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Time: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 01:05:08 GMT
Everything server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) mod_perl/1.21
Number of nodes: 554424 (1597 new since June 6, 2000)
Number of users: 15387 (40 new since June 6, 2000)
Number of links: 1853747 (18188 new since June 6, 2000)

Node to user ratio: 36.032 nodes per user
Link to node ratio: 3.344 links per node
Link to user ratio: 120.475 links per user

New Nodes: Users Online (30): [dem bones] [pukesick] [ailie] [Orange Julius] [Dis] [rescdsk] [ophie] [datagirl] [Stride] [Starrynight] [kamamer] [f1r3br4nd] [heropsychodreamer] [SCSIbug] [gnarl] [washort] [Jack Black] [transform] [ScottMan] [jkfghldagv] [urbanmisfit] [skid] [quantumet] [SB5] [Kung] [Romulus] [Kailen] [cody] [Mindful Box] [KillerPenguin]

JeffMagnus node count: 3694 (1 new since June 6, 2000)
JeffMagnus experience: 6213 (2 more since June 6, 2000)
JeffMagnus experience to node ratio: 1.682 XP per node
JeffMagnus nodeshare: 0.667%
JeffMagnus node of the day: Everything 2 Civil War

Insanity abounds. Now that I am boss, I feel the pain of management in my soul. My people want more money, more machines, more office space. Other colleagues try to creep into my resources, despite my vigorous repulse.
No longer immersed in techie matters, barely time enough to read a spec and take a decision.
Every morning I check if my hair is becoming pointy. I am submerged by paper, both from the Long Haul division and the Goosefood project.
That one, dudes, is a goner. People higher up are expecting a demo as of 30 June. I have a fragmented team, and hardware scattered in a 40 kilometer radius. I have a pissed-off ex-project manager that is maintining big fucking dotted lines to the people that are supposed to be my people (the Evil Doctor Foo). I have hardware that I have not chosen, and software that I don't like.

From this unappetizing mix, we will either get: a big hit, with many war stories. Or, a good reason to emigrate, in fact to re-emigrate somewhere more reasonable.
Oh, and did I mention that all this happens in a Mexican democracy environment ?

Maybe I should have been a diplomat, or a lumberjack.

<< week | June 6, 2000 | June 7, 2000 | June 8, 2000 | week >>

Everything's Best Users Snapshot

Users                  XP wa7 inc   l_XP l_wa7
Pseudo_Intellectual 13689 131 208  13481 118
jessicapierce       11540  80 117  11423  74
dem bones           11302  50 132  11170  36
DMan                10608 170 192  10416 166
pukesick             8854  45  23   8831  49
Saige                8546  88 177   8369  73
Segnbora-t           8536 138 120   8416 141
  ...
RockLobster          3342  81  78   3264  81
Woundweavr           3337  16  79   3258   6
discofever           3329   3   3   3326   3
CaptainSpam          3300   2   2   3298   2
bitter_engineer      3256  19  86   3170   8
ailie                3157  14  14   3143  14
sabre23t             3150  61  52   3098  63
Lord Brawl           3068  13   2   3066  15
artfuldodger         2970  23  32   2938  21
Xamot                2890  12  21   2869  11
hatless              2807   -   -      -   -
EBU #50              2807  30   3   2804  34 

Server time: 04:26 Wed Jun 7 2000 TZ +0100 not UTC since May 26, 2000

l_ = last (previous) value; inc = increase in stats value
wa7 = ((stats + (6 * l_wa7))/7) = weighted average with denominator 7

sabre23t: Random Nodes

RockLobster is still moving up quite smartly, and Woundweavr has followed him. But, Segnbora-t gave way back to Saige.

sabre23t: Nodes to node

12:30 EET

Excuse me, but I would like to point out that getting only 4.5 hours of sleep sucks ass.

This was the 3rd night this year I had this strange acute insomnia attack. My pulse was fast and I was sweating, unable to sleep. There wasn't any apparent mental/physical stress to cause this effect.
I do understand that this isn't a serious case of sleeplessness. After all, 4.5 hours is better than no sack time at all. When my mother suffered from depression years ago, she didn't sleep for 3 nights in a row and had to take pretty heavy medication for a good while. My father has had problems with his back which have kept him up half of the night every now and then for years. So I really should stop whining about my microscopical troubles and get on with my day.

I dug my old Magic: The Gathering cards out of my closet yesterday. I was so hooked on that games years back.. There still are some quite rare and valuable ones I haven't sold. Better check what they are worth these days.
A good friend was over while I checked my closets and boxes for more cards, and we made plans to spend the friday night playing MTG just for the nostalgia. Naturally we are going to research the effects of herbal remedies to playing the game, purely for the interest of science of course.

morning

wake up. it's gorgeous out. decide to ride my bike to work. load up on coffee and miscellaneous vitamin supplements.

i don't know what to node today. i am a mere 6 writeups from level 5. i'm stuck. my day log entries are all well and good, but i would prefer to add some real content to everything. i have some downtime today at work. my tasks for the next few days are taken care of. i'll get started on next weeks tasks soon, but i'm going to take some time to goof off.

more later...

afternoon

well, so i goofed off more than i meant to. i just needed 6 write ups to get to level 5, and i added about 30 about volcanoes. heh, there goes the work day. oh well. everything i did was worked into the volcano meta-node which is well worth a looking at.



I have achieved Level 5! Mwa Ha Ha!


evening plans

grab a sub or go to the grocery store for some stuff. pick up the packages for me at the rental office. walk the dog. run the vacuum over the carpet. sit and take some deep breaths. go to practice. come home. eat sub (or stuff from the grocery store). don't stay up too late.
Shortly after my arrival in New York City, one of my godfathers died -- Joe, the eldest at 95. I hadn't counted on seeing him immediately, since I thought he would be at his Cooperstown manse, rather than his Harlem brownstone; a visit is now a moot point. The Times obit, oddly, didn't show up until this week, about 2 1/2 weeks after his death. One fact in it had escaped me -- Joe, a lawyer, as is his widow Helen (one of my godmothers) ran for the US Congress three times against Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., twice before I was born, and the final run took place while I was still in diapers. He was surely trounced each time, being cursed both by the godlike stature of Rev. Powell, and by the fact that he was a Republican. We're probably talking single-digit shares of the vote here.

One of my more vivid early-childhood dreams took place in Joe and Helen's living room: I was being chewed out (don't know why) by Desi Arnaz and William Frawley; this was, no doubt, a result of having watched one too many I Love Lucy reruns in those preschool mornings.


This morning, I was going about my sometimes-ritual of buying the Times and a caffeinated beverage at a small local grocery store, and then smoking a cigarette and browsing through the paper before boarding the subway train. As I'm paying for the stuff, a man comes in and asks the cashier about the blood outside, and the cashier gives a curt, angry response. I hadn't noticed any blood, but upon leaving, I saw it; it started with a shallow pool, containing a couple of cigarette butts, then you could follow the trail of drops of blood part of the way up the block, in the direction I was headed. I normally pick a spot in front of one of the not-yet-opened storefronts for my smoke-and-browse activity, but picked a spot further up the block, so as to avoid being around the drops of blood. I chose a pizza place, but noticed that the drops continued there, after I'd thought they were finished. I sat down anyway, and did my thing. With my last puff, I stared at the crimson droplets on the sidewalk, and mentioned something to Toto.

Morning

Woke up at 9:30AM, damn I was going to go to work at nine! Oh well, went back to sleep...

Afternoon

Woke up at 1:30 PM, damn was going to go to work at noon! Oh well, went back to sleep...

Later Afternoon

Woke up at 3:30Pm. Finally dragged my ass out of bed. Went down stairs to find something to eat, didn't find anything. Logged onto Everything. Damn, I wish I had an Everything Alarm Clock! Late for work: 5:55PM.

Work

Boring. Too long. Can't wait to go home to log on...

Today was one of the strangest days I have had in a long time. I actually slept for 16 hours. I haven't slept for more than four-five in weeks. I thought I would feel better if I finally got some sleep. But I don't. I don't feel worse either. But I was hoping to feel better. Maybe I just feel guilty cos I didn't go in for any extra hours. Maybe it was that awful dream I had last night. I wish they would stop...
Today started out on a note that saddened me. There were the two nodes by, about DMan:

If the first one is true; its sad. If it isn’t; its sadder still. I can’t make that judgement.

And the second one, when anyone loses their passion for doing something, it is always an occasion for sadness.

Talked with shmOOnkie pOOnks, (I think I spelled the marshmallow’s name right today8)), about noding. I think I give away no secrets when I say that noders with any success node in several different ways. They will recognize the following (and probably have more):

Nodes they plan, and write offline. Like this Day Log.

Nodes they etext from Project Gutenberg, or other sources of public domain texts. I found the The Golden Sayings of Epictetus there, today I did:

I don’t just cut and paste. When I downloaded the text file, I didn’t do it quite right; I lost the formatting. So I spent my time with it reading, and re-paragraphing it. Also I try to improve the archaic language a bit.(That’s why the translation is public domain.) And I format it to highlight Epictetusthought. I’m editing this etext.

There are also the etexts I enter by my own hand. Today I’ve done nothing from The Man with the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens. Must try tomorrow.

I’ve done a lot of this in the past, particularly poetry, my own, and others. And other text.

Then there are nodes of opportunity. These are the ones noders do online, in immediate response to nodes, or chat they see, or just an idea that expresses itself in expanding into node after node. Today I noded the following in this manner:

Made my pot roast today. It is delicious. No time to node it, will try tomorrow.

Scheduling is a bit less of a nightmare today. This is the time of the year when the Director’s Office is festooned with schedules: the year past, worn and tired; the summer, bright and cheerful; the fall, not yet fully formed.

I teach in a piano school. But any teaching arrangement would require scheduling. Although I have more than a little experience, some I’ve noded about, I don’t much like doing it any more.

Instead of doing a lot of noding today, I spent it cooking, and working on covers of the songs from my new song book, The Groovy Years, that I bought yesterday. Working on my Roland XP-10, its transposing keyboard gives me a resonably workable illusion I can sing.

Unlike most compilations, this book has more than one or two I like: Besides "And When I Die", there is the Turtles' hit, "Happy Together", Barry McGuire’s "Eve of Destruction", several Steppenwolf, Cream, "Turn, Turn, Turn," sung by The Birds, "Wild Thing", by The Troggs, "For Your Love", sung by The Yardbirds. The band I was in for a time did a good cover of that.

Several of my adult students wanted me to play some of them. "Leaving on a Jet Plane", sung by Peter, Paul & Mary, was another request.

The practicing thing came up again today--as it will until exams are finished at the end of the month. We cannot force our children to practice, anymore than we can force them to do their school homework. As a piano teacher, I don’t have the advantage of seeing them everyday--though that is an advantage in other ways for some students.

Some students defect--stop practicing. I only hope that in working with me I have helped them come to a little understanding not only about music and piano. With all my students, adult and child, I always try for rapport, a connection, through which I may show them the door to things beyond things.

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