just started wondering if ppl would live happier lives if they didnt fight against their own natures. but would that work? if each of us was trying to do whatever we wanted, some of those wants would surely conflict with others' wants. out of conflict, the losing, or potentially losing party would probably come out with some kinda compromise with themselves = this is not important enough to me to get hurt over. enter the conflicting parties' friends and families. finally now the deciding factor might be how well liked each of the 2 original individuals was by whom they knew - enough to get their support in a risky situation? did one of the "originals" actually not even know nearly as many people as the other? the socio-political factor.

so back to an individual's freedom to do one's own will - i guess depending on the degree to which one's will conflicts with the wills of others in the environment, one whose natural desires dont encroach on others' should be able to expect to live a fairly happy life. or at least relatively conflict-free. would the absence of conflict actually lead to a happier life?

but how many of us have desires that would never seriously be in conflict with the desires of others? also, do we curb our desires more than strictly necessary to avoid undue danger?

i feel like we should all do what we like a little more. we just got to figure out how to free ourselves of some of these mental restraints. our self-restraint mechanisms are probably governed more by fears of social unacceptance rather than fear of physical harm. but how much acceptance do we really need? maybe if we find ourselves surrounded by ppl with values very different than our own, we should not persist in such an oppressive setup but rather leave and find others like ourselves? guess thats where the fear of the unknown might come in - leaving the relative safety of a known situation for an unknown, possibly worse reality. an individual would have to cross a threshold past which the risk is worth it. its a tangled web. still - i think one should try. even if just a little. at first. even realizing the possibility of doing something different is a start. then knowing that others have gone down that path is reassuring. having a support system, group, or even just a person to lean on during a transition would definitely help. and with the advent of the intrawebs, "finding the others" just got easier.

being "alive" :)

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3276599&op=8&o=global&view=global&subj=607637039&id=795110103

everything was going fine, until...

i show up at the office of this company through which the boss gets a big chunk of our work. i'm told the owner's assistant cant connect to the dvr anymore to check footage of who's been coming in late or whatever she uses it for once in a blue moon. i check the IP addy on the dvr, its gateway and port, go to her office - she lost the IP addy - a-ha, gotcha, easy. no - it doesnt work. i check her setup - she should be on the same network as the dvr. try to ping dvr - comes back with timeouts, but it comes back from some other IP address. wtf? i quickly check that the dvr is connected to the router under the receptionist's desk - lights are blinking - all good. go to their IT guy. he gets mildly agitated, tells the boss' assistant she should have called him, he doesnt know anything about this, but ok - we'll try to figure it out. i showed him what i did, the ping, he tries to ping some other stuff, seems to find a nearby addy that pings, tells me to change the dvr to that address, still doesnt ping. now a girl comes to his desk saying she lost her connection to the server. "a-ha!" we say, she was the address we stole - back to change the dvr back to what it was. he reassures the girl that now it all works and everything is as it should. except we still cant ping the dvr. we check the router together, he finds there's some unused cables still connected to it, and one is actually looping back into another port. he gets rid of unnecessary wiring, and as we walk back to his desk to try pinging, the girl that said she was disconnected is saying she's still disconnected. and the girl from the next desk over. we go back to his comp, he's tweaking out, the head of accounting comes down to say accounting has lost their connection to the server. ooops... the IT guy says he's only been there for like a month or something, and he's trying to learn their setup on the fly, harassing them for documentation and information, no time to spare for masturbation... he's about to open up the server room when the boss of the company comes down asking if, when he has a spare minute in say the next 5 minutes, if he could install a mobile internet stick on so'n'so's laptop, because his father is dying and he's gonna be spending a lot of time at the hospital, but would still like to have access to his files... which in itself is pretty weird, to me. i mean, i donno, but work could wait, as i see it. all these rich fuckers living in these goddamn condos can make do without holding hands with their goddam property manager for a bit in case of extenuating circumstances, cant they? but maybe i got this out of context, maybe the guy is expecting that this will potentially take weeks on end and every now and then he'll sneak off to the cafeteria and take care of the most important stuff as he has a bite to eat.
alas, IT guy tells the boss he's having a serious issue with the server and cant get to the mobile stick for the moment, but he's not liking that others beside himself have administrative access to the server, and is wondering if that might be the problem. the boss tells him that the only person other than him that has admin access is the head of accounting girl, and why dont they go ask her right now. she says no, hasnt done anything. IT guy logs in right at his server, and it's like most stuff is missing. but there is a computer somewhere at the office from where he can still login to the server and see everything as it's supposed to be. at this point i say "see ya later, when you get your server up again".
i'm at another call, and i get a call from the boss' assistant telling me they need me to come back because the thing i plugged something into is whats bringing the server down, and they're getting nowhere, and i need to undo what i did... um, i didnt do anything?
so i get back there, because i need to drop something off anyways, and the IT guy has the DVR with the router completely disconnected from his network, and he's till having the same issues. he's starting to suspect the head of accounting girl might be messing with him, or just messing with the server. he doesnt know if he's being paranoid or is she actually guilty. he wonders if maybe it's somebody back east..? and he still has this login that allows him to see what appears to be an unpopulated version of the server. it appears to him that while he was trying to figure out the DVR problem, someone has created another user, and bla bla bla... i say "see you when you get your server back up."
paranoia seems to be the flavour of the year.

what to do?

85 year old lady, single (widowed, i think), seems in pretty good health for her age, has lived in this house for a long time, has been doing gardening there all that time, apparently at some point won 1st prize for that town's gardening contest. not too long ago had to have her german shepherd put down. got another one, 8 or 10 year old, from the shelter, because she doesnt think she has that much more to go...
has probably 14 cameras around the house, hooked up to 3 DVRs, figures somebody wants her house, and is trying to get her out of there, messing with her garden, trimming her hedge 6 inches lower than it used to be, taking chunks out of her trees, taking her garden stones - which she got for a fair bit of change (apparently stones are good in garden b/c they help retain moisture). she's had 2 security companies install the cameras and DVRs for her, but at least one of them seems to have been gouging her, and she doesnt wanna be involved with them anymore. she wants to get good footage of her neighbours coming into her backyard to steal her stones and damage her trees. she pretty sure the neighbours whose backyard is kitty-corner to hers have 3 cameras pointed at her house. either they are the police or they got some kinda deal with someone who's in the police, so she doesnt feel she can go to the police with this anymore. she's suspecting someone's been inside her house because she's heard ppl speaking upstairs where her DVRs are, and she suspects they took one of her harddrives out of one of her DVRs, and so now she's lost some valuable footage that would prove... i forget what.
she really wants me to help her out.
on the one hand, she's a customer, she wants a better view of a certain area, i suggested a different camera, she's all for it. with the missing footage, i told her likely one of the harddrives failed and thats why the footage is missing. i saw her receipt for the purchase of this DVR, it says 1 terabyte, the dvr says its got 500 gigs, it should still be under warranty from the company she bought it from, they should fix it for free - which i told her. there's probably some more work she'd have me do there.
on the other hand, as much as i am willing to entertain the idea that someone could be messing with her, damaging her garden, taking garden stones - more likely unrelated things than a concerted effort, i have a strong feeling that this lady is suffering from some senile dementia or something, suspecting that people are out to get her, to get her out of this house, because they want it, and they want it cheap, and she doesnt want to be pressured out of there just because she's an old, lone lady.
i dont want to feed her probable dementia, though i dont know whether anything i'd do would change things either way. i feel like doing this work she wants done is taking advantage of her, because its probably all in her head, and so she doesnt need to spend this money, and all the money she'd already spent getting ripped off by one of the previous security companies she dealt with. she seems aware that these things she says may sound crazy, but she doesnt think she is. she asked me something like "you dont think i'm crazy, do you?" to which i answered "no, not really". i've never really had to deal with this kind of thing. now i think i should have said how it all sounds, somehow try to tell her gently. hope that big friggin dog wouldnt freak out on me for upsetting his owner. but she's not crazy enough to be dangerous, so nobody can really step in and lock her up. nor should they - she's not doing any harm. just to herself. spending all this money and worrying that ppl are trying to screw her out of the house.
i dont want her to spend more money and persist in her paranoia. but if i walk away someone else will come in and gauge her again. and she really wants my help with the security setup. what to do?

its been bugging me. i keep trying to think it out, and what i got in my mind at the moment is to try to find some kind of volunteer senile/demented service to keep an eye on her, possibly take care of her somehow, if she's not far enough gone yet then when she does. this was phx' idea, which i like. but does such a service even exist? i also want to call her and tell her what i think of her situation, but ultimately say that if she wants, i can do some work for her, but i'm hoping she takes what i say into consideration, talks to her doctor about it, i dont know. is there even meds for this kind of thing? it seems obvious that her judgement is impaired, so how can i trust her judgement when i tell her what i think? but i dont think she's messed up enough for "the government" to step in. what to do?

a good new year's eve from my point of view involves being optimally smashed at a nice bash. probably the best one of these that comes to mind was at some friends' dad's warehouse they'd just bought and havent put machines in yet - some of the friends were sorta forming a band at the time, so they played some tunes, there was a 2nd floor overlooking the ground floor, so thats always nice, there was a ping-pong table on the 2nd floor, a keg on the ground floor, one of the guys kinda officially came out of the closet and brought his BF, so that was in interesting detail. unfortunately the BF was a total chachi. and we have some nice pics of us from there :)

how i think of it is that the mind sometimes gets overzealous trying to spot patterns and assigns all kinds of significance to coincidence. however i have heard some interesting talk of "attractors" - end scenarios that might seem to coax themselves into existence by "pulling" their "causes" towards themselves through time and space - a funny way to model fate from our perception of time.
regarding things seeming to be given to you while you were creating, i too find it interesting that we are given credit for our "creations" when we are actually handed them from our subconscious. i visualize it as a brick wall with some small holes in it, and i - the conscious spectator am handed little scrolls of paper with ideas written on them through these little holes from the other side of the wall. i get to marvel at them, or reject them, or try and group some of them together and hand them back thru the wall for further processing - so it seems like i'm the editor or conductor, but not the actual idea generator. then again - why only define myself as that which is conscious - unconscious can be beautiful too :) its all me. especially if i'm a solipsist... :D