A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

I’ve been using bloglines as my feed reader for several years now. But over the past few months I’ve been beginning to get the sense that it’s starting to buckle under it’s own weight.

The functionality itself has always been pretty damn good.  But it’s reaction to what appears to be load, be it my 239 feeds or it’s own server-side load, does not exactly inspire confidence.

See, I don’t just use it for reading feeds, but for storing articles of reference interest as well.  So, with 239 feeds I have upwards of 20,000 saved items.  Now granted, most of this is just schlock and should probably be deleted.  But there’s an awful lot of it that I go back to.

Sure, I could save the links to del.icio.us or something. But aside from the fact that it would take damn near forever is the problem that an awful lot of those links are defunct.

That’s been one of those things that’s great about the service.  It actually saves the article bodies instead of just the links.

I suppose I could whip some greasemonkey script together that I could tell to somehow export eveything.   but that’d be awfully complex. (Hmm… is this a job for selenium + greasemonkey?)

But either way I have to start looking for a new reader.  I haven’t looked at google’s in a while, so that may be a good place to start.

It’s too bad though.  Bloglines, when it works, is solid.  But I haven’t been able to read updates for the last hour.

Which, at 2:00 am is probably just as well frankly.

So like I was sayin’. I’d gotten to thinking and something’s bugging me about the tendrils of my online presence.

It’s all summed up pretty well in facebook. I found/was found by a friend of mine from high-school. We caught up a bit and it was nice. I linked up with my junior year roommate and I saw in their “friend” lists tendrils that spanned that environment years in either diretion.

Now, I’m 39. High school for me is about 25 years ago.

My 3 years at The Marvelwood School (I spent my freshman year in public) just might have been the three worst years of my life; and I had a childhood that sucked righteous wind. It was a horrible hellish experience and I hated just about every minute of it.

It was integral to my development as a human being, so I can’t really reject it’s influence. It took me an awfully long time to come to terms with who I was, how poorly I adapted to my mid-late teen years and to just move on and put it all past me.

I’m enjoying catching up with Lukas and Will a bit. They were good guys then and they sure seem to be good guys now. But I’ve spent decades working on the deficiencies in my character which became so terribly clear to me in those years and I don’t think I want it around.

I find that my distant past in general is something best left where it was. There are always exceptions in the form of people. There are a couple relationships I hope I’ll carry forward for the next 50+ years. You know who you are.

But the rest of them? The events and people of my past? The part they served in my life was to contribute to the ride, as I did to theirs (hopefully to the good. But even the small souled bullies from high-school and before ended up contributing positively to my character though I’m not sure I’d hold my fist to my side on sight, so who knows what constitutes a positive contribution to someone’s life.)

So that whole line of thought led me to realize that, while I’ve spent an awfully great deal of energy overcoming shyness (a hard few years in East Norwalk) I’m actually more comfortable keeping a pretty high wall around myself, though I come out to play frequently. My online presence is a very particular facet of my life and I have no qualms about letting out the truth, being who I am, etc. there are facets that simply don’t mix.

So yeah I’m doing some pruning on facebook (and elsewhere frankly.) I’m not trying to make some grand statement about the people I’ve left on, or out. I’m just feeling out my comfort zone.

I’ve got an awful lot more about this swirling around in my head. But I’ll get to that later.
UPDATE:  Ya know, ya never know who’s going to drift on to a post like this so I have to add something:  There are a couple/few people to whom I have behaved rather terribly and from whom I’ve subsequently become estranged.  I’m going to address that in general at some point in the near future in the hopes that it helps me gain the courage to deal with it specifically (the former here, the latter not likely.)  If you’re not one of those people then that’s going to seem exceptionally cryptic.

So I got to thinkin’ a while ago; ’bout an hour actually.

And one of the things．．．　Ｇｏｄ　ｄａｍｎｉｔ．　　ｔｈｅ　ｅｅｅ　ｊｕｓｔ　ｄｉｄ　ｔｈａｔ　ｔｈｉｎｇ　ａｇａｉｎ．　　ＷＴＦ！？！　　Ｎｏｗ　ｔｈｅ　ｆｏｎｔ’ｓ　ａｌｌ　ｓｃｒｅｗｙ；　ａｎｄ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｉｓ　ｉｎ　　ｆｉｒｅｆｏｘ，　ｎｏｔ　ＯｐｅｎＯｆｆｉｃｅ，　ｗｈｉｃｈ　ｍｉｇｈｔ　ｅｘｐｌａｉｎ　ｗｈｙ　Ｉcouldn’t find the setting in….. now it’s back again.

God DAMNIT this is driving me batshit.

I’ve got to be hitting something.  It’s something in combination with the shift key..

ａ　ＨＡ！　　Ｓｍａｒｔ　Ｍｉｋｅｙ，　ｇｅｔｓ　ｂｉｓｃｕｉｔ．　（Ｗｅｌｌ，　Ｉ’ｌｌ　ｈａｖｅ　ｔｏ　ｆｉｎｄ　ｓｏｍｅ　ｎｉｃｅ　ｙｏｕｎｇ　ｌａｄｙ　ｗｈｏ’ｌｌ　ｏｂｌｉｇｅ　ｍｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｏｌｌｅｃｔｉｏｎ　ｏｆ　ｓａｉｄ　ｐｒｉｚｅ，　ｂｕｔ　ｔｈａｔ’ｓ　ａ　ｔａｓｋ　ｆｏｒ　ａｎｏｔｈｅｒ　ｄａｙ．）

Hold down the shift key and tap the space bar and it toggles.

Phew.

Now, with my luck none of this will translate to the post and you people won’t have the FAINTEST idea what the hell I’m talking about.  s’ok.  I’m used to it.

America’s first Woman four-star general

WASHINGTON (AP) - Call it breaking the brass ceiling. Ann E. Dunwoody, after 33 years in the Army, ascended Friday to a peak never before reached by a woman in the U.S. military: four-star general.

Congratulations!

Yeah, it’s good.

It’s that good.

So yesterday I got “Healing ADD” and “Change Your Brain Change Your Life” both by Daniel Amen.

In the ADD book, I spent a good deal of time going through treatment options he put down, of which there are seemingly dozens.  The dietary and behavioral changes he talks about are all pretty straightforward.

This morning I woke up, though didn’t exactly bound out of bed, and instead of hitting the markets I hit the drug store for multis and an omega 3 thingie.  Then I had some bacon & eggs… Mmmmm bacon.

No caffeine (ouch!) and lots of water later and I’ve got a few things to report:

1) I’m not exactly setting the world on fire here.  But I am ABSOLUTELY more awake than usual.  So much so that I really see the contrast more than anything else.  I’ve been zombifying through the last month with a remarkable lack of purpose and will.  I recognize it in my writing (most notably the lack thereof) and the lack of trading.  I’ve made some reasonable trades in the last week, but today I’ve made more than the previous week combined.

2) It’s not the caffeine I miss, but the diet soda in general.  Of course, trying to ease up (and ostensibly eliminate) caffeine removes the last reason to succumb to the impulse to drink a metric shitload of diet dew or coke zero, so that I’m going to have to let go of.

3) Cutting back on the carbs is gonna fucking kill me.

Now that I’ve got a bit of a jumpstart on what I can do, I’m going back and reading the book properly.

He’ll never win a pulitzer for his writing, but the content is all there and clear.  It’s an impressive work with a breadth of understanding of the phenomenon that I’d never previously encountered.  My favorite thing so far is that it’s not a commercial for a treatment.  It’s not some damn treatise for or against Ritalin or Adderal.

If I were to endeavor to organize this into a cohesive piece, using  Tinderbox or something, I know there’s be precisely zero chance I’d get it done.  So instead I’m just opening the WP WritePost form and blathering.  alas and alack.

I started noticing this over the last week; projects undone, laundry piling up, strange bursts of reckless impulsiveness occurring with greater and greater frequency.  My trading is starting to slide a bit as well.  I’m becoming impatient and executing trades just to do it rather than waiting for the right timing and looking for the right conditions.

But when I look back over the past couple/few months I realize that I’ve just started noticing the change.

I’m getting more ADD.

I think the cause is a bit less clear than that implies.  It’s not that I think that whatever brain chemistry is attached with that condition  is getting worse.   But trading has me sliding down the Maslow hierarchy of needs a bit.  The result of that is that I’m never quite comfortable enough to just relax and focus.

While working (provided it’s at a job I can stand) I can at least leave when I leave and plan for a certain income.  Now, I can’t.  Every day I wake up and wonder whether or not I’m going to be able to do what it takes to be successful at this.  And, as anybody who’s ever been in a casino can tell you; scared money loses.

I’m not really sure what else to say about it.  But I have to deal with this on a couple fronts.

The effect this has had on my life and personality has been pretty interesting.  An aspect that just wasn’t clear to me until lately has been the ancillary affect of aptitude without accomplishment.  I’ve had such difficulty following through on, well, just about anything, that I no longer expect myself to be able to, and have set the bar much lower on personal accomplishments as a result.

Being conscious of THAT, in turn, doesn’t do wonders for my self appraisal.

How it’s played into my relationships over the past 10 years (mostly in my incredible propensity for ending them) is something that’s really starting to sink in to my skull with some gravitas.

What I’ve always been afraid of has been heaping all the problems of my life in a pile and tagging it with “ADD” then throwing up my hands.  The other side of that is that I don’t give the real problem it’s due, which is at least as damaging.

So a multi-pronged approach.  I’m spending an awful lot of energy (in ADDworthy bites) creating massive lists of teeny things that need doing, while taking great pains to avoid putting giant sweeping declarative headings over the top of them.  For instance, “fill a bag of garbage” and “wash the stainless steel cookware” are there but “clean the kitchen” is not, since that’s a foolishly vast project.

I’m doing the same thing with programming projects and even, yes, with gaming goals.  Set lots of them, make them small and tractable.  That’s where the WordPress plugin I installed today came from.

As for the ADD itself… Well, I don’t know what to do.  It’s not like I’m flush enough to take the same tact I took a decade ago.  But I’ve read a couple encouraging things and have a couple books coming that I’m going to throw myself in to, to see what they have to say.

Diet is undoubtedly another aspect of this which may play a larger part than I’d originally suspected.  My diet has changed vastly since I started working out of my apartment, and entirely for the worse.  I wonder how much ground I could gain in reversing some of those changes.  But that’s something that’s pretty tough to sneak up on like I can the other stuff.

Well that will work.  Now that I’ve babbled on at Stevie like lengths I’m gonna just abruptly hit “publish”

It links to the previous post “This is a post” just by virtue of the fact that I put that title in quotes in the edit box in WordPress.

This is a piece of functionality I miss from Radio Userland.

This post will be linked to by the next post by merely putting the name of this post in quotes.

It’s a test of my new wiki-ish wordpress plugin.

Larry Winget is one of my favorite guys. It never really occurred to me to go looking for an online presence. But I had a referrer this morning that led me down that path and he had this to say about detroit:

We have enough cars

What do I mean by that? Automobile manufacturers want US (that’s you and me) to bail them out with our tax dollars. Well, to hell with ‘em. Yep. Let ‘em sink. Buh-bye!

Read it. I couldn’t agree more.

Just caught this link from a commenter over at chizumatic

It drives me to look at animatronics.

Transparency. We’ve been hearing about the need for transparency in the financial system for months. Between Barney Frank’s bloviatiations (fucking ironic since he’s the chairman of the House Financial Services committee, but I digress), and pundits across the spectrum; from CNBC to FOX.

Even Paulson has come out more than once on the topic.

But they’re not going to do it:

Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

Here. We’re going to spend 2 TRILLION dollars of your money. But we’re not going to tell you what we’re going to do with it.

Trust us.

We’re from the government.

We’re here to help you.

It’s insane. inSANE.

noun: The WaPo

You spent the last eight years engaged in a disgusting orgy of divisive political hatred and now you want to play nice and pretend we’re all united now? I for one am not going to treat President Obama the way you treated President Bush. That doesn’t mean, though, I’m going to just forgive and forget the fact that you’ve polluted the political landscape with your bile and patchouli-stanking spittle.

Over at Ace

General Motors is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. There is a tremendous amount of discussion about saving the industry with ‘Government Money.’

Look, regardless of what you think about GM, Ford, the reasons for their condition remember this:

There is NO SUCH THING as “Government Money”

That’s YOUR money.

Calling it anything else is a lie.

What I don’t understand is why people are talking about what the President Elect to do about the economy before January 20?

He’s not the President.

Settle down folks.

On my way home from my buddy’s house yesterday, the morning after, I blasted a couple thousand words into my laptop about the whole thing.

On and off I’d been noodling around with it, editing, adding and removing, etc.

But today I got a link to Steven Den Beste’s treatment.

I smiled, then deleted the file, since there was about 40 percent overlap in the points I was trying to make.

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are