Twenty-First Century Fox

I don't take enough vacation. I keep hitting the cap on the number of vacation days I save up. So today I took a day of vacation from work.

Jill is taking Lily Pup to the groomer right now, so I'm hitting my to-do list. Fed the cats, did the dishes, put away the pieces we're saving of the tree in front of our house that was pushed to a worrying angle by Hurricane Irma, fed the cats again, and now the next item is "delete LJ scratch posts."

I have a whole folder of stuff from 10-15 years ago that I wrote for LJ and never posted. Some of it is material that I eventually polished up and put up, some of it I never finished, some of it is just stream-of-consciousness notes. And as I go through it I see that a lot of it ranges from angsty to darkly depressed, much more than I remember. "I am lonely," "I want to share my life with someone," "I feel like I'm spending all my time doing stuff for people who don't appreciate it," "I wish people would return my calls so we could go do stuff together," those sorts of things. I was in a somewhat different place back then. Some themes still carry through, some of them don't, but there's no use keeping these old thoughts around. So I deleted them. And I feel better for it.

I found myself missing musewoozle so I spent some time reading through his last LJ entries. And I noticed he was friends with tugrik with whom I haven't caught up for far too long, so I read his LJ and found out he was considering moving to Dreamwidth and resuming "writing longform." I've already been wanting to join Dreamwidth so I can keep up with crepes_of_wrath (among others! Who else here is on Dreamwidth?). So, I did it. "https://foxmagic.dreamwidth.org". I don't know what I'll use the space for, yet, but I'd really like to get back into "writing longform," myself.

So chareth sent me a link to a page titled "Holy christ, get off livejournal," which draws attention to the somewhat shady user agreement every LJ user is now required to accept. I say "somewhat shady" because it emphasizes that the English translation is not legally binding, only the original Russian version is. And LiveJournal no longer supports secure connections, which is a troubling change. (It's 2017; why would anyone not support secure connections?) Plus, all the disturbing political rhetoric that's been circling lately about Russia.

So I am putting thought into packing up and drawing my LJ to a close. Archiving all my posts and comments by using the ljArchive tool (use the fixed version linked from http://ljarchive.livejournal.com/89769.html), which is also capable of exporting them as HTML so that I have a readable version (though sadly ljArchive doesn't seem to save userpics on comments). Maybe I could also use https://www.blogbooker.com/ to make a nice book of them, or at least a nicely-formatted PDF file.

And then ... could I bring myself to delete my LiveJournal? 3,291 posts (so far) since April 21, 2001? I've posted some private stuff here that I'd rather not have laid bare if LJ is ever hacked, but ... no, there's no but. Any site can get hacked. I just don't think I have the guts to pull the trigger on my LJ, is all.

And, most of all, I don't want to lose my connections with lots of people I've gotten to know really well here, even if I haven't communicated with you much in the past few years. Yes, even you. ESPECIALLY you.

I primarily use Facebook now (https://www.facebook.com/brian.kendig) though that too is a mess and I'm always looking for something better. I'm also reachable at brian@mac.com and brian@enchanter.net. Please don't lose touch with me.

I'm not shipping off yet; just putting thought into it, is all.

A little while ago, I shifted my paradigm.

I remember when Karen MacArthur introduced me to the World-Wide Web on my Mac IIvx back in late 1994. In '95 I got a job with a young Netscape, and ever since then my career has been tied to the Web - through the big IPO and the big bubble burst, through web projects at small companies (I still have nightmares about the Ginormous Project), and finally with the big "Next Gen" project with Disney (the web site that let you link resort and dining reservations, park admissions, and more to your MagicBand). Recently I've felt like I've had a hand in every part of this big project ... and, at the same time, I've been frustrated because it's been going in directions I don't like. (I believe in getting the fundamentals right, making sure the core of it works well; but the emphasis has become more and more on adding features and moving from server-side PHP to client-side AngularJS and abandoning the parts that aren't as cool-looking.)

So, at the end of August, I switched to an iOS mobile development team. I'm working on iPhone/iPad apps for Disney Parks & Resorts.

On one hand, little has changed; I'm in the same cube with the same neighbors, working for the same part of the same company. But, on the other hand, I recognize this as a huge departure. I've moved away from this web thing that really defined my career. I no longer know everything. In fact, I'm finding mobile development to be tough. It's really frustrating, but I'll pick it up eventually, and meanwhile it's kind of nice to not have to worry about the big picture as much as I had been, before.

. o O o .

Meanwhile I'm also finding myself more and more motivated to clean house. I'm feeling like things are closing in on me - like one of those silding-number puzzles that I can't solve because I can't slide the numbers out of the way. But as I purge stuff from my closet, for example, it feels like there are more spaces to move things around, and it becomes even easier to purge.

Most recently I've been going through things I've saved from high school, from college, and from my move to Florida sixteen years ago. I've saved a lot of stuff that meant a lot to me.

And I miss so many of you out there. a_blue, thank you for the little pick-me-ups you sent me when I was feeling, well, blue. hannah_jane, I really had a good time when you showed me around where you worked at Animal Kingdom and told me about the animals. sassinak, I very much miss hanging out with you and Ross and I hope Isabelle is doing well these days! credendovides, I haven't heard from you for years and I hope you're doing well too, and I really wonder whether you ever kept in touch with those two Dutch gals whom I helped when they came to visit you (or your girlfriend, was it?) that once.

And that's just to name a few off the top of my head ... I owe so many of you for adding color to my life, so many times! I apologize for the times (often) when I was a dork and didn't know how to reciprocate properly.

Something I want to link here for posterity:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/web-dev/2003/Jul/msg00103.html

"and to think that Live Journal was just for angst-ridden teens and bad poets"

:-)

Been long silent, yes. One excuse is that I've been busier living life than writing about it - yes, that sounds good, I'll stick with that.

What I won't admit is that I've been caught in what I call "immediate mode". That's an old computer term. In contrast to programming mode, where you write a sequence of steps and then say "go do that", immediate mode is where every individual step is executed as soon as you type it in. How it relates to me is that I feel like I have a pile of tasks around me and I need to get through them as quickly as possible, no planning just doing, because I value myself based on what I do for other people and time spent planning is time spent not doing. And I can't even come near finishing the tasks before there's a pile more tasks, so there's never a dull moment but I rarely think very far into the future. Either I don't need to, or I can't. Dunno which.

Job-wise, I'm still a web developer for Disney. Same role as when I was hired, and I just passed my fourth anniversary. Same rank, too. No promotion. That's got me down a bit - I keep getting top scores on my performance reviews, I frequently let my manager and his manager (the director) know that I'm fulfilling the requirements of two grades above my current position (and they don't disagree), I know everybody and everybody knows me and I communicate and I get things done; just, I don't get much feedback, positive or negative. In the past, a lack of feedback has meant that people disapprove of me but are afraid of telling me so. I know in my head that can't be the case here, but my heart doesn't always listen to logic.

At home, Jill and I feed and entertain our dog Lily (who licks everything) and our cats Tooie (who disapproves of everything) and Maxwell (who gets into everything). We're always busy with stuff; we have a lot of friends who come to Disney World and it's great that they make time for us to see them, I run the town computer users group and I'm frequently answering phonecalls and emails from people who need computer help, and Jill has been involved in a lot of running (from 5K up to half-marathons). At the rare times I have an opportunity to find some peace and quiet for a while I attempt to work on my writing, since I feel some strange drive to write fiction fantasy. But inevitably I end up frustrated with myself, through some mental block I don't comprehend. The demon on my shoulder is far too loud, telling me that I can't come up with an original idea and that my writing efforts are laughably stupid. Still, I persevere, either out of optimism or masochism.

Today I'm on the back porch with my laptop because it's a beautiful day. Reading a Guild Wars novel, catching up on email, and writing this journal entry because crepes_of_wrath encouraged me to. :-)

This morning I resolved to have breakfast, so I took advantage of the hotel's $12 breakfast buffet.

The hotel lobby has several tables, with a breakfast buffet serving fruits, cereals, pastries, and some hot food. It was a busy place; lots of families were getting a start on their day, several waiters were cleaning tables. But I stood nearby for several minutes and couldn't figure out how to get in on it.

Finally I stopped a waiter. "I want the breakfast buffet. What do I do?" I asked. She replied, "Just take a table and someone will be with you." So I did, and eventually a waiter came to me. "Go ahead and help yourself," he said. "May I have some milk?" I asked, and he gestured over towards the counter.

The milk he had pointed to was only enough for cereal. The orange juice had pulp in it. They were out of sausage. I took some potatoes and a few strips of bacon, and returned to my table to find that someone else had claimed it while I was up.

So I found another table, and ate what I had, and went back to look for sausage. This time I left my glass, dirty plate, and utensils on the table so that people would realize it's already claimed! I got some more potatoes and bacon and a muffin that I thought was chocolate chip but, regrettably, wasn't. And this time when I returned to my table, I found that the waiters were using it to pile other dirty dishes on.

Fed up, I left breakfast without paying. No one noticed.

. o O o .

I visited the Computer History Museum with Scott and Brian, and I briefly got to meet Brian's girlfriend Andrea. She seems every bit as scary smart as he is. Together they are either a powerful force for humankind or a dangerous threat to it.

The museum is in the building that formerly housed the long-defunct Silicon Graphics. That fascinated me as much as anything else inside it. It's a well done museum, replete with abacuses and flash memory and everything in-between, including several large pieces of computers from the mid-1900s. The displays are nice, the descriptions are detailed, and there are plenty of videos to explain what you're looking at. Definitely an interesting place to go to see where today's hardware owes its roots. Though I would have liked to have seen more old computers actually functioning; I couldn't help but feel that most of what's there has been "stuffed and mounted". Especially the robots, which are eerily motionless. (And they really ought to get an old animatronic from Disney!)

From there, I went to lunch at Potsticker King - an old favorite of mine, known for their wonderful potstickers, green onion pancakes, and hot-and-sour soup - with Heather, her daughter Isabelle, and Tor and Garth. It really was great to see them all again. They caught me up on the current whereabouts of nearly everyone I had known when I lived out here, and then Tor showed off his Nissan Leaf to me. I have seen more Leafs (Leaves?) and Teslas out here in the past three days than I've seen in Florida over a much longer period.

Heather, Isabelle, and I then explored a Japanese dollar store. Fun! I find that I can actually read (most of) the hiragana on the labels ... but I don't yet know what the words mean. Well, I'll get there.

Afterwards, we were GOING to go to Golfland and play minigolf, but I completely forgot about it. Totally left my mind, probably on account of my lack of sleep last night. Now not only do I feel bad for having reneged on my promise to go play mini golf with Heather and Isabelle, but I wanna go play minigolf and I deprived myself of the chance, too! Darn!

Today is the reason I am in California right now.

Netscape, the little Internet company that made lots of headlines, was founded in 1994. I joined the company in '95, and was there until 2000, after my stock had vested and the company had sold its soul to AOL. Working for an Internet startup is a trial by fire: you do everything, you get to know everybody. It's a crucible that forges deep friendships. In the years after I left I kept in touch with some of the people I had known from there, and on a whim I began suggesting that we have a twentieth anniversary party.

The former Netscape Public Relations team took me up on that idea.

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Friday morning began with a fire alarm at the hotel. Turns out there was a water main break, and if the sprinkler pressure drops then the system thinks one of the sprinklers was activated by a fire. It didn't impact my day at all, but the hotel now has a lot of water damage to deal with.

Fortunately the alarm didn't wake me; I'd been up since four in the morning. Since I'm only here for a few days I'm trying to keep to an Orlando time zone schedule to avoid being jetlagged in both directions. But, there is an unforeseen flaw in my plan: if I have dinner at six in the evening here and then I go to bed and I get up at four, and I don't join people for lunch until noonish, then I become mighty hungry by then...

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The alarm went off at four in the morning. I ignored it. “C’mon,” Jill nudged me. “You’ll be late for your flight.”

“I don’t wanna go.”

“I know. C’mon.”

I hate traveling. It’s one reason I never take vacations. It’s so much stress and hassle to decide what I want to do and when I need to be there and how I’m going to get there, to arrange the flight and the hotel and the car, to remember everything I’ll need and stuff it into a suitcase and lug it with me so I can live out of it. Fortunately, Jill loves making the arrangements, so (as usual) she handled all the logistics for me. (“I’ll take care of everything else, you just show up,” she says.)

Packing took a week. I left my bags on the table and every time I remembered something I wanted to bring, I’d put it in the bags right then. No last-minute rush to remember every little thing. That helped.

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I miss you all! I miss LiveJournal being the hub of activity it once was!

But I blame myself in part, because I never found it easy to follow the friends feed of everyone all mashed together - I wish there had been a way to read authenticated feeds through an RSS reader, so I could keep track of what I hadn't read yet from any given friend! And I also blame myself because I haven't been posting here nearly as much as I used to.

The reason for that is that so much of my content here is friends-locked. I wanted to share my thoughts with the world, but then I'd post something personal about work or whatever and I wouldn't want anyone outside a limited group of people to see it. And so eventually my LJ became a tangle of personal thoughts shared with friends and even the public posts would reference stuff that wasn't public, so I figured it was time for a fresh start.

You can see my public blog at "http://enchanter.net/ao/". I'm not a professional blogger, but at least I hope that Google's search engine picks it up and that some of the technical stuff I post there helps someone.

Meanwhile, of course, I'm keeping this LJ forever for any more private thoughts I want to share. :-)