tsunami, wondering why all the fish have gone away, he has still held to a belief that dolphin sonar, bat radar, bird magneto-sensors, eel electro sensors, and fish hydro sensors are all "non-technologies" of "intelligence-free" "auto-responsive" "instinct-driven" animals while his ability to yield a knife proves his exclusive unique intelligence. Man has held steadfastly to this belief even as it became increasingly evident that bio and mechanical technologies may be created12 and that advances in biotechnology may ultimately as important than mechanical technology in the long term success of our species.

Subjective definitions continued even after the supposed ultimate proof of homo sapiens superiority, DNA complexity, was found non-existent. The decoding of human and other animal genomes showed not that human DNA possessed more information or was more complex than other life forms on earth, but that the salamander's DNA held an order of magnitude more information, and that human DNA barely exceeded the complexity of a rice grass.

Cuda Nvidia 3.0.1 Installation Notes on Macbook Air / Macbook Pro 11/28/2009

2009-11-28T09:33:00.001-08:00

Cuda Nvidia 3.0.1 Installation Notes on Macbook Air / Pro 11/28/2009

Agents require two processor technologies (CPU - right brain and GPU - left brain). We use nvidia's Cuda GPU Computing engine for left brain processing. The great thing about Cuda is that even though future production systems may require performance capabilities not yet available, with the availability of Cuda 3.0, the new code can be compiled and run on millions of nvidia equiped PC's today.

If working with Snow Leopard on a MacBook (I installed on Macbook Air Mac OS X 10.6.2 2GB RAM), install the 3.0 Beta
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=149959

Here are my environment variables:

To edit, type:
pico ~/.bash_profile

Paste the following at the end of your file

#Add Cuda to Path, Note $cudasdk is not needed ... just a shortcut for me
export SDK_INSTALL_PATH=/Developer/GPU_Computing
export cudasdk=$SDK_INSTALL_PATH
export CUDA_HOME=/usr/local/cuda
export PATH=$PATH:PATH=$CUDA_HOME/bin
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$CUDA_HOME/lib

If you are upgrading, clean out the old installation first:
sudo rm -r /usr/local/cuda/*

Before you install, to avoid issues, and the general hassle of typing paths with spaces, change the name of the install directory (when installing the SDK) from the default (/Developer/GPU Computing) to /Developer/GPU_Computing by choosing Customize. You may want to create the directory first:

mkdir /Developer/GPU_Computing

Follow the install instructions from both these documents (making sure to Customize the SDK install as above):

here
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/3_0-Beta1/sdk/docs/CUDA_SDK_Release_Notes.txt

and here
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/3_0-Beta1/docs/CUDA_Getting_Started_3.0-beta1_MacOS.pdf

Unlike 2.3 (where I ran into several install problems, 3.0 was relatively smooth)

Note that you don't need to copy libcutil.a (or the include file) to the /$cudasdk/C/lib directory as they say in the Getting Started Guide

One issue I found after completing the above and verifying the installation per the Getting Started Guide, was that I couldn't run the bandwidthTest Program without getting an out of memory error.

I found that if you are running with multiple displays, you may be maxing out your GPU memory (and thus unable to run programs),

To fix this, reduce your display resolution or set your displays to mirrored mode (click Apple Menu, System Preferences, Displays, Arrangement tab, click Mirror Displays). I have an external 23" monitor with a 1920x1200 default resolution. By setting this display to 1280x1024, I was still able to have dual displays (external and MacBookAir) and run test programs. Note, for best GPU bandwidth performance, Mirror the displays.

Hope this helps.

Warren

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Work

2009-11-18T11:16:00.001-08:00

It seems that after working on a system design for three years plus six months, that we can see what we've been designing. I guess that happens with vision. Sometimes you need look to the side to see what's in front of you. The goal was to build a better computer. But as the computer design became more efficient, more elegant and more complete, the design began to look less like a traditional computer and more like something in nature. Actually it looked like many things in nature. Searches for prior work to resolve logic problems started bringing up bumble bees, ant colonies, and the octopus.

It was as Alan Turing suggested in a lecture [Turing, 1947] long ago, computers can achieve intelligence. But unlike the human level machine intelligence Alan described in a follow-up [Turing, 1950] and pursued by a generation of Artificial Intelligence researchers [McCarthy, 1996], it seems computer intelligence may best be achieved from fundamental concepts and not by modeling humans.

So what's the funny thing that happened on the way to work? It seems that understanding people, and how we think (i.e. modeling humans) gets a whole lot simpler once you understand how intelligent computers think.

Warren

Reference

[Turing, 1947] Turing, A. M. (1947). Lec- ture to the london mathematical society. In The Collected Works of A. M. Tur- ing, volume Mechanical Intelligence. North- Holland. This was apparently the first pub- lic introduction of AI, typescript in the King's College archive, the book is 1992.

[Turing, 1950] Turing, A. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind.

[McCarthy, 1995] John McCarthy, (1995) FROM HERE TO HUMAN-LEVEL AI, "Many will find dismayingly large the list of tasks that must be accomplished in order to to reach human-level logical intelligence. Perhaps fewer but more powerful ideas would simplify the list. Others will claim that a system that evolves intelligence as life does will be more straightforward to build. Maybe, but the advocates of that approach have been at it as long as we have and still aren't even close." >

I know there are unresolved terms in this entry. Once icopen.org and automapp.com are public (really soon now), I'll create links.

A Tendency to Discard Names

2009-11-17T14:09:00.001-08:00

Working on the Intelligent Computer Open (icopen.org) Project this morning and I think I learned a reason why my mind likes to throw out names.

Was doing work designing memory retention (specifically the minimum memory requirement for serialized context-space vectors) and considered what happens when a Librarian Agent's archiver continues to optimize memory. I realized that the algorithm could retain lots real-time memory context with very low memory as long as there are no strings (i.e. names) attached. I then realized that my mind may similar to the algorithm being designed (I seem to be able to optimize and store and process lots of diverse context space). So it may be that a tendency to discard names may have a purpose. Less names, more concepts stored and processed, more capacity for complexity.

Anyone else out there have trouble remembering names. Do you think you too are able to learn and understand a broader set of concepts than the average person (who can remember names)?

Warren

ps,

I know there are some, unresolved terms in this entry. Once ICOpen.org and Automapp.com are public (really soon now), I'll create links.

Motivation

2007-07-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

Face it, we are the Snakehead Fish of our planet. Humans have learned to dominate our once natural predators and have thus expanded.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, human "success" lead to a new status, an "invasive species". We've established a presence in every geographic region on the planet's surface. Today 6.5 billion of us consume and lay waste wherever we spawn.

We weren't always invasive. The human animal existed in balance with earth's other life forms for hundreds of thousands of years. Then about ten thousand years ago things changed. Man made major advances in math and science. Predators as large as the lion and as small as the germ became less effective in slowing our growth. Cultures that had survived in balance with the earth for as long as a million years were classified as godless savages. Many of these "savages" were either converted or exterminated. Any way of life that achieved harmony with the earth was classified as backward.

Today we are self aware, and we are self determining. We are capable of great things but our most likely accomplishment will be our self destruction.

Fortunately, we are faced with limits to clean water and energy, otherwise we might quickly overrun and over consume the planet's life forms and resources.

But,

What if we were to suddenly learn how access the limitless supply of water just twelve miles deep?

What we learned to tap limitless supplies of energy via generators placed in great thermal energy layers twenty-five miles deep?

Would unfettered access to resources accelerate human advancement or destruction?

------------------------------------

I am motivated by a belief that we can learn as a species.

I think we can learn to live in a sustainable way.

I think we can progress toward something other than our own annihilation.

American Hygiene

2007-07-08T06:07:00.000-07:00

Our American culture is wondrous in its ability to change, so maybe we can affect a change to the positive. One change I would like to see is when we wash our hands.

We need to wash our hands before we eat, not just after...

Americans regularly don't wash hands before eating. Take a moment to consider what your hands touch each hour before dining. Then consider what else has come in contact with all that your hands have touched.

At any point in time, a typical hand will host 800,000 - 1,000,000 active bacteria. Not all of those little organisms will be bad, some are essential to your hand/fingernail ecosystem.

But the most recent arrivals to your hands (from shoe soles or door knobs touched by those who skipped a wash in the restroom or bird dropping residue on the car) should be sent packing before you touch any food or utensil. This goes double before eating the typical fast food that requires extensive use of your hands.

A wash (or two) with plain soap and warm water is all that's needed. There is no need for special germ killing or anti-bacterial soap as this has been shown to perform no better than a good wash with plain soap and may increase bacterial resistance.

It's a lesson I've taught my children. There are good sites on the web that can help you instruct your children.

It's a lesson that doesn't need teaching in cultures in Africa, Asia and much of Europe. Unfortunately, the American Way is spreading with American movies and television. The world is learning our way where a wash pot at the table or a trip to the washroom before dining 1) is not cool, 2) is strange, or 3) is old fashioned. I was on an international air carrier a few months ago and was mortified that the attendants handed out the warm towel for hand cleaning ... after the meal.

It is time to make a change. As we feel the need to change the law each time a bad burger or spinach crop is found, it is time to first change personal habits ... and then change our institutions to cut down on the hundreds of thousands of bacterial illnesses that don't make the news.

Wash-up before you eat. Just one warning ... take care to leave the restroom without making your hands dirtier than when you entered ... but that's the topic of another rant.

Links:

Hand Washing in Daycare (FoodSafetyGov)
Hand Washing in Hospitals (CDC) (Essay)
Hand Washing in Food Service (FightBak) PDF
Hand Washing in Healing Arts

article: American Hygiene by Warren Jones

Water Bottles

2007-07-08T05:09:00.000-07:00

My son, daughter and a cousin from New Jersey considered a growing problem ... water bottles.

"How did this happen?" they yapped at the kitchen table. Water. It's clean, it's natural, it's essential ... but bottled water? It's stupid. Think about it. Water is virtually everywhere. In the U.S. it is plentiful, clean and piped into most homes. Yet we use chemicals, including petroleum to manufacture millions of plastic bottles. Then we use more environmentally unfriendly chemicals to prepare the bottles. Then to protect the bottle's long shelf life, we heat, purify and "enhance" the water, using still more energy.
But that's just the beginning. We either chop down trees or make more plastic to put the bottles in cases. Then we then employ trucks, fueling and lubricating them with oil so they can expend the oil in the form of exhaust as they carry bottles from places like as Oregon to New York and from places like San Antonio to Denver.

But we are still not close to being done with this story. We then retail the bottles in grocery and convenience stores, sometimes storing them in refrigerators sustained by electrical plants fed by more oil. Finally, someone buys the water, ignoring the faucet in the kitchen and driving to the store.

......

But what set us on the topic was not bottles of water, but emptied bottles of water. A day before, we had celebrated my eldest daughter's high school graduation, an occasion for much food and drink. As we gathered in the kitchen, the children for the purpose of finding a snack and me for the purpose of separating out the last of the many bottles and cans that never made it to the "blue" bin, the lunacy of the bottle became a brief topic before passing us over.

My eldest son began searching the refrigerator for one of the new bottles of water that appeared for guests the day before. I noted that the "party" drinks were done, as I dumped the remaining empty bottles into the recycling bin. He then went to the small refrigerator where we keep the cold refills of "recovered" water bottles. We retrieve them sometimes after playing basketball the park. Early that morning I had applied extra warm suds to a few of the leftovers from the party, filling them with clean water from our faucet. He pulled bottles from the mini-refrigerator for his sister and cousin.

They all knew they were doing the real recycling while I, filling two large bins with discarded bottles, was simply engaging in therapy. Recycling is indeed therapeutic for me, it makes me feel good, separating the paper from the bottles, religiously placing the blue and green bins in front of the house for Tuesday pickup. But it is mostly therapy.

As the children watched me practice good container hygiene, they continued the conversation that is the basis for this blog entry.

What we do in the U.S. is not very good recycling. The entire process of haul, sort, clean, melt, ... is so expensive and uses so much energy, it's only true value is that it keeps some of the many millions of bottles out of land fills.

True recycling is what we do at home, and what families do in nearly every third world country.

The Jones' basic water bottle recycling rules:

Drink tap water (for you youngsters, that's water from the faucet). We keep a Brita pitcher in the refrigerator at all times.
If someone does somehow acquire a plastic water bottle - rinse it, refill it from the faucet, and place it in the refrigerator.
Repeat rule #2 three times.
Dispose of the waste bottle in a recycling bin.

A couple years ago, we didn't have limits on rule 3. We would use a bottle until it looked like it was "done", generally about five times. Then at some point, either my wife or one of the kids pointed out that plastic shouldn't be used so long. So, we set the limit to three uses. Doing the math, if everyone in the U.S. used water bottles three times before recycling, we would keep 40 million bottles from being disposed of each day and save 14.6 billion bottles each year. That's a lot of green.

For More Information
see Container-Recycling.org

Q4 2005 Reading List

2006-01-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

Q4 2005 Reading List: "The quarter started on a down note, I was mildly disappointed with Sherwin Nuland's Leonardo da Vinci.... I hoped Nuland's work would not only shed light on the man, but also shine the lantern on the secrets of his success. Instead, Nuland told a good basic story, but fell short (I think) in illuminating the man and his genius.... I was also surprised to learn that da Vinci could rival today's venture capitalists at securing funding for his projects. ...Ellis, His Excellency and quickly moved to two more historical treatments of the birth of America, David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing and another Ellis work, Founding Brothers.... Although he is hard to quote (a lesson that you don't have to say much to change the world), I found much in his life to follow. As the original military and political CEO, he's someone I thank my lucky red, white, and blue stripes for. I took a quick break from history, scarfing down a Robin Cook novel, Marker in one gulp. ...Since I was literally on a historical roll, I put the literary pedal to the metal and took on the American Iliad, Shelby Foote's three book series, The Civil War: A Narrative. A friend of mine who owns a local book store said his dad read the set over the period of a year and loved it. Since the Matrix is real, I set my iPod to ultra high speed play and digested"

The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

2006-01-01T12:04:00.000-08:00

The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language: "I just finished a very well told story of the English language; from its start as a Germanic dialect to its position today as the closest thing we have to a global 'common' language. The story runs about 12 hours in Audible format, is well narrated by Robert Powell and moves well despite the content. This book was a good side trip on trek through American History. I rate it 4 of 5 stars. I thought the storytelling through the Norman occupation of England was wonderful. The history of the original English dictionaries and the first English versions of the Bible were fascinating. I especially enjoyed learning about the difficulties faced in committing what the Roman Catholic church considered an act of heresy in telling the story of God in any language other than Latin. The only weak area I felt was in the author's discussion of the Internet's impact on modern English. I think Bragg missed an opportunity to tie in the ever rapid evolution of the language with the ability of peoples around the world to share that language instantly with Google. I think Bragg's conclusion that there will be 'many Englishes' is counter to the results seen from a common printed English (the web) that is globally accessible. The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language (Unabridged) Melvyn Bragg **** four of five stars."

What an Epic! The Civil War: A Narrative

2006-01-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

What an Epic! The Civil War: A Narrative: "Unbelievable!!! Nearly flawless in writing and narration, this is one of the most amazing works of history ever written and the most complete treatment of the United States Civil War ever penned. Every major battle and personality are brought to life. In more than 140 hours of reading (or listening) I learned the stories behind highway landmarks like Fort Sumter, Perryville, Gettysburg, and Manassis, Virginia. There are great stories in the book: how New Orleans and Kentucky were kept Union, the rapid evolution of Naval power, Lincoln and the scorched earth campaign of Stonewall Jackson. After the complete emerson in the Civil War lore for nearly two weeks, I found myself using war analogies when making points with business associates. Gaining the ability to contrast the near perfect George B. McClellan with the near perfectly flawed Ulysses S. Grant has been pure platinum. Grover Gardner brings the life to work with relentless narration that keeps the energy of the story. The story 'seems true' as told and is shared from the perspective of the people involved in it. This is the United States Iliad, and Shelby Foote's triumph. Foote died on June 27 of 2005. His work is a great treasure for the country. The Civil War: A Narrative (Unabridged) Volume I, Fort Sumter to Perryville Volume II, Fredericksburg to Meridian Volume III, Re"

Quotes of the Season

2006-01-01T03:55:00.000-08:00

Quotes of the Season: "It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone -- but it can take a lifetime to forget someone. - Unknown We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly. - Sam Keen, from To Love and Be Loved A girl asked a boy if she was pretty. He said no. She asked him if he wanted to be with her forever. He said no. She then asked him if he would cry if she walked away. He again said no. She had heard too much. She needed to leave. As she walked away, he grabbed her arm and told her to stay, he said, 'You're not pretty, you're beautiful. I don't want to be with you forever, I need to be with you forever. I wouldn't cry if you walked away, I would die.' - Unknown A friend is someone who will bail you out of jail, but your best friend is the one sitting next to you saying 'that was f***ing awesome' - J-Dub"

the upside of being down

2006-01-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

the upside of being down: "An interesting thing happened on the way to bulgaria, I didn't go. It was not for lack of effort, but it wasn't to be (until 4 days later). The department of state said, 'no,' we have no idea where your passport is and with NY shut down, there is nothing we can do. And so on Sunday, I packed up the family for Sofia - without me. By Tuesday, a friend of a friend would find my old and new passports. By Wednesday I would be officially OK for travel, and by Thursday evening I would be on the plane. But now, my first thought was, 'this is great ?!?! all this planning and now I have nothing to do'. I immediately decided to go back to work and give the vendors who didn't make the 23 December cut-off date, another chance. ...I had already lost two weeks vacation this year because I am so far over the unused leave limit. It was then that I began to consider the possibility of actually doing nothing. ...a day where I owned my time, initiated the release of the hammer which cracked the high pressure lid on the case that held the list... ...There would be no objecting parties sub-vocally screaming boredom in the passenger and rear seats.... I could take my camera and really capture the day.... The online library (this site) could actually open if I had a few days to focus on it.... For the first time since the"