Helter Swelter

The sweltering heat of the afternoon inspired nothing but boredom from me. It was a summer afternoon not unlike many that have gone past. It was hot. It was humid. Heat was radiating from everything that the sun caressed in the last 8 hours.

I settled on reading books I had long abandoned. Like a ritual, I took each one and wiped the dust off the covers. I flipped to marked pages. I tried to recall where I left off. I realized I had left my books too long that I could no longer recall. I had bits and pieces of the stories in them, nothing more. I settled on one of them, Connecting Flights. I resolved to read it cover-to-cover. As I went along, I discovered missing pieces of what I could not remember fully. I discover new  stories I had originally skipped. I consumed it within an hour.

I picked up another. Pete Lacaba's Edad Medya. I read a couple of poems. The mood was too somber, I could not go on. I might've triggered depression if I did. Most of my old friends would tell you that I suffer from these episodic bouts of depression, which confused many of them, so much so that I've only managed to keep a handful of them. I picked up The Kite of Stars. Memories began to flood my mind. I knew this book well. It imprinted on me so much that the mere suggestion of it's blue cover with gold lettering triggered memories of the stories the lay within it. I will read it again, when I lacked inspiration. There is no better epitome of so great a love than the kite of stars.

I picked up Dream Noises : A Generation Writes next. I read the first three stories and felt a sadness settle in me. I stopped reading and decided I really had to do something else. I have a writer's heart. My skills are not at par with many of the published kind. But I have the heart of one. I read and I understand. No, I feel the stories. They stir in me the emotions these authors felt when they created these works.

I guess this was one of the reasons I stopped blogging, or even writing in general. I did my best work in the most emotionally destitute times of my life. I wasn't the kind that could write the cheery side of everything. I was the kind that fed off my darker side. The sadder I was, the better the prose. I subconsciously begged myself to stop. And stop I did. But you cannot really deny what you are. I need to write again. If only for myself. If only for me to release my demons.

As I started typing this, it started to rain. A light drizzle that belied the true strength of an approaching typhoon. I guess we all need some rain in our life. Otherwise we would not wish for more sunshine, however hot it was..

I'm Still Human After All...

Friday night, I got word. A dear old friend died. After 2 weeks in a coma, she had succumbed.

For the last 2 days I had been trying to come to terms with myself. When I got the news, I was sad. Very sad. But no tears had come. In the years that have passed I had learned to steel myself against grief. I had forced myself to accept whatever disappointment, however big or small, and move on. I had to move on. The rest of the world either didn't care or didn't stop moving despite what I was feeling. I felt expendable an replaceable, nobody was going to stop to help me if I fell behind. I often told myself that whatever didn't kill me made me stronger. Well, the the last 2 days I was already questioning if I was still human. I asked myself if perhaps I had done too much of this rationalizing that I had succeeded in making myself numb and unfeeling.

Early today, driving to the market, I just said it out loud to my wife. "Namatay na si Maya." I didn't take my eyes off the road. She asked, "Kailan mo nalaman?" I replied, "Nung Byernes, pagkauwi natin" I steadied my grip on the wheel as felt a sudden emptiness fill me.

I had gone to work Thursday night. Friday morning, I had to pickup Matt at swimming practice. Then after that, we had to go to San Fernando to make our monthly mortgage payments. When afternoon came, I had to go back to work to do overtime on work that had to be finished to meet a deadline. By the time I got home, I had been awake 26 hours. That's when I read the text message. I had been sent earlier but I was too busy to have noticed it. I only read it when I got home. Over the last 2 days, I was busy with out usual weekend chores.

After saying that I knew as early as Friday night, and after my wife realized I hadn't talked about in the last 2 days, I finally cried. The sobs came on their own. I could barely hold the steering wheel straight as I drove. I just drove as I sobbed. I sobbed even worse when my wife put her arm around my shoulder to console me. I had to put my hand up to tell her I had to do this on my own. I had to grieve my loss my own way. As we approached the market, the sobs died down. I felt better knowing I could still grieve my loss.

The Zahir

I finished reading The Zahir a few days ago. As usual for a Coelho book, the story has me thinking about me, what it means to be me and how being me affects the people I love. Like many other people, I go through my own troubles. That's maybe why i named this blog as it is titled. Thoughts sometimes go through my head, each opposing side talking whiel the core self listens to both arguments. Often, it's a stalemate. No one side wins over the over. At times one side presents a convincing argument, but the heart of the core self belongs to the other side.

The Zahir is a story about a writer. His wife suddenly disappeared. He couldn't figure out why she chose to do so. After getting over being angery, bitter and sullen, he began taking an honest look at himself and his marriage. In his pusuit to purge himself of all doubt and his desire to see his wife again, he mets a man, another woman and himself.

The man, he suspected of being his wife's lover. That turns out to be untrue. But the man touches him with his gift, a unique connection to the universe that conspires to make dreams come true. This man helps him find what he truly seeks. The other woman, girlfriend who loved him so, stayed with him as long as he would have her. She knew he still yearned to see his wife, but she stuck on anyway. Because that was how love was like, it cared not what it received in exchange of what it gave. All along the story he recounts how he hesitated before he started writing. He recounted how he poured his soul into each succeeding book without even knowing it. He pictured how he would write, possessed with a torturous need to finish each book, only finding solace once the book has written itself. He believed a writer was just that, a typist for the book. The book finishes itself. The book always had a life of it's own, revealing itself so the writer could share it's essence in a language men would understand.

In the end, he finds peace. He makes peace with who he is. Only then does he find himself worthy to seek out his Zahir, the one thing he count not live without.


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Disclaimer: This is far from a review. I write about how I feel and how the book 'talked' to me. I am no critic by any chance, just another dude with a blog.

Writer's Block

I haven't had any ideas to write about. And it seems every writer or blogger suffers from a lack of enthusiasm or interest every now and then. Then there are days when you're just gushing with ideas you can't stop typing.

By chance I had been reading Bag of Bones, which I bought a few months back at a second-hand bookstore together with Whiteout. Having bought and read other books after, I had forgotten about it and left it gathering dust in my book shelf. Over the weekend I was looking at my bookshelf to see what I could do away with. Mostly I had old computer magazines that I could donate somewhere. My wife had already taken a few of the magazines and donated them to one of my son's therapists. I noticed Bag of Bones, stared at it for a moment and took it off the shelf. I started reading and after a few pages came to a discovery of sorts.

The story starts off with the main character saying goodbye to his wife, tragically not knowing it would be for the last time. Mike Noonan, a novelist, had suffered loss that will impair his writing for years to come. His wife had died suddenly of an aneurysm. He found out later that his wife was pregnant when she died. It was a tragedy in itself, as they had been trying to conceive for years with no success. He had suffered a writer's block after turning in his last piece of work, a half-finished novel at the time of his wife's death. Still, he was able to turn in a novel for each of the next three years. He revealed a trick he had discovered during his writing career. He had created 3 extra novels in-between his other works. And since he only submitted one per year to his publisher, he had these works stored in a safety deposit box just in case. Well, it came to be that he did need it. For three years after his wife died, he had submitted a finished novel to appease his agent and his publisher. The fourth year was the killer, he longer had a reserve and he still couldn't find it in him to write again. So the story continues from there.

That got me thinking. I mean that sounds like a logical way to regularly have something to post on your blog. If you're aiming to have an article a day, you can actually set aside time during the weekend to write up stuff and publish one per day. If you have a feature on your blog to schedule when a post gets published, like Blogger does, then you can actually set it and forget. So I plan on doing it that way, since there are times I actually have lots of ideas to work on anyway. The only thing I'd have to review would be the links. By the time I publish anything, I may need to check if the links are still up-to-date. Eventually, I will want to publish one article a day. That's my goal anyway. Wish me luck :-)

Solitude

It's been a while since I've had these episodic attacks of insomnia and depression. Last night was awful. I lay awake in bed for what seemed like hours. Though looking at my phone at the time it must've been around three hours before I finally dozed off.

During college, being surrounded by writers, activists and musicians, we had a term for this. It was the "i wanna curl up and die" syndrome. The 1990's were an in-between time that made for a confused generation of people trying to sort their feelings out. You had the vestiges of the New Wave melodramatic culture trying to resurface. The angst of the revived punk movement was rising from the ashes. The technology of the internet was just starting to influence how people used computers. I and my group of writers were torn between our DOS-based Wordstar and new-car-smell appeal of Windows 3.1. There were left-wing rallies everywhere. I was wearing anything from torn jeans, concert t-shirts, leather sandals, Vans skate shoes, Mao caps, eye glasses (nope, I had perfect vision). I wore my hair long. I was a jumble of contradictions.

Those times, as confusing as they were, were conducive to writing. Writers with extreme emotions are able to draw inspiration from them. So bouts of depression were almost always half-wanted. These days, my bouts of depression are unwanted. They come and bother me from time to time. Usually the images in my head range from saddening scenes of me in various stages of emotional and physical distress to morbid thoughts of an unspeakable degree. The vivid detail in my imagination had always been a blessing or a curse.

So last night was difficult. I was struggling. I couldn't sleep. I almost wept. I was pathetic. But it was a cycle I had to go through, I had to ride it out. And then I dozed off. I woke up feeling tired, a few hours of sleep not helping one bit. I found my little girl had strewn the floor with 4 different kinds of flash cards. Toys were all over the floor too. She was almost at a tantrum and when she saw I was awake kept asking me for her morning bath. It was time for her morning bath and she was adamant about keeping her schedule. As I picked up the flash cards and started sorting them to put them back in their designated cartons, I felt a little bit better. The domestic routine ground on you, but it was also comforting to feel needed. Belonging is one thing, but to feel needed is foremost in what every depressed person out there may be craving. To feel useless is be without purpose. And without purpose, what are we to world?

Wanting to be Indifferent

The days following the weekend, a bit of news had me happy and content. It had me hoping and dreaming. Then when the same news was not welcomed by someone very important to me, even labeled as a "problem", it irked me. Then after a few hours it depressed me. That was yesterday. I feel differently today, having mixed feelings of guilt, anger and frustration. At times we don't realize the impact our words have on others. We are callous to what words can create or destroy. For me, this time around, it brought my world crashing in.

I've been pre-occupied with these thoughts the past couple of days that I've been dreaming weird dreams. The other night, I couldn't concentrate in the audio book I was listening to. It was half past midnight. I was lying down, listening to Daemon. I was drifting in and out of sleep as the reader rambled on about the story. In between waking consciousness and drifting off I saw snatches of split-second images. Anatomical figures, much like pieces of those anatomy dolls showing the nature-engineered magnificence of the human body beneath the cover of skin floated in and out of my sight. An arm, the upper torso, a leg, the face and shoulders, all with muscles exposed. It went on too fast for me to even register fear in my subconscious dreaming stupor. In my waking moments, trying to remember what it was I dreamt about, I was surprised to find I wasn't afraid of the scenes that unfolded. It would have been logical to feel fear. Weirdly enough, I remember feeling calm all through out, like the strangeness of it all had stirred an oblivious detachment in me. I was, during the dream, without emotion. I was just a passive observer, free of pain, fear or worry.

Looking back at that dream, I cannot but feel a need to be detached.

Thank You Blogger for Restoring My Blog!

I finally got my blog back, thanks to people at the Blogger Help Forums! I specifically wants to thank nitecruzr who guided me through the process of appealing the spam tag that my blog got.

I didn't know how bad spam in Blogger was until my blog was tagged as spam (read the FAQ here: FAQ: My Blog Is Locked As Spam). As a normal reaction I bawled and complained, rather badly. I did not know what to do. nitecruzr, one of the Blogger Help moderators, helped me through the process. It was a long process, and I had to do a lot of reading to understand why and how Blogger blogs are tagged as spam. I understand it better now, though I fear the false-positive might happen again.

But now that I have my blog back, it is all that matters.

Climate Change

There are still some who contend that climate change is a natural phase that the Earth is going through. That may be true. But man has in his quest to control his surroundings has hastened it all to a critical point.

For several thousand years mankind has made huge strides in controlling his environment, to the point that it seems nothing is impossible. Farms and cities took the place of nomadic hunting and gathering. Civilizations were built on ever hastening movement. It's said that our ancestors walked land bridges that once connected our continents. Today we bridge those continents with air planes, cruise ships and the internet. All of these advances have come at the cost of the environment. Our cities are burgeoning to a point so far greater than what the land could sustain. It's a far cry from the times when hunter-gatherers would take what they needed to survive then move on, allowing nature time to replenish itself. Our constant need to move people, food and supplies to and from urban centers has caused pollution to the air we breathe. Our need to food alone has made it necessary that we demand more from the earth we till.

Yet, for all the powerful change man has caused, it has all been for his own gain. All is not lost. If man can cause so much damage, he can also help heal it. We only need to act together to help the Earth be a sustainable place to live in. If we conserve our resources and use them wisely, we can slow climate change.

Comment Spam

It's amazing the amount of comment spam sites receive. I mean, you open yourself up to readers of your blog or site and you expose yourself to bots plying the web to check what forms they could post ads on. It's not comforting either that its so common to see one URL being posted over and over again by different spam bots. It just means that spammers are out to get us. Good thing I've got comment moderation turned on on my blog. Otherwise legit readers would be bothered by the sheer volume

The Past Weeks Have Blurred Past

It seems that I keep going on a recurring cycle every now and then. I post sporadically often for a few weeks then suddenly go quiet.

Well, there's a reason. As most day jobs go, there are times that you really have to really work hard to get the results you want. It's been a busy 2 weeks for me, not because of added work, but because of tensions in the office.

Recently, our operations manager decided to give us extra tasks. We're now doing more QC (quality check) work on the work output that our agents do. Mostly its boring work, pulling long hours reviewing stuff. It's worthwhile work, though. We see where our guys could use some help or areas we could help them improve.

Then there's the part where you have to deal with people. We (collectively, me and my supervisors) have had to deal with really difficult people in the past month. A lot of fear mongering and whining has been going on and we can't really give them all the information we have. Speaking for myself, I come across a lot of information that explains why things are happening. But I am duty-bound not to disclose that to people who do not need to know. I can only share what I am allowed to speak about. Ironically, some of the higher up's are surprised that I sometimes get information earlier than they do. I have a secret weapon in my arsenal, and it's called Google-Fu ;-) Hehehe.

Anyway, tonight I'm staying home. My schedule got changed to 11 am instead of the night shift. I got a call yesterday morning from one of my supervisors asking if I could adjust my schedule to cover for another sup who was supposed to be working today. She filed for vacation time and was going to be out for the whole weekend. I said yes without hesitation. Tonight, before leaving the office, I talked to our shift manager and he told me he was in the office when my super called. He mentioned my super was all praises for me because I was always ready to take one for the team. That was in direct comparison to one other person in the team who always weaseled out of any schedule changes that didn't happen to suit his personal preferences. Hehehe - score one for me, yaay!

Now enough about work. I have been able to update my blogs here and there. Minor stuff, but it's coming along. Adding the Paypal Donate button on each of my blogs was the most major one. I also plan to do some more reviews for my tech blog. I haven't done those in a while and from the looks of my hits, it appears most of my Google clicks are coming from the last few reviews I did. I need to do some more of that. I'm actually lining up a mini-reviews of Puppy Linux, TinyMe 2008 and DreamLinux. And since I have old hardware that would make for interesting tinkering, I'm going to do a Part II of of my Vector Linux mini-review but focusing on how it will perform on a barely running Pentium II -266 MHz machine.

Now, to find time to do that...

Torn

It was a rough first day. Today was my wife's first day back at the office. My world was again jolted out of orbit because of the change in the schedules we had grown accustomed to in the last few months. I went to work, and she was there in the morning to welcome me home. This morning, she left early to get to work by 8am.

Sleep-deprived, I brought our son to the doctor this morning. He had been running a fever on and off since Saturday night. Doctor said he was having an episode of tonsillitis again. Weather was not helping at all. The heat was affecting him, but we had no choice but to make the commute to the hospital. We finally got home by 1:30 PM. His fever got worse. I had a hard time getting him to drink medicine. My baby girl wasn't in the mood either, she was crying whenever my mother (or I) put her back in her crib. As if in jest, she had no trouble sleeping whenever I rested her on my shoulder.

Two hours of sleep was all I managed. And I'm going to work tonight. This is going to be a long night. And tomorrow is going to be a long day. Sometimes, it seems I will never see the end of the week without trouble creeping up unexpectedly :-(

Sold the PC...Cheap

If you haven't seen me posting anything, there's a reason. Been trying to sell my PC for the past week or so. A buyer finally made and offer and I took it. She texted me a few days back and I remember feeling sad about it. I grow attached to things, really. Too much of that emotion thing going on. I proudly say that I build them (PCs) myself and they never break down. Now, I feel kind of odd that I'm selling a machine that I built for the satisfaction of it.

I used to always tell my wife that me building PCs is a "blood, sweat and a bucketful of tears" affair for me. I agonize over what parts to use and what functionalities to compromise for the sake of price. I do the research, I scour the shops, I haggle for the best prices, I take the parts home and roll up my sleeves. When building a machine, I am a reclusive hermit for at least half a day. I troubleshoot and test it the next day to ensure I have a stable machine. So to me that machine is a whole lot more than just the sum of its parts. It's time well-spent, learning and tinkering. It's me giving parts of myself. See, I told you I was too sentimental for my own good.

So lately, I've been setting it up over the last few days to her specifications and she'll be picking it up by Saturday. So, I'll be posting from internet cafe's for a while and Twittering from my mobile. See ya...

An Open Letter

Subject: Help Fight AIDS, Malaria And TB

Hi,

I've just signed a petition asking senators to co-sponsor the reauthorization of PEPFAR, America's response to the emergency of global AIDS, malaria and TB.

ONE is trying to get fifty senators to co-sponsor this lifesaving legislation. You can help by adding your voice.

http://www.one.org/pepfarsenate

ONE is a new effort by Americans to rally Americans - one by one. So far, over two million have joined ONE in support of a historic pact for compassion and justice to help the poorest people of the world.

Together as ONE we can make a difference!

Thanks!

Restored

Thank God for Google's cached webpages. I was able to retrieve my old links and links to images. I was able to restores my two blogs in record time.

Nuked

While trying to modify my template, I managed to nuke 2 of my blogs. I didn't back up either of them before I started editing. Don't ask how that happened. It was all due to the lack caffeine in my veins and the mental state I was in. I had just woken up :-(

Of Tweets and MeeboMe's

Just wanted everyone to know you'll find two new widgets on my sidebar, one for Twitter and one for Meebo. After months and months of hearing about Twitter over and over again, I relented and signed up for an account. Check out the widget or my page at www.twitter.com/daysleeper_ed. Add me, if you're Twittering as well. Meebo is just another way to chat with me. If you're here on my page, IM me from the Meebo widget :-)

Accepting Ads

If you would like to place an ad on my blog, please leave your contact email in comments. My comments are moderated, so if you prefer that your email remain private it won't be published (please request for this).

I'm offering 125x125 space (that you see on my sidebar) and text links. Prices are extremely affordable.

Top 5 Reasons Your Friends Say You're Addicted to the Web

5. You maintain multiple blogs - You have a blog for personal issues, one for technology, one for your favorite band, one for news commentary, one for your club, one for making money and one for ummm....'private' interests (like porn).

4. You've ditched AIM/ICQ, MSN and Y! Messenger for a multi-protocol IM/Chat solution - Maybe you use Trillian on Windows? Running Adium on your MacBook? Or do you stick to Meebo.com on your favorite browser? Maybe you like the exotic and customize stuff with Miranda IM? Aha! Pidgin!

3. You have an email address for each of your activities - You have an email address for emailing friends, one for all your blogs, one for mailing lists and forums (with a twin account for bashing people you fight with in the forums), one for ad revenues and affiliate programs and one for other ummm... 'private' activities (porn). You will typically have one from each of the big players (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL/AIM/Netscape), a couple or more from niche providers (Hushmail, Fastmail, Bluebottle, Hotpop, Mail.com) and one for work (lest we forget!).

2. You have multiple browsers - You have Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Netscape, Maxthon and Browzar (for 'private' browsing of ummm... porn) on your MS-Windows systems. You also have Firefox, Opera, Epiphany, Galeon, Konqueror, Swiftfox, IceWeasel, SwiftWeasel, Kazehase and IEs4Linux on your Linux system. If you're a true- blue Linux geek, you'll go one step further and install Lynx, Dillo and may even browse sites using Emacs/W3. Then to maintain your social networking, Flickr, Del.icio.us and blog accounts you rely on Flock.

1. You have a blackbelt in Google-Fu - 'Nuff said.

Back!

I'm back...

At last!!! I have a connection at home again! I have cable internet now. Eventhough the speed isn't as consistent, I'm quite happy. I have a subscription for 384 kbps. I haven't been able to max it out. I hover more around 280, but that's okay, since I happen to think this is inherently more secure than Smart Wifi (now called Smart Bro).

Used to use Shields Up to scan my Smart connection. It would always fail on several ports and that alarmed me. I also used Shields Up on my mother-in-law's Smart connection and the same ports were failing the port scanning test. Thing is she has a software firewall and a hardware firewall through her broadband router. My current connection passed the Shields Up test (see screenshot below), so I think I'm better off now.


Off the bat, torrenting worked quite well. No problems with NAT traversal and all that stuff. I'm currently seeding only one ISO image (FreeBSD's 6.1 DVD compilation - listed here: http://torrents.freebsd.org:8080/) since I need to bandwidth more for downloading other stuff. FDM 2.1 (Free Download Manager) works pretty well with this connection as well. No problems whatsoever. FDM's able to max out the connection to 45KB/s speed at certain times of the day.

Next up in my list of To Do's... Update all of my installers to newer version and back-up all my data. I really need to scratch my VMWare itch. If all goes well, by next weekend I'll be installing Ubuntu and using VMWare Server to test out Windoze and Bayanihan Linux (currently in Beta2). There are a lot of Beta software that I'm testing under XP. It's fun to watch them break the system under a controlled environment.