I started and finished a new project tonight over the past two hours or so. It is something I am calling my List Agent.

I made this tool because I was losing track of things I wanted to buy, or wish lists, and things of the like. At work, I would remember something and jot it down. At home, I would do the same, and after 5 individual slips of paper, things still got lost enough that I just stopped with paper and tried to remember things. That obviously didn't work very well.

Now though, this tool will let me create and manage small text file lists as long as I have an Internet connection. Ideally, this means I can add to them at work and at home. Additionally, I could probably link the file itself to a small blurb page so if someone wants to see, for instance, my Christmas wish-list, they can do so.

At any rate, a 2 hour project with a nice use is always a good thing to have around a web site.

"There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. By doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to all things."

-- Yamamoto Tsenetomo, from the book Hagakure

It still freaks me out a little, my uncanny ability to be placed under a starry sky, and within seconds be able to identify the constellation of Orion.

In fact, it's so scary, that if I just sit in a car, glance out the window which offers a limited view of the sky, I'll see Orion. It's like he follows me.

I remember why I can see him too. Back in my very, very young years, Nickolodean had a short-lived, but oft-run series of little info-mercials about space and stars. They were like 2 minute blurbs about something. I always remember getting excited about seeing a new one, learning something else, only to have it be the same old re-run segment. The most-run one was on a small star, Beetlejuece (I'm sure I spelled it wrong, but I'm lazy tonight). This rather bright star happens to reside in the middle of Orion's belt, which is made up of a straight line of three bright stars in a row. The rest of Orion forms a sort of dented trapezoid around this belt.

After seeing that little blurb so many times, and actually learning something from it, I started seeing Orion in the sky; more often than the Dippers. It became something to be almost haunting, that I couldn't look up at the sky without seeing it just jump out at me.

On a related note, astronomy and the idea of sailors and ancient people's memorizing the constellations and even being able to navigate by them used to overwhelm me. It's what really kept me from pursuing more constellation knowledge (I know a few, like Scorpio, my sign, Casiopeia, the Dippers). But now, I can see that once they have meanings, I'm sure ancient people's had the etire heaven's just jump out at them like Orion jumps out at me on a starry night.

Another CNN article has sparked a bit of interest in me. This article actually impacted me beyond the obvious interest in the environment that I have.

But just think about it. Three of your species left in a dense forest, having never met each other. The last breeding of the species was five years ago. These three birds have lived very solitary lives, going through mating seasons with absolutely no payoff (for lack of a better word). It's heart-touching if you ask me. I am glad that efforts have been made to preserve the species, and give them the chance to perform one of the most innate of instincts: furthering the species.

For some reason, my eye caught this article on cnn.com and my mind keeps turning it over and over. The article is about a woman who has been in a vegetative state for 12 years, and a judge has ruled that she may be allowed to die this January.

There are so many things about the story that are interesting. First of all, for issues like euthanasia, it is exactly this sort of extreme situation that is needed in order to start defining morals, guidelines, and right and wrong.

I also cannot imagine being in a vegetative state for 12 years, aware, brain damaged, or not. Would I want to have lived 12 years or more as a vegetable (gosh I hate that word, but the doctors use it too...)? The husband claims she had said previously that she would never want to live in a vegetative state. I probably would claim the same thing right now; but that's very easy for me to say. I'm not the one in such a state. What if I were though...that would be the only thing left. Would I want it taken away? Would I go insane with only my thoughts (if any) for company? Dreams?

The article says she's 38. That means 12 years ago she was 26. Just one year older than me when she suffered "heart failure and massive brain damage."

Last night I was pretty tired when I rolled into bed and turned the light out. After getting comfortable, I remembered my alarm needed set. So, I did a quick scan for my favored, but never remembered morning radio station. I hate most of them though, as the morning crew is always annoying and retarded. I have this lame wheel thing to find stations, and it takes forever to tune things like a football game in on AM.

Anyway, I wanted to avoid the stupid programs that come on in the morning for my alarm, so I quickly found this jazzy song and turned off the alarm.

At any rate, I had the pleasant experience of being awakened this morning to the sounds of "smooth jazz" from a local radio station. I was quite happy, and made my morning pretty nice; nice enough to add the station to my list in my car. Although it's not 100% smooth jazz (think Kenny G styled stuff), as they do play some 80's "light favorites" in there, it's a very nice option when the rock stations get old, and makes a nice compliment to my classical station hotkey.

I've been turning over a new theory in my mind a bit. I think I may be idealistic when it comes to thinking/dealing with myself. In turn, I may be realistic when thinking/dealing with anyone besides myself. That would definitely explain my high self-regard, yet my overall pessimistic view of other people. I wonder if that means I am becoming possibly self-destructive with friendships?

In other news, I bought a new car air freshener tonight. It's called Outdoor Breeze. I think that basically means is smells like soap. Or if that's not the intention, then it's broke because it smells like soap. It also burns my nose...but that's what I get for ripping it fully out of the package and hanging it up like that. Scanning the directions waiting at a stop light enlightened me to the forgotten rule of introducing the freshener gradually into the wild by use of the ugly plastic wrapper being slowly taken off. Oh well, I'll get over it in a few days I'm sure. In the meantime, my car smells like soap.

I've been playing with the front page here, making some minor changes and tweaks. I decided it might be useful to put my recent movie list on my front page here, as well as the movies page. Most of those Passions pages are fairly static and really do not change often at all. Yet, I had a section on the movies page that changed all the time. I guess I decided something that dynamic should be on the dynamic page of the site, the front page.

One of the banes of web pages like mine though (or at least a pet peeve of mine) is the overloading of links and information surrounding news logs like this one. I hate getting overloaded like that. Web surfers are largely the same. We want to find our information within ten seconds of a page loading. If we don't find it, we move on. Information overload immediately glazes eyes over quicker than the History Channel can come back from commercials.

I really want to avoid that, which is why I have kept the front page so minimal in terms of information given. There's news. There's optional (since they're hidden by default) links. There's a random quote.

That's been it, but I think I can get away with a small list of movies. The list displays only movies from the past 30 days, so I doubt it will ever get too long (unless I somehow see more than a movie every 3 days!).

Happy birthday to me!

Fireworks

Every face I see is cold as ice
Everything I touch is pale
Ever since I lost imagination
Like a stream that flows into the sea
I am lost for all eternity
Ever since you took your love away from me

Sometimes the sound of goodbye
Is louder than any drumbeat

Perpetuous Dreamer, "The Sound of Goodbye"

A new domain is not complete without being able to have my own emails! I now have a few set up, including michael@ and mdickey@holdinfinity.com. The first one will be one I don't give out to anyone except those that I want to have my address. Basically, it's my precious one. The mdickey@ one will be freely displayed on this site, and given out to things that want a decent email, but things that are unimportant or temporary. I also have a junk@ email for all the junk crap that I seem to get frequently.

Well, I'm happy to admit to myself that I think I've finally gotten my habit of going to the gym back in order again. I pretty much go 4 or 5 days a week, although I still am doing just the better part of an hour's worth of cardio, and no weight training yet.

Now all I have to do is wrestle my diet back under control. Junk food almost daily can't be good. But I have started my turn-around by picking up some nice green bananas at the store (I had to stop anyway to get some toilet paper)! mmmmm bananas.

The only bad thing is my timing. Now that I am slipping back into old (but good!) habits, the holidays will be coming around and screwing with my schedules to hell and back.

I plan to make another small round of changes to this site. The main aim is to start to get back to my minimalist roots and trim off the excess baggage in my pages. I know that a lot of people skip over some of my lengthy pages, and sometimes just don't ever get to scroll down to what may be the meat I want them to read.

To start the changes, I've updated the personality page a little bit. Where once there was this one huge column, I've "chunked" it down into one small column, along with three links that open small windows with the "chunks" of content. This way, everyone can see what it presented, and thus read or not read. And those that wish to read, get nice chunks rather than a long tome.

"Chunking" is a neat word, and it is one of the things I took from my freshman year English class when we read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I skipped most of those classes, but I did really get that part about how Prof. Pogge emphasized the author's use of chunking information so that it can be consumed in bit-sized morsals. The book itself is a deep, and many times confusing venture into metaphysics. However, it is very nciely "chunked" so that even impressionable youngsters like me could handle it. I can still see Prof. Pogge's lips, covered almost fully with beard and moustache growth, teeth shining beneath a slightly amused smile as he mouthed and exclaimed the word "chunking" to us.

This website has relocated to my own server, so that I can have better control over what runs and what doesn't run. In this case, my perl newsscript can now run without having to pester someone else to help fix it.

At any rate, along with the new IP, comes a set of new domains with which to access this site. I'm pretty excited about this part, because it's the first time I've ever had my own domain. The following all point here:

www.holdinfinity.com
holdinfinity.com
www.holdinfinity.net
holdinfinity.net

The old site is still there, but all files are now gone, and instead of the actual content is just a forwarding link to this page. Hopefully things remain running smoothly and I can keep this page up consistently.

Well, this site is finally back in business. After some playing around, I have coaxed perl to finally start accepting files, which meant I could then work on rebuilding this news script. And if you're reading this post, that means the news script has worked! Wahoo!

Now I just have to clean up things like the archives, and get a couple more smaller post-type things, and I'll be done with my move to this nifty new domain!