Synaxis TV

I’ve been a bit stressed and down for a while now. Some of it has to do with general things going on right now like the move to Indiana, and all of the associated factors, like moving out of the apartment, moving without Laura, waiting to see how much money I’m going to get in loans, wondering if this is the right choice after all, and wondering what effect going to Purdue is going to have on my career choices in the future. Other than this, if it were not enough, it hit me pretty hard when my site went down (though that was pretty much resolved without much trouble), and there is another lingering factor that I cannot mention here.

The goal here is self-moderation on a message board. What if you combine the invite nature of Orkut with a participant mechanism that only lets people post more than a limited amount if they get positive feedback. The invite nature will keep people from having their friends join the board to give them faux positive feedback or sign up with multiple accounts. It will also penalize people for the negative actions of people that they invite. Hmmm…

So I finally got to visit the doctor about my achey breaky heart. He didn’t think it was cardio-vascular, and the EKG didn’t show anything. He asked a lot of questions about if I get out of breath or start to hurt when I exert myself, but that isn’t the case. He seemed to be leaning more towards heartburn, which I considered, but he was thrown off by the fact that the sensation I am having is off to the side rather than in the middle where my esophagus is. I gave them some blood and urine, so we’ll see what that turns up. I have to make an appointment for some chests x-rays too.

The doctor himself was kind of interesting. When he saw my tongue piercing and tattoo he said he didn’t understand why we young people do those kinds of things and that it was just another generation. It was also interesting that he dwelled a bit on my sexual orientation to make sure that I wasn’t having any qualms there. He had also asked if I enjoyed my job, and I said that it was tolerable, and that I didn’t think there were many people who liked their jobs. He said I was too young to be so cynical. I can’t imagine a doctor asking these kinds of questions just a few decades ago. It was both refreshing and revealing of the kinds of ground that doctors have to cover now in treating their patients.

Alright. On Monday last week, my site was down. Tuesday it was still down. Wednesday I got worried. Thursday I had given up. Friday just before going out I found that it was back up again. I had assumed the worst, that my website was irretrievably lost, but luckily, that was not the case. However, it did scare me enough to move to a new host.

My new host is just as cheap if not cheaper, so I don’t quite think I have learned my lesson. But I am a bit more facile at moving my Movable Type installation now, and will adopt the practice of making backups. Just for my own records (should this happen again), I was able to make a copy of my Movable Type directory and dump it in my new account, then aside from the SQL database all I really had to do was change some of the paths in the MT configurations and in the category template. I tried to start off with the new MT 3.0 and start from scratch, but it wouldn’t connect to the SQL server for some reason…

I don’t know what to say about this movie except that I knew things were bad but not this bad. This is the most terrible president that I have ever known and it’s confusing that there are others who don’t see that or even see anything wrong at all.

One of the most harrowing parts of the film was seeing all the innocent Iraqis who lost life and limb for absolutely no reason. I still don’t understand the purpose of the shock and awe campaign except to put dollars in the war makers’ pockets.

The other part that bothered me was thinking about the president’s complete failure to conduct investigations into Saudi Arabia when the majority of the September 11th hijackers were Saudis and the majority of the money that funded their actions also belonged to Saudis. To this day it seems that many Americans believe that Iraq had something to do with September 11th when that has been proven not to be the case. And in hindsight it seems more and more that Afghanistan was just more subterfuge to divert attention from where it should have been.

As for the movie itself there was a lot of information provided, with many sub-narratives that did not deal directly with Bush himself. I’m not sure how I feel about Moore’s decision to include everything that he did, particularly the part where he asked government officials about sending their kids to Iraq. But it did relate to an issue I am glad he included and highlighted — that of the socioeconomic disparities between those who go to fight for our country versus those who stay here and reap the results of said sacrifice.

One of my greatest difficulties is seeing America through others’ eyes. So many of the things that others’ look to America for are either taken for granted or overshadowed by the realities. And for this reason stories about coming to America make for the strangest narratives. In America dispersed some of that awkwardness, however, by presenting our country through young eyes.

I don’t know what it is about children, but I started crying only 9 minutes into the movie, and cried several times throughout. Something about their innocence, ability to see beauty in the world, and susceptibility to misery and pain really touches me. Sometimes the most beautiful thing in this world isn’t life but survival, and that perhaps forms the core of the movie.

I very much enjoyed this film but it’s difficult to mention that it has a happy ending considering all of the pain the characters carried with them throughout. I suppose it is worth watching this movie just to give our own lives some perspective, but also, to experience the world through the eyes of the two young girls who make up the warm glowing heart at the movie’s center.

During lunch I looked for roommates. After work I stopped by Half Price and got Pink Samurai, a book about sex in Japan, and a book on the history of Japan. From there I went over to the Atlanta Bread Company, but I figured out it would be too long to wait there until Laura’s plane came in so I came home. I made some updates but Laura called to tell me that her plane was broken so she would be delayed. I took a nap then went to pick her up and we didn’t get back until way way late.

I picked up around the house then finished the book I was reading. Unfortunately I got bogged down trying to get Gallery to work but I eventually got out of the house and over to the Seals’ to do some laundry. While that was going I made some updates. For dinner I went over to Lite Wok and got some katsudon.

I spent all day with church people. At service there was an interesting presentation on the scouts and we talked about that some at lunch after. One parent was dealing with the issue of letter her kid participate in scouts. Someone suggested that there’d be no harm to them as kids don’t really pay much attention to such things at that age. I didn’t state it at the time but it seems the real issue is not so much the kid’s experience but whether you should support a backwards organization in any way.

I shared some files with Michael, though we had to swap it on SD because we couldn’t get the bluetooth to work. We talked a bit about the verses where Jesus said he was coming as a sword, and I mentioned the crazy infancy gospels where Jesus made his friends and teachers whither away when they displeased him. I asked about how people felt regarding the 23 year old woman in Florida who had sex with her 14 year old student, and responses seemed to be pretty evenly split along the gender lines. Rick complained about how bad The Day After Tomorrow was and how the bad science they used to make the film would undo any hope they might have had to bring about discussion on the issue.

We moved tables because someone was smoking nearby and after talked about whether Rick’s experience with the Pentecostal woman was the result of discrimination. I don’t tend to see it that way, especially since I think there would be problems if I dated a Christian or a theist. After that we shared some bad jokes and tough puzzles (I had to look up the answer to the one Ethel gave me when I got home just to be sure there was an actual solution).

We were at Fuddruckers until it closed at nine, then we went over to Starbucks for a bit and I killed everyone at Boggle and we went home. It was quite a fun evening.

I almost forgot to mention that Uz from Venezuela hung out with us too. He talked to us about the problems in Venezuela and told me about some fun he had in Monterrey.

I woke quite late then went to the office to get the SD card I ordered. I spent some time looking at database programs then ended up taking a long nap. My parents called in the evening and asked me to come there for the holidays but it was too late and I had things I wanted to do in town. Maybe if they had said something sooner… Besides, I had thought my sister was going to come into town. I later learned that part of the reason she didn’t come was that they were giving her so much crap over money.

In the evening after I woke from my nap I watched Dogtown & the Z-Boys on IFC about some surfers cum skateboarders. I then saw an episode of Dave Attell where he was in Columbus, Ohio, and he spent part of the night at this really interesting looking gothic-industrial club Outland that had some nice fetish play going on. Finally I saw an episide of South Park where Johnny Cochran used the Chewbacca defense.