Category: Hobbies


Be cruel to your school

Filed Under: About Me, Life, Meta, Politics, rant by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2010.10.13

It is shortly after midnight on what is now the morning of Wednesday, October 13th, 2010. As usual, I’m not tired. If I go upstairs now, I will find myself playing either Minesweeper or Sudoku to tire myself out.

A one-night fling from years and years ago appears in my IM (Damn, I never discard anything) I haven’t shared words with her pretty much since that one night. I contemplate saying hello. I type into the IM window:

‘I would say, “hello.” But I don’t know if it was garner a response. And honestly I don’t know to what purpose it would serve starting a conversation.’

I don’t get more than a few characters into the word honestly; contemplate the rest of my sentence; and then discard the text and close the window.

It’s another one of those nights where I’ve been looking at legal proceedings between large companies and individuals. I’ve been reading how laws have been very carefully designed to protect the large companies from the individuals. I’m saddened by how few laws protect the individual.

This always leads me back to the pipe dream of going to Law School. This is of course pardoning the irony that Law School itself is one giant corporate machine masked in higher education and the only people that really succeed at it are the ones willing to get into bed with the large companies that are destroying the individual one-by-one.

Of course there’s also the personal limitation that to get into Law School they expect you to at least have a Bachelor’s degree, which to this day I am still blissfully missing. I wish that Education and I hadn’t had such a hate-hate relationship when I was in my 20s. I see the point now. I’m also pleased that both fields I studied in then have a more solid grounding for people with degrees now.

In college I studied two disciplines (more than any other) Theatre and Computer Science. My Theatre department was wonderful. Unfortunately, like many small colleges it was also very incestuous and driven to powerful cliques. I of course was a social ignoramus, so I fell out of the clique fairly quickly. There were also so many specific topics that I did not excel in that made me feel inferior in the department. My costuming and makeup work was second to last to none. Also, there really wasn’t a large call for Degrees in theatre in the real world. Granted, in college I also discovered that I really didn’t have the chops to pursue Theatre professionally.

I discovered that the performing arts (as well as other media) is a very cutthroat field where the manufacture of your business self often supersedes your professional self. It’s more important how you sell yourself than what you’re selling. (Art isn’t easy) And with that dripping level of cynicism by age 22, I knew I didn’t want to wait tables.

My other field was computer science. At my college this degree was an absolute mess. The chair of the department (who rumour has it has since been incarcerated) was an absolute egotistical tyrant who taught classes by giving unsolvable problems to weed out anyone he felt was undeserving in the major. Which was everyone. He actually tried to charge me for his time when I asked him for some information on a topic I wanted to pursue on my own time. (Object oriented Pascal for the interested) I was shocked at his pretentiousness and went to the Provost. She told me that not a lot of people understand her job and that she was pleased I came to speak with her. She explained that her job was to remind the tenured faculty that they were in fact mortal. The department chair wanted nothing to do with me from there.

So, with one major filled with people that I didn’t get along with terribly well (including my Theatrical advisor who told me to my face that he considered me his greatest academic failure) working towards a degree that would only help me if I wanted to pursue Dramaturgy, publishing or teaching in college, on one hand; on the other a major that was downright hostile to me because it was busy teaching the chairs pet classes that were antiquated to say the least (VAX/VMS and no compiler design classes)… I dropped out.

Amazingly in less than 5 years I would go from Welfare to a position as a software architect at a Major University.

In those 5 years I did try to return to college; I went to community college to prove I could pass a class with something higher than a C. I then went to the local university in my hometown. (Yeah, that narrows it down)… Actually I went to the Dramatic conservatory in the city first and auditioned for their directing program and got top recommendation yet wait-listed. Which is a story that could fill another huge post. The local university took me as a student in my vain hopes to complete my CS degree. Within 1.5 years I was hired on because of the information I’d specialized in on my own time.

It’s now been 15 years since that University hired me. That doesn’t count the 5-7 years of odd work I did with computers before getting hired on. Co-workers in my company often refer to me as the Sr. Guru. I appreciate that. I’ve spent a long time not just studying the technology I work in, but the company that makes it. Its business practices as well as its technology practices. I’d work for them someday; but I’ve actually come to like the idea of settling in Pittsburgh.

But despite that… no BS. I guess just a lot of BS that really wasn’t BS after awhile. And despite this, I have the AUDACITY to believe I could go to Law school, especially now that I have a family and am the primary income source. And my reason? The vain hope to help legislate to help people. This unto itself is very funny for someone who was more interested in doing theatre than the job of selling oneself. Which seems to be all that legislators are really interested in.

We’re nearing election time. You can tell this because the “them vs. us” attitude is at an all-time high. Once again issues dissolve away into spin about how, “THEIR SIDE IS EEEEEEEEEVUL” Well, let me assure you… Politicians are not EEEEEEEVUL. I’ve read “Fahrenheit-451” and “Liber Al vel Legis” Those books are EEEEEEEVUL. Why? Because they change you, they make you think, they make you better the more you take them into your life. The hypocrisy of elected officials who feel their job is to make you hate the other person more so that they can stalemate government long enough to make you hate again two years later. That’s not EEEEEEVUL. That’s not even evil… It’s just sad.

I have issues I truly believe in that come from issues championed on both sides of the aisle. By both sides I mean Democrats and Republicans. I will state that I do not believe in the current Republican Agenda which really seems to boil down to, “Vote the ticket” which of course is completely destructive to the Democrats which boil down to, “Vote with your heart”. Then there’s the tea party, which seems to boil down to, “Vote with your passion, because God decided to omit your brain.”

And all the while… the corporations take more and more away. There’s so little left. And so few who really want to change it… even fewer who actually have the power to do it.

It’s disheartening. Maybe enough for me to message someone I slept with one night years ago… Or at least get my mind churning in a direction that is better to afford sleep.

Law School, pipe dream or potential. *shrug*

Bedtime I guess.

-Night.

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Book Meme

Filed Under: About Me, Philosophy by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2010.08.24

Taken from a post on the blog: “In Her Web She Still Delights”

List 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you: list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don’t take too long to think about it.

In no particular order besides coming up with the list:

  1. Fahrenheit 451
  2. A Wrinkle In Time
  3. Flatland
  4. Planiverse
  5. Stranger In A Strange Land
  6. Cat’s Cradle
  7. Godel Escher Bach
  8. Liber Al vel Legis
  9. The Riverside Shakespeare
  10. Wizard of Earthsea
  11. Octagon
  12. Links
  13. Beneath Apple DOS
  14. Unix in a Nutshell
  15. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Composed on the bus ride to work

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The body of this post ironically has 1,206 words.

Filed Under: About Me, Hobbies, Life, Meta, Philosophy, rant by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2010.08.15

I am reminded of two commercials… Libby’s and Smuckers. Both finally were honest about the nature of brand-based advertising. In the case of the former the jingle went, “If it says “Libby’s, Libby’s Libby’s” on the “Label Label Label” you will “like it like it like it” on the “Table table table.” Smuckers took the direct approach; “With a name like Smuckers… it’s got to be good.”

Is the name really sufficient to identify something’s worth or quality? The classic “Saturday Night Live” had their response to the name making the Jam But in the 1970s… SNL had a driving and vicious look at the world that has only been rivalled of late by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.

So in this worlds where we are seeing the war of Gay Marriage vs. Equal Marriage for all … words as always become weapons of mis-definition and weighted egregore. The great saint George the 14th (For those not keeping count that is George Carlin) said it best that…”There are no bad words… Bad thoughts… but no bad words.”

We use words to define and refine who we are. This can be either by single words that we try to master, own, re-direct, or any other number of verbs. My personal favourite will always be ‘slut.’ This word contemporarily still carries with it darkness or often an ugliness directed at a woman who enjoys having intercourse; often times with more than one partner. There is no gentle word for this behaviour for a woman in English. There is no gentle or even not-so-gentle word for the behaviour in a man. Though sadly, in a man it’s just behaviour that is expected and underwhelming when revealed.

These words can also be sentences, phrases, or oaths. Promises we make to ourselves or to others. I will be this way. I promise to do that thing. I resolve to lose twenty pounds in the New Year. And in truth we find ourselves fixated on the guilt when we either don’t live up to these phrases or worst condemn ourselves when we unconsciously or worse yet consciously break them with intent.

Sometimes we seek definitions to hinder, soften, or deflect other definitions. I am a heterosexual, white, and married male. Each of those words carry the weight of an entire polar opposite group who have members that avidly resent me just for having one of those. For each group represented by one of mine descriptors there are members that have committed (and still commit) great injustices. So, I deflect by finding comforting terminology that subdues each one. I actually consider myself a Queer, Jewish, Pair-Bonded, ummm… err… Okay… Now I mis-quote Meatloaf: “Three out of four ain’t bad.” Well, two out of four.. It’s never okay to admit Judaism… there’s still groups out there that think Semitic Genocide is still a good plan.

Queer? But you said you were hetero?!?! While I’m not going to go fully into my sexual views in this posting (as thanks to the Facebook revolution I now have active co-workers reading my blogs 😉 but suffice it to say; that I tend to view my views as avant-garde and often times challenging to the norm. This ability to see both sides of the line and to try to pull both sides closer has served me well as an ordained priest. Especially when offering pastoral counselling.

Priest? But you said you were Jewish!!! (And now I see the old Giggles and Goggles routine from the Electric Company. And please… This is a show that ran in the 70’s and 80’s. Any programme you saw from the last 5 years calling itself “The Electric Company“… Wasn’t even close. But look… we come back to the power of names and words.

My last post was about the change of my name. It’s interesting how people have reacted to it. There have been the obvious two camps. Those that knew me by my birth name and those that never knew me by that name. Society seems to not really have a strong acceptance for men changing their names at marriage. As I said before, it’s an interesting argument with civil servants who ask for my wife’s birth name but not mine. Of course there is one subset that does stand out, those that were there when the transformation began.

My name change happened outside before it happened on the inside. This is similar to the Watchman character of Rorschach who put on the name until one day something changed inside of him that made him change from being a man calling himself Rorschach to becoming Rorschach even out of costume. I can say with all honesty, The Greg calling himself Andrei was not a great person. He kind of sucked in many, many ways. There are those that probably would never be able to really accept the Andrei I am as I wear Greg’s face and carry the name Andrei. Again, the reference here is to an amazing two-part Doctor Who. The 2nd part “Family of Blood” really hammers home the idea of “The Doctor wearing an identity” while the identity itself has a life of its own.

Doctor Who also gives me another inspiration for this twisted web of the value of a word or name. In one episode we meet creatures that use the power of words to build, control, and destroy. Yet, when they try to use the name of a contemporary woman to kill her, it fails. She is merely rendered unconscious while the creature exclaims that ‘the name has lost its power and meaning to these people.” We’ve come a very far way from the worlds of “Earthsea” where people used public names because their secret names carried so much power over them.

Perhaps in reflection this is a possible reason why the Jews were so hunted and hated. Their entire language and alphabet is built on the Thoth-ian concept of the power of the word and the letter. The Hebrew alphabet is often referred to as the “Alephbet of Flame” as each letter looks like it was breathed out by the Old Testament God him-(white, male, straight)-self. The Hebrew Torah itself is copied by hand so that every letter looks and is placed exactly where it always is required to be. The deepest layers of Hebrew Mysticism come from the power of words and the numbers they represent.

So, while we wish to control words, we must also understand that words have power. A name can be as powerful an identifier as an epithet or slur. But power comes from within as well as from without. We can take on the power of a word as quickly as we can let ourselves be crushed by its weight.

Words are magickal creatures. They have a life and a power of their own. We keep them, we wield then, we use them, and we abuse them. But we have no choice… Words are the doorways to the unspoken magic that transcends the voice of creation and destruction. This is the magick that exists without sound or form. And when we unlock that power… maybe we won’t need words to cause each other harm.

Agape-

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What’s in a name… Part 6

Filed Under: About Me, Philosophy by Lord Andrei — 2 Comments
2010.08.05

Andrei Greg and his two closest friends from grade school

Not quite 6 years; yet change is a constant.

On October 7th, 2010, I will celebrate an anniversary. Tangentially, it is related to my most amazing and loving wife with whom I share the dubious and Facebook-foisted dishonour of being labeled merely as “In an open relationship with.” I call it a dishonour because it’s not accurate. I’m assuredly married. If anyone were to try to mess with my marriage to Heather I’d assuredly take great offense. I don’t think open relationship is accurate either despite the fact that we are theoretically poly. I use the term theoretically because while we are in practice polyamourous and have carried on secondary relationships beyond our marriage, raising a child really does not give you much of a chance to date or form relationships. (I do not know how single parents do it!)

But as I said, this anniversary is only tangentially related to my wife and actually started 3, 5, 15, 43 years earlier. The anniversary is that on Oct 7, 2004. The California State Court issued my official decree of name change. This was the day that I laid Greg A. Tapolow to rest. Or so I thought at the time. Over the past year there have been some very interesting changes that once again cause me to look on the decisions and changes I’ve been through. And dear reader, less you panic, I have no intentions of changing it again… or back. Though as they say, “Never say never.”

The post was actually inspired by a letter I received this evening (of the writing of this post) from someone I knew briefly but not well in High School. “The marvels of Facebook.” People over 35 are no longer afraid of computers and everyone can find almost everyone. Everyone, of course, except for the one of two individualists who wish to hold out from the revolution much like Knox Overstreet merely to prove a point or by those who wish to blame Facebook for the loss of privacy that was in fact stolen away decades if not centuries ago. But I digress.

No really, a quick digression: I couldn’t remember the name of the character so I went to IMDB. There was a huge article on the casting of Carol Burnett in a show I really enjoy (Glee) and one thing led to another, and 45 minutes later and several web searches later, I closed my browser, saw this post and thought… Oh yeah… That’s why I opened a browser… Damned net. End digressions.

The E-mail talked to me about change and the estrangement from family; both of which I know all too well. Normally, when someone asks about my name change I have a simple link on LiveJournal that I send to him or her. (Ahh, LiveJournal… Remember when… No, no… not going there.) However, first I read over the 6-7 year old posts. This time they read very much as an incomplete book; it reads more like the early chapters alone. I suppose the change over the last year has definitely affected my views. At this point, I strongly suggest that if you haven’t read this link that you do so before continuing. Note: It reads best if you do so from the bottom post up to the top post.

Until about 6-9 months ago. Greg was a remnant to be discarded. He was someone that I paid lip service to as being my foundation but me being a changed person different from him. Up until 6-9 months I couldn’t or more properly wouldn’t speak his name. For a long time it was mental discipline. Thinking as an Andrei. Not thinking as an ex-Greg. I remember this time very much as I went through my own personal Liber Jugorum. Cursing myself everytime I turned and looked when someone called the name ‘Greg.’ Personally, I think the mental discipline can be done without self-mutilation.

I’m saying 6-9 months because there was a weekend where much changed in my life. It was very Dickensesque. In one weekend, my wife suffered her worst migraine, writhed in pain a lot, got introduced to the wonder that is vicodin and then I was contacted by my best friend from elementary school. And that weekend happened about a year in advance of the change 6-9 months ago. That however opened the floodgates.

I changed from Greg to Andrei to escape a very painful time in my memory. My father had a stroke when I was 11 years old. From that point forwards things in my household were never quite right again. For 11 years I’d been raised to be a spoiled rich kid with manners. I was the son of a prominent doctor in a small sub-suburb of Philadelphia. For the next 11 years things didn’t go as well. I would explain to folks that I’d spent a good bit of my late 20s and early 30s fixing the damage that had been done.

But what I failed to consider was those first 11 years. “Greg” to me had come to symbolise the damage of a decade or so and the repair that followed. It was also the closest thing. I’d moved to the West Coast, changed my name, and abandoned my estranged family (which for sanity reasons, has been an amazingly correct choice). I grew up. I felt I’d become a better person. But there was still the Greg who led a fairly well adjusted life as a child. And one person had called me on it.

My friend had found me on FB through a posting I made to a group for our rather small and private elementary school. He looked at the picture and instantly recognised me. For about 3 months there was a rush of enthusiasm to contact as many of the old group as possible. (I believe there’s got to be a slang term or sniglet for this phase) Over this time, I was reminded of who I was close to, who I didn’t know as well or specifically didn’t like. And of course the girl I (foolishly) adored who made my life miserable. There was also the girl that had I not been thick, would have realised from day one was absolutely the coolest person ever and potentially ended up dating her. (Too many stories there… long one short… she’s the one I got to see most recently and I’m thrilled to have her back in my life as a friend after 25 years)

These people knew a Greg that was a good person; a person who was taught to honestly say please and thank-you by age 4. By 4 I could read, spell, write very sloppily, and do simple math. (My son at three has far better penmanship than I ever will) So what was the magickal thing that happened within the last 12 months? Well, I think it was the last 12 months. I can’t for the life of me find a blog post on the topic. I really thought I wrote about it. Well… here it is.

With a wife living in Chronic Pain, A toddler, and a major layoff in 2009. (Eventually 2)… I was under a little bit of stress. Even before the layoff there was stress. I had a little bit of a crumble during this time and decided it was time to go back for counseling. Ironically the counseling started the Monday after the weekend of the migraine, vicodin, and FB contact.

Through most of my sessions, my name really never came up. Then at one point we talked about it. I inferred the name, I dodged the name, but in short, I refused to say the name and there was no good reason not to. I told her my full name. It was the first time I think I’d said the name aloud in about 8 years. (I could name the last time I’d said it aloud, but if I told you why, I’d have to kill you 😉 It was admittedly the death of me to do so.) It was odd saying the name. It was even odder talking not merely about Greg as another person, but taking the good parts of him back into me. The analyst suggest that I have a chat with Greg and find out what he’s been up to and how he feels about the whole thing. (Ah, just what I need Dissociative Identity Disorder… which some might say I already have)

I went home. Heather asked me how my session went. I looked at her and told her we’d been chatting about “Greg Tapolow.” Her jaw dropped. She’d never heard me speak the name in our entire relationship. It was a positive thing. It was the start of a new phase of my life. This phase, however, would ironically put me back in the den of the worst years of my life (early 20s) back in Pittsburgh.

Recently, I’ve taken more steps to … I guess the term would be ‘integrate.’ My FB profile now lists my “Maiden Name” (I really hate that term) I also especially hate government forms that ask for my wife’s maiden name but refuse mine. “Do you need mine?” No. “Well, why do you need hers?” Also, I’ve finally acquiesced to putting my birth name into my genealogy software. Users are supposed to be listed by their birth names (Which is REALLY going to piss of my cousins who changed their names when they were kids)

So now I talk about Greg. I’m still Andrei and really not planning a return. I will still correct people who call me Greg. I will still slack people who’ve known me since way before my marriage. It is however an interesting feeling to look back at the change I created and the motivation behind it. And how that’s changed from its original change.

I suppose no story is ever really complete until the last page.

P.S. Caleb – Does that answer your question or just create more? Feel free to send a friend request through FB for more chat.

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Today I Violated Google!

Filed Under: About Me, Hobbies, Statistics by Lord Andrei — Leave a comment
2010.03.17

Okay, not so much the company, but their search Terms of Service.

Okay, I didn’t so much violate their Terms of Service as their automated bots thought I did.

Actually the irony was that their automated bots thought I was an automated bot.

I suppose, the real irony is that this situation was inspired by today’s web comic on XKCD and as a result deserves to become a daily comic on XKCD.

I am without a doubt a statistics freak. I love crunching numbers. I love using Excel. (I think this is why the MacBU was scared of me)

My most recent uses of Excel have been:

So back to today’s XKCD. It was a statistician’s dream. All those wonderful google statistics. Of course I found myself wondering, “What about age?” I also found myself wondering about the extreme ends that were edited out from the illustrations. So I tried a few of the samples. The numbers are pretty much accurate. So I figured… “My turn!!!!!”

I opened up my browser and typed in, “I am 3 years old.” I got a surprisingly high response. Of course then I realised that this was likely the doing of parents who were enthusiastically writing about their toddlers. “I am 2 years old.” Similar response. I did 4, then 5. Then I realised. I should write these down. I opened up Simple Text. (That’s better than notepad for the Mac Impaired). I did about 15 more. Then I realised I should be doing this in Excel. So, I back paged on my browser to keep the pages in order. Then I front paged again recording the data. About 5 later I got a Google “Sorry” page.

I’d never seen this beast before. The help page told me that Google perceived me to be an automated bot which is not permitted by the terms of service. This page also directed me to a form where I could type in my name, email, and IP. No place for an explanation. Well, carp (sic) my IP had been blocked from making Google searches. Oddly after I reported the form my search came back in about 30 seconds. Ah… no harm no foul. So I went back to work. Hey… XKCD could do it, why not me. I got up to 97 and it happened again. Went back to the form. Nothing. Now there was no google. My entire home network goes through this IP. (Not my served domains, just the end users in the house).

Turns out, Google really isn’t to responsive to these problems. The user is left to their own devices. Their own devices being defined as asking their ISP to change their IP. Granted, discovering this was not easy as I no longer had “Google” to use as a tool. It would seem that Yahoo still has its uses. Well, after a good half hour of reading vitriolic “Google Hate” boards the answer revealed itself to me. It turns out that Google simply (redacted) vicious (redacted) and all you have to do is (redacted) assuming you can figure out which (redacted) and then everything is fine again.

But in the mean time… I now know what age people say they are on the interwebz.

This chart fascinates me for several reasons. First off, it seems that people are most eager to express their age at 7. Of course there is some drift when you consider that there are song titles and lyrics that include the line, “I am (x) years old.”

What’s really nifty is that people tend to go on 3-4 year cycles of talking about it and NOT talking about it. Er. Writing about it. 43 is such a peak between 40 and 47.

Looking at the posts it’s also amusing to see what people are saying with their statements of age. Kids are talking about pride. Teens have problems. Young adults are talking about things they do. 30s-50s are talking about work. 60’s-80’s are talking about medical procedures and health. And Ironically past 80’s it’s all about the pride of still being able to post on the net.

Looking at these little cycles I decided to cluster ages by 3 and 4. So in one chart I’ve done: 1-3, 4-6, 5-9, etc. In the next I’ve done: 1-4, 5-8, 9-12. If I cared I’d be really tempted to graph astrological returns onto this.

Hits on google for "I am (x) years old" grouped by 3.

Hits on google for "I am (x) years old" grouped by 4.

The good news is that since then, my Google search has been restored. And I am free to hunt after free roaming data again.

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