Escaped Thoughts

Sun, Oct 17, 2004

Dash-tastic

I think the em-dash—that fantastically useful divider—is rapidly replacing the comma as my most over-used punctuation mark. Although parentheses and semi-colons (some of my other favorite punctuators) tend to creep in fairly often as well; maybe I just need to write down fewer of my tangential thoughts?

Category: Language

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Apparently, They Lied

It seems that the songs aren't true, because I'm sitting here listening to the rain on our deck/patio/porch (I may, at Josh's suggestion, start calling it a lanai—no-one can agree on what it is, but I think everyone could agree on it not being a lanai). You can take the man out of Oregon, but you can't take Oregon out of the man—as much as I enjoy the sunshine here, grey rainy days make me feel like I'm truly home.

Category: Life

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Gadget Dilemma

Working inside the reality-distortion field every day has intensified my innate need to buy gadgets that I probably don't need—luckily, Laura acts as a force of sanity, causing me to ration my purchases. The problem is, this leaves me with the task of picking which gadget to get first. Here's my current wish list:

512 MB RAM – there's nothing quite like RAM to make an old computer feel zippy and new again. The 512 I have now is nice, but I'm often near or past the upper end because of all the stuff I keep open all the time (as the 1 GB of virtual memory files that live full time on my drive can attest to).
Keystation 49e – I've always sort of wished I'd stuck with piano, and now Garage Band is making getting back into it even more tempting. Sure it's not a real piano, but it's much smaller, cheaper, and easier to move, so it's actually feasible. This is perhaps the most dangerous of the items on my list, since it could be a starter drug for larger, more expensive keyboards (like the 61es).
iSight – What would I use it for? Who would I talk to? I have no clue. Do I want one anyways? Heck yeah. The RDF at its finest. In my defense, I do have some plans to play around with stop-motion and time-lapse recording, which should be fun.
iTalk – It's less important now that I'm not on the move as much as I was in college, but still potentially useful for filling the iPod's input void.
AirPort Express – Right now my G4 is our wireless basestation, which means I can't put it to sleep and, more importantly, it has to live on the wall with our cable modem. As a bonus for the AirPort, that's the wall with our stereo stuff (for the moment at least). So although not vital, it would give us more freedom, which could become even more important whenever we move, depending on what the new layout is like.

I've pretty much narrowed my first choice down to the RAM (boring, but safe) and the keyboard (cool, but risky). On one hand, I'll never say to myself, “Boy, I sure wish I hadn't bought that RAM. I never use it!” On the other hand, I won't be saying “This RAM is so much fun! I could just play with it for hours and hours!” Do I want the subtle, pervasive improvement to my whole computer experience, or the Christmas-morning excitement and the possibility of a new creative outlet?

So here I am, balanced between childishness and fuddy-duddydom, stability and excitement. If you think about it, isn't that really a metaphor for the struggle we all face daily in our lives to define who we are?

No, I didn't think so either.

Category: Geek

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