5 September 2001

Today was a good day at Ximian. We’ve completed the port of GNOME 1.2 to HP-UX, I had a great conversation with Dave Mason and John Heard, we’re rapidly getting ready to launch our new Red Carpet services, and my grand plan to restructure some of our development groups is going very well. Hooray for us!

My job description.

In the true spirit of weblog egocentrism, I’m going to post some excerpts from the journal I kept in 1998, which spanned my sophomore and junior years at MIT. Back then I was sleeping about four hours a night, downing two pots of coffee and smoking at least a pack of cigarettes every day. My lifestyle goes some of the way towards explaining my state of mind in these entries, though most of it is just nailbiting about classes and pathetic attempts to ward off academic guilt pangs, which are of Catholic proportions for me most of the time.

Here are the first couple of passages. I’m putting these in verbatim. Be gentle:

 Wed Mar 4 09:18:37 EST 1998 Awake. Coffee brewing. Strange dream involving buckey-balls-embedded-in-buckey-ball shaped deserts, 19th century sensibilities, and 9mm guns. Kidnapping, prostitutes, and short order delis. My right eye is doing that I-need-more-sleep stinging thing. Skipping 6.863 this morning for sure, substituting a little coffee and some Bode plots. 

And the next day:

 Thu Mar 5 07:14:28 EST 1998 Awake. Left eye doing that stinging thing this time. Lord, I do not get enough sleep. Coffee brewed, sipping now. I'll write up 6.003 in about 30 minutes. Music. Dreams weren't so strange last night. Chomsky as a young man lecturing me, switching e's and o's in all his sentences. Dinosaurs in the background. I can't remember much more. The phrase he wrote on the board, and that I repeated, with all the o's and e's switched, was like some sort of mantra in the dream -- very meaningful. I wish I could remember it. It had to do with me personally. 

More excerpts to come. Brace yourself.

This makes me smile.

Jacob and Joe bought a Playstation 2 yesterday, and so this evening I drove them to the mall so that they could buy a game for it. I put together a collection of mall images from the trip. With weary cynicism, note the large number of imperative phrases in shopping mall signs.

Talking Heads: “There was a shopping mall. Now it’s all covered with flowers.”

Lower Allston.

Mrs. Shaw? We know you’re out there. I took some pictures of the inside of your son’s apartment for you. As you can see from these images, Joe has turned into a ruthless drunk. Be warned: you may not recognize him as your son. Enjoy.

(Take that, Joe!)

Shelley: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

I finished Choke last night. The book’s redeeming quote was basically Palahniuk’s recognition of his own major failing: “I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything.” Hopefully it’s what will be called a transitional work.

At the park near my apartment.

Jacob’s off to Red Hat in a few hours. And now, I’m off to bed.

Chema strikes a pose in my room, as Taylor looks on.

5 September 2001