december 22

happy holidays are here again
best to you and yours!

i am unemployed and alone and I am having a good time of it.

i spent most of the weekend working at Jonathan Steuer's house on a collection of old and new hardware, trying to build something suitable to provide a better home for Howard Rheingold's conferencing server. As bad as system problems on a personal computer are, trying to resolve IRQ conflicts with flakey motherboards is pure heck. I stayed at his house until midnight three days in a row, three days, three days were each time we thought we were just about to wrap it up and then something broke or a piece was never there or parts were incompatible, and we were facing another day of poking around and slinging mikita's and scsi cables in his cramped laundry room. sometimes he got frustrated and swore. one time i thought i'd blown out a motherboard and i started sweating while i pulled all the components off and stuck them back together.

did i learn anything? more patience. Don Pearman suggests that i might try fixing hardware for money around here - I can't imagine being responsible for people's digital livelihood like that. it's one thing to lose my own data or suffer downtime at my own failings, it's quite another to have to explain to the unknowing why something is broken, and wonder all the while if it is my fault.

so on we work, and waited for the light,

i sent my resume to ex'pression center for new media to be a digital literacy teacher. someday i might expect to design my own course but until then helping folks understand software is good practice.

i sent my resume to braintrust, maybe they'll get me some fly-ass techno temp job that will turn into a good regular gig. or maybe they'll just tell me how to describe myself - "mr. hall, it seems you would work best as an assistant vice president of front end interface" or "you'll be lucky if anyone still needs an HTML programmer from 1994"

i really enjoy the rhythm of unemployment, i must say. i make my own schedule. i can work on projects with Jonathan Steuer or extend my Linux kernal with Jonathan Wilner or try to make plans with Kathy Fierrera or have Wayne Bremser and Heidi Swanson over for salad or play email tag with Elly Millican.

I hunt for MP3s, I edit bud.com, I collect funny pictures from Bjorn Larsen. I eat yogurt and granola and hard boiled eggs. I study Circuit's Edge

Amy calls and she's so cute and I'm excited to meet more of her family. Her cousin younger than her described amy as "an intellectual" and a role model for her as a teen.

i thought nice thoughts about amy, and a funny sentimental smile came onto my face as i drove down highway 880 today, coming back from the Department of Motor Vehicles, where I picked up my BUD COM vanity plates that I bought and paid for when the money was flowing freer.

I have been thinking a lot about finances. unfortunately, quicken doesn't have an "export to html" function, so i had to code this income/expense report with tabs and search and replace.

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I thought, you know, I'm older and I don't share so much of my like wonderings about the nature of happiness or nothin'. what do i do instead of writing navelgazing poetry? i analyse my cash flow for lifestyle patterns. now you can join me! hah hah, just kidding. maybe it's interesting to see what a oakland-living young freelance web professional does with most of his money. i think i'll be glad to look back on it. and if my hard drive dies or something, maybe my finances will be recorded in archive dot org come taxtime.

soundtrack recently has been cat power's cross bones style and polar bear and hindi MP3. all of which are available online! what a nice world. what good mood music.