I lack discipline. Or maybe I just lack focus. Or both. I shift interests fast, having a habit of leaving things uncompleted. See, if I was disciplined, I’d complete it whether I like it or not. If I was focussed, I wouldn’t shift interests in the first place.

So heres what I’m gonna’ do. I’m going to produce the results, and hope that it produces the catalyst retrospectivly. Now I got flamed by the students I teach for writing English that doesn’t make sense because I use words most people don’t understand. Actually I get flamed for that a fair bit

Discpline and focus – whats the result? Finishing things that you start. Doing thing things you say you will. Ultimately, the result will hopefully be increased integrity. So all I have to do is finish the things I start. And hopefully that will breed a habit of that. Which is discipline. And focus! Maybe I’ll actually be able to “succeed” at uni, and business

No not X Box. Mac OS X.
Ok heres the deal. The HDD in my Powerbook is failing. I.e. it does not pass a SMART verification. I think it has something to do with me leaving it on 24/7 while we were in Melbourne in Febuary

But anyway, it no longer passes an fsck. It fails on checking the catalogue. And because the drive was uncleanly unmounted, OS X tries to do a check on startup. And it fails, which means it tries to do it on the next boot. Which fails. Repeat, frustrate, repeat some more.

So the question becomes how do I bypass the fsck? There isn’t any key command to do it, or an optional start up. What I DID do is boot into single user mode. I.e. BSD terminal. It skips the fsck when I do that. Unfortunately, the terminal is limited in the sense that you can’t run your GUI apps!

I’ve found that if you just exit (type “exit”) the terminal, it tries to boot to Aqua…without the FSCK!!! Of course, it fails to load a bunch of stuff because of corrupt data, but I did get it to boot. I also found a nice reference for Mac OS X single user mode commands.

Unfortunately, every app I ran crashed instantly on startup. Oh well. At least I know it works

I came across pics of my old iBook while cleaning out the old site. I bought it in 2005, but didn’t use it much. About 6 months later, the iBook started exhibiting logic board problems: The video would scramble, and the laptop crash, sometimes it would make the sounds of booting, but not show any video at all etc.

I fixed it with a shim about 3 months later, but a few weeks after that, the HDD died! It refused to hold partition data. So I dissembled it and sold the parts. But it still looks pretty

And heres me dissembling it. What you’re looking at is an iBook G3 900Mhz
640MB PC133 RAM 40GB 3600RPM 2.5″ HDD 24x16x40x4x CDR/RW/RO/DVD-ROM !

It’s a song

But anyway, I was thinking about what it means to be faithful to someone. I took the approach that in order to define this, I need to know what a relationship is. Because you need to have a relationship with someone in order to be faithful to them. Now, I’m going to use intimacy relationships (friends, family, partner) as the benchmark, as opposed to proximity relationships (like ‘the boss’).

So, intimacey relationships are based on love. So whats the defintion of love? It’s more than saying ‘I love you’ in my opinion. Well, we can love all three types of people there, friends, family and our partner, but it’s not all the same. So I’m going to infer that love is the commonality between these relationships. Whats common?

Well, I care about those people. A lot. And it’s not quantative, it’s qualitive.

Those people also care about me. That is, they know how I feel, and reciprocate to some extent. Possibly not to the extent that I do, maybe more, maybe less. But they know. And they reciprocate.
On the flipside, if I ‘love’ someone who doesn’t reciprocate, i.e. they don’t know how I feel or don’t reciprocate, and I die, they may not care at all. There was no love. Love is a bond between two people.

For love to be known, it must be shown. I believe that actions speak louder than words, and are often a truer reflection of how we feel than our words are. Lip service love is easy. Putting action behind it requires effort. That’s physical intimacy.

Mental intimacy is also required in my opinion. This relates to the way that we all create our own version of ‘the world’. This is formed, I believe, by our beliefs, attitudes, and values. In order to share mental intimacy, we need to share our worlds.
And it needs to begin with values. Values don’t really change. Values are what help us distinguish what is right from wrong. What is just from unjust. They are generally fixed when we are young and impressionable. When we use our five senses to help tell us about the world.
Beliefs are manifestations of values. For instance, some people believe that the police are corrupt. Some people believe Microsoft are a bad company. And so on.
And attitudes are reactions to beliefs, our own and others. When someone brings up a belief that we do not agree with, do we beat them down and impose our beliefs on them? Or do we accept that they are different? Or maybe adopt their belief as our own, and change ourself?
These are my definitions. If you love someone, you need to share values, because otherwise there will be a lot of cognitive dissonance, and you will either change your behaviour or change your values. Since values don’t really change, it is more likely you will change your behaviour and not be around that person. Thats not love.

So love is:

- A caring bond between two people
- A sharing of common values
- A sharing of worlds, mentally and physically

Developing these requirements takes _time_. How much time is subjective in my opinion. Everyone is different. Also, we seem to get it wrong a lot!
Developing these requirements also takes _effort_. To put effort in, people must want the reward. So it also requires both parties to want to build a relationship.

With these requirements, it can be seen that there are different qualitive levels of love. For instance, even though I don’t share the same beliefs as all my friends, because our values match, I am able to have a working friendship, and love them for being who they are, my friend. Thats one level.
But for my partner, I share my whole world with her. And it’s common. Our values and most of our beliefs and attitudes. And that sort of love results in me not needing or wanting to give my whole world to anyone else.

So now, back to the original question, what does it mean to be faithful?
At a basic level, I think it means sustaining the love.
This will result in different meanings for different levels of relationships. I.e. for friends, I do not share everything about me, or all my attitudes and beliefs with them. So the expected level of faithfulness is less than my partner. With my partner, I share my whole world. So I have to continue with that level of action to maintain that level of love.

This definition of what it means to be faithful explains why one couple can be in love and maintain that love, but share parts of their world with others. For instance, I can have a friendship with a girl, but my partner knows that I love her and that my partner is the only one I share my whole world with.

For me, with my beliefs and attitudes, I also have additional constrains on what being faithful means to me. If my partner wants to kiss someone else in passion, and does not, then it is almost as bad as if she actually does it. And if she does not tell me about it, then she has started blocking me out from her world. Which degrades the love.

Do I think I can live up to these definitions? Absolutely…If I have the right girl! Someone who rocks my world, and continues to. Someone to take on my yacht, just the two of us, and never feel lonely

I was going through the archive of the old site, and came across a search page I wrote. It basically takes advantage of the way the GET process works in HTTP by forming special URL strings. I used it to group a bunch of search pages (not just search engines) into one page so I didn’t have to go to the page to search. For example, IMDB has flash and lots of pictures, which can be annoying when just trying to find a movie name.

I’m deleting that page though, because it’s still annoying to have to load a page to search. Of course, when I wrote it in 2001, there wasn’t really any other options! But now, (well for a while), Firefox has supported the search bar. And you can write your own search plugins. They’re easy to write, and use some simple JS to formulate the URL. It’s cool

*Finally* my blades arrived today. Now, I haven’t bladed since I was about 12 and I wasn’t exactly good at it then. I mean, I can balance, still…just. But I have trouble stopping at speed, or even maintaining speed in a straight line hehe

But practice makes perfect, so I was skating around the driveway a bit to improve my basic techniques, and of course, I stacked it. Now my elbow is all sore. I don’t remember it hurting this much when I was younger…it’s great though hehe. I WILL persist, and move on from being a gumbie blader!!!

I bumped into my ex gf today, it seems she finishes class when I start teaching it on Mondays. Didn’t say anything, just a smile, interesting effect on me though. Seeing her still makes my heart rate double and my knees go weak, you know, like an anxiety attack

I’m never really sure how to deal with situations like that. I figure with the obvious effect it has on me, I’m better off keeping my distance for my own safety! I will, too, unless my help is specifically requested.

Still, with random encounters like that, who knows when my next serendipity will come along. There’s definately enough lovely ladies at uni! Just need to improve my stewardship I think

I’ve chosen to emain in a co-habitat with a parental unit for a while. Unfortunately, one of the ways I learn is to argue. If I think your’re wrong, I tell you. If you think I’m wrong, I presume you’ll tell me. With guys, that seems to work fine. I mean, it’s not the best of a way to communicate, but most guys can handle it. With females…well it seems to break them pretty fast.

So the question becomes, how to successfully co-habitat with a parental unit where almost everything I say results in a delayed explosion. Heres my hypothisis:

1. Everyone wants respect. They respect you if you respect them. One of the signs of respect is paying attention to them, and what they are saying. So, don’t argue.

2. “sensitive” people don’t like my advice. I tend not to sugar coat things by nature. So, don’t give advice. Just give encouragement that they can do it on their own.

3. Avoid unnecessary counseling of my affairs with them. This breeds weakness. Of course, sometimes it is weaker NOT to counsel, especially if they have the experience you know you need. Still, minimise this. Especially given the assumption that the longer I talk, the more likely I am to put that person offside.

4. In fact, try not to talk to the person all together. It may be harder to get a message accross in written form, but that usually means I write less, which means I keep to the point. Plus there’s no one to argue with

5. Avoid contact, but always be courteus. That means saying hello and goodbye, please, thankyou, and excuse me.

6. If I have to have a conversation, stick to asking questions that reveal information, and making positive comments. Avoid making suggestions, getting off topic, or talking about anything else.

This is going to require me to jam up my real world relationships for a while, so hopefully that means more frequent blogging! We’ll see how it turns out

Ok I fixed the links in the menu (Home etc.). Now the content on the site needs to catch up with the links

I am sorting the old blog posts, and putting up the old content as ncessary so that should help. I also added the site to Google today…unfortunately, it had already indexed me when I didn’t have the main page up though
Oh well, it’ll right up given time!