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Woke up before dawn this morning, not because i forgot to change my clock but because I had such a full day ahead. (Click some pictures for larger versions.)
Yesterday I setup my Moroccan Tent, because friends of a friend had a beautiful wedding at the beach. They had the ceremony under a huppah out on the sand, and we all coiled up into a kabbalistic spiral together to start the event.
But they wanted my tent up all night, so I slept over in my van.
It was hard to pack up the tent in the morning with seven people asleep in it though. I love seeing people that comfortable in my tent, sacked out and safe in its shelter. Makes me go all rubbery.
But after a full cup of coffee I was ready to wake them up and pack pack pack it in.
I enjoyed seeing the surfers arrive at dawn, and watch them for a sec. I’ve lived here for so long and still haven’t learned to surf. Add that to the long list of things to do.
Maybe if I move to a warmer freakin’ ocean though…
All that and I still managed to make it sixty miles south for a morning meditation group and then onto work for more debugging. We keep finding serious software bugs to fix.
When will this project be over? I’m exhausted…
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still chugging away on our upcoming product release. our test team keeps finding good things that need to be fixed, and marketing keeps upping the ante on how much security needs to be in the product on the first release.
i’m implementing the dynamic side of our web site, and there seems to be an endless list of things to do. so i haven’t had any time to write in my journal lately.
quick updates:
- last sunday we restarted the silicon valley shambhala group and nine people came to meditate.
- i keep checking with the local megaplex about buying a group of tickets or a whole theater for the upcoming Matrix Revolutions release. But they seem to have fewer prints of the film than they did for the last release, and haven’t been able to give me an answer yet with less than two weeks away.
- i did manage to get a ticket for the upcoming all day Lord of the Rings, back to back showing of all three films on December 16th. That is going to be brilliant but arduous.
- i’m setting up my large Moroccan tent this Saturday for a wedding. The wedding is on the beach just before sunset with a procession down to the water. Then there is a reception and party planned just off the beach, and my tent will serve as a space for the party with a DJ setup.
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wow, john. thanks for the kick ass link to Ishkar’s guide to electronic music. i thought i had a decent handle on the different genre’s but this guide really dives *deep* into all the subgenres with hilarious commentary and audio samples of each. sweet.
and badger in her enthusiasm for cuneiform found a super cool set of animated gif’s demonstrating the evolutions of european alphabets from their roots.
i’m still madly working to finish a year-long project, and hold onto my sanity nonetheless. wish me luck.
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this saturday night, friends from NYC came to town for a bachelor party. mike is getting married in a month, but he was nice enough to let all his left coast friends torture him for the weekend. we started the night at dinner, but the highlight of the night for me was Club 181: a little touch of east coast here in laid back SF. we immediately reserved one of the VIP tables for an hour.
the club looked like many others, except for the soft couches and small tables along one side of the room. there was even a bed set up with pillows, making the place look like a large Crate and Barrel furniture showcase but with a DJ. Each set of couches and the bed were individual VIP areas you could reserve, including little black ropes and a bouncer to keep non VIP’s out of your area. To rent an area, you agree to buy one, measly bottle of booze for $200.
from one perspective, the expense of a vip area is no different than a regular club. say you came with ten friends and reserved a VIP area. you get to skip the line out front, you’re ushered to your area and donned with VIP arm bands. you don’t have to pay a cover charge. this treatment costs you about $20 per person, roughly what you would have paid for one drink and the cover charge to get in anyway. and the non VIP’s are kept outside in the cold by the front door for an hour anyway even though the inside of the club is empty - they must make the place at least _look_ busy.
but my NYC friend explained the real magic of the VIP area was to create the fantasy have and have-not dynamic in the club. it’s important that the areas are elevated, so the have’s and have-not’s can easily see each other and perceive the rift. i really enjoyed the anthropology of the night, both how i reacted to this fake duality and how that changed interactions in the club.
we were onto some cultural pulse though, the ever haggard and frightening steven tyler from aerosmith (king of the camel fist) took over our table when we left.
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ok, i’m such a geek. i just installed a document control system on my laptop so i could version files that i’m working on. since mac’s are unix-y now they come with cvs but i wanted the full enchilada and downloaded perforce, setup a separate perforce account and a protected root directory for it, with handy scripts to admin it from my account. perforce is free for a single user.
sheesh. it’s a nice day out, too. i should get some fresh air.
it’s for a good cause though, i keep futzing with my web page projects more and more and i’m worried that i’ll nuke something by accident. the next step are some scripts to backup and deploy versions of each site, which automatically submit changes to perforce for me. that way if i horribly screw up a site i can revert to an earlier backup easily, and i can automate backups.
after all that’s done, i’m going to start prototyping a family tree web site with my genealogy research, but in a way that family members can sign into the site and update content, add stories, and contact each other. in my copious spare time of course.
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&i’ve been working at a small startup for the last sixteen months, and we’re within a few weeks of releasing our first product. but we’re not really done. much of the polish in my interface designs we didn’t have time to complete, there are still major features going in which won’t see much testing, and i’m killing myself at the moment to find and fix bugs in the web site.;br />
don’t get me wrong, it’s a good product and it does work well. it’s just not going to live up to my personal standards and that’s incredibly frustrating. especially the interface designs i spent so much time on. they’ll potentially improve the next release for january, but my initial pride and enthusiasm in the first release will be a mix of embarrassment (as people find the half-finished interfaces hard to use) and exhaustion.
on the plus side of all this, i remind myself, i picked up skills during this time which i hadn’t planned on but i’m really, really jazzed about. i’ve planned to take off and travel if the company failed. probably spend time volunteering and working on personal projects too. but now that things are going well i’m tempted to stay longer - fixing the damn interface issues which i couldn’t resolve for this release - and maybe learn a few more skills. the joys of a startup: you can (and are forced to) pick up many different hats to wear.
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although not Jewish, over the years I’ve occasionally participated in Jewish holidays to experience them and understand them better. today is Yom Kippur. i wouldn’t feel comfortable completely engaging in this one, and i can’t take off work today to go to a synagogue and pray. but i haven’t eaten anything or had anything to drink since yesterday before sunset and i’ve been thinking about what it means to ask for forgiveness and repenting.
mostly though i’ve just been thinking about food! i’m starving.
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when His Holiness was on the east coast, he met with a panel of scientists. the washington post had a really interesting article about the exchange.
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ok, i only posted the first half of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s quote last week. He lived from 1882 to 1926 by the way, so his language and view is from that context.
“We learn from this that both opinions are right. We are evolving, and yet at the same time, going backward… This brings us ot the philosophical conception that it is not only the world that is round, but that every thing is round: that everythign moves in circles. For instance the early dawn is not very different from the late evening, age is not very different from infancy, when we realize how innocence develops as one grows old and arrives at a stage where one shows the same expression of the angelic spheres which one had as an infant. It is just like the octave: seven notes and then the key-note comes again. It is not going upward or downward, it is going in a circle… Progress means going upward and downward at the same time; progress should be described by a circle and not a straight line. If we look at it from this point of view, everything in the world has a circular aspect, for the real picture of motion, of movement, is a circle.”
what’s your take on this confusing answer?
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I found this thoughtful quote from Hazrat Inayat Khan to share:
“It is most interesting to notice that the East and West have a different or perhaps contrary opinion on the subject of the world’s evolution. While in the West, man thinks that we are becoming more evolved, that we have progressed and are going forward compared with our forefathers, in the East man believes that we are going backward and downward, that we are worse. What is the truth about this?
From the point of view that there has never been such good communication in the world as nowadays… uniting mankind in one moment at any distance; besides the development that is taking place in every branch of science… When one looks at all this and cannot doubt for one moment… that the world is evolving.
But when it comes to delicate thought and sentiment, good manners, knightly chivalry, kingly attitude, nobleness of spirit, and generosity of heart, the tendency to sacrifice, depth of feeling, and keenness of insight, we are certain that what the man of the East says is true.”
what do you think?
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