caro thinks

Pah, 2001/05/21:18:46

caro's home ~*~ caro's index I'm in a really bad mood. I have a cold turning into an infection that's making me sleep 12 hours a day and preventing me from getting air, my brain is dead, I can't get anything to work, I've just wasted 240 hours of work on a dead-end and it's time to pay the bills, and on top of everything everybody expects me to do for them I have to deal with their disrespect and flippancy. I am inches from going on strike.

now in bloom on my patio
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responses All fuchsias except for "Guinevere," "Dollar Princess," "Golden Marinka" are in full bloom. "Blue Eyes" and "Winston Churchill" are loving the marine layer. "Blue Satin" has exploded from a one-inch sprout to a three-foot blooming plant in just one month. The one I thought would be "Swing Time" turned out to be "White Pixie" instead, and it looks like a little christmas tree covered with bubble-gum-pink-and-white ornaments. "Dusky Rose" has so many blossoms on it that you can't see the pot. "Voodoo" had the hardest time with the recent fertilizer attack; I've moved it from the patio up to the shower window, where it is recuperating and has just slitted one very fat bud. I took several cuttings from the few fuchsia branches that weren't loaded with buds and stuck them in a terrarium. The flowers sometimes drop from the fuchsias before they have faded; I gather these up and set them in a small bowl of water on my desk for an unusual upside-down view.

The calamondin is blooming and making fruits; I'm still taking the fruits away from the orange because the plant is too skinny to hold them up. All sign of citrus bud mite is gone from all the citrus, including the lemon, which was the original culprit.

Fragrant blooms: Big shots this month: trachelospermum, calamondin, orange, dark purple petunias, pink stock, freesia, hybrid tea rose "Tropicana," honeysuckle, alyssum. The pittosporum and the boronia are just finishing.

Fragrant plants gearing up: Night blooming jasmine. The pink striped boronia is making a comeback and just starting to show buds. The miniature gardenia has at least 100 buds; "Mystery" has about 30. South African jasmine preparing 200-300 buds. Stargazer lillies each have 3 or 4.

Just color: Bougainvillea "San Diego Red"--main branch has persistently bloomed for months, and now has sent out about ten side-stalks, all blooming. Martha Washington geranium "Morwenna" , alyogyne, maroon and yellow dahlia, bougainvillea "Raspberry Ice", yellow epidendrum, impatiens in all colors, ivy geranium in white with red, feijoa tree, orange hibiscus, blue vinca, solanum jasminoides, bougainvillea Rosenka, solanum rantonnetii, scaevola, chrysanthemum, cyclamens, yellow euryops daisy tree, pomegranate, yellow and pink kalanchoes, orange tuberous begonia, half the primroses, cistus purpureus, blue felicia, sedum morganianium, lobelia, lotus, calla lillies. Still a few blooms on both white and red leptospermum scoparium.

Expecting this month: pandorea jasmonoides, gladiolus, bignonia riversii, hibiscus syriacus, nerium, mandevillea.

Hoping for next month: plumeria, yellow hibiscus, stephenotis, white wing hibiscus, variegated Raspberry Ice, bougainvillea Texas Dawn (resting). No signs yet of red tuberous begonias or tuberoses.

Blooming Indoors: the unstoppable fragrant spathophyllum in south-west shaded room; red anthurium in north-east bright window; nemantanthus in north-east filtered sun window; columnea in sunny south-west window. Phalenopsis in dark south-west window has made one new leaf.

accomplishments
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responses Have beaten head against wall for several days, and accomplished nothing except the emptying of brain. This is why I shouldn't be trying to do this. But what I am trained for it utterly worthless, as people are happy to tell me every chance they get. So I try to do this instead in one last desperate attempt to avoid slavery and it's not working.

capitalism
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responses There is a difference between open-source and free. Unix people traditionally have not made this distinction, being unphilosophical and completely immersed in technical trivia 15 hours a day. "The internet should be free" is a welfare entitlement statement if I ever heard one.

folk psychology examined
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responses
What Have I Got To Live For?
There's seems to be something wrong with this question. When people contemplate suicide, other people entreat them to consider all they have to live for, hoping to remind them of all the benefits of staying alive. People contemplating suicide sometimes ask themselves, or other people, "What have I got to live for?" This method seems to rely upon an implicit comparison with the state of being dead, wherein the benefits will be lost. I don't think people are normally making this comparison in their perpetual choice to live, so it doesn't seem likely to impress someone who is contemplating suicide either. Yes, the benefits of being alive will be lost--but lost by whom? If one is dead, one won't feel the loss.

The real question should be "Is the cost of living worth the benefit?" Or, to put it in terms I like better, "Would it be fun to continue living, or will I on net suffer more than I enjoy?" People don't normally ask themselves this question either, because they are just busy living. But it seems to me it is the salient question for someone who is suicidal.

in progress
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responses cookies for money. ha.

perl
respond
responses When I finally figure out what I am working on, I am going to put an explanation of it on the web. This will piss everyone off, as no one yet has seen fit to provide an explanation of it. There always seems to come a point in working with computers where people don't want to tell you how to do something, and it seems that the only reason is that then they wouldn't be the only ones who know how to do it. Very often someone will guide you through a trivial process like choosing an option from a menu; then when the crucial information point comes, they ask you to move over and type at lightening-speed on your keyboard, and are then completely unable to explain to you what they did. Installing an Apache web server on a windows machine to run locally is like this; even after you've figured it out and got it working, people will come along to tell you there is something--they can't say what--wrong with the way you've done it and it will destroy the entire internet if you leave it that way; they'll sit with you long enough to break it completely, then shrug and go away. I haven't published my Apache notes yet but I wonder if I'll get hate mail when I do.

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Find Enlightenment

now in bloom on my patio respond responses	All fuchsias except for "Guinevere," "Dollar Princess," "Golden Marinka" are in full bloom. "Blue Eyes" and "Winston Churchill" are loving the marine layer. "Blue Satin" has exploded from a one-inch sprout to a three-foot blooming plant in just one month. The one I thought would be "Swing Time" turned out to be "White Pixie" instead, and it looks like a little christmas tree covered with bubble-gum-pink-and-white ornaments. "Dusky Rose" has so many blossoms on it that you can't see the pot. "Voodoo" had the hardest time with the recent fertilizer attack; I've moved it from the patio up to the shower window, where it is recuperating and has just slitted one very fat bud. I took several cuttings from the few fuchsia branches that weren't loaded with buds and stuck them in a terrarium. The flowers sometimes drop from the fuchsias before they have faded; I gather these up and set them in a small bowl of water on my desk for an unusual upside-down view. The calamondin is blooming and making fruits; I'm still taking the fruits away from the orange because the plant is too skinny to hold them up. All sign of citrus bud mite is gone from all the citrus, including the lemon, which was the original culprit. Fragrant blooms: Big shots this month: trachelospermum, calamondin, orange, dark purple petunias, pink stock, freesia, hybrid tea rose "Tropicana," honeysuckle, alyssum. The pittosporum and the boronia are just finishing. Fragrant plants gearing up: Night blooming jasmine. The pink striped boronia is making a comeback and just starting to show buds. The miniature gardenia has at least 100 buds; "Mystery" has about 30. South African jasmine preparing 200-300 buds. Stargazer lillies each have 3 or 4. Just color: Bougainvillea "San Diego Red"--main branch has persistently bloomed for months, and now has sent out about ten side-stalks, all blooming. Martha Washington geranium "Morwenna" , alyogyne, maroon and yellow dahlia, bougainvillea "Raspberry Ice", yellow epidendrum, impatiens in all colors, ivy geranium in white with red, feijoa tree, orange hibiscus, blue vinca, solanum jasminoides, bougainvillea Rosenka, solanum rantonnetii, scaevola, chrysanthemum, cyclamens, yellow euryops daisy tree, pomegranate, yellow and pink kalanchoes, orange tuberous begonia, half the primroses, cistus purpureus, blue felicia, sedum morganianium, lobelia, lotus, calla lillies. Still a few blooms on both white and red leptospermum scoparium. Expecting this month: pandorea jasmonoides, gladiolus, bignonia riversii, hibiscus syriacus, nerium, mandevillea. Hoping for next month: plumeria, yellow hibiscus, stephenotis, white wing hibiscus, variegated Raspberry Ice, bougainvillea Texas Dawn (resting). No signs yet of red tuberous begonias or tuberoses. Blooming Indoors: the unstoppable fragrant spathophyllum in south-west shaded room; red anthurium in north-east bright window; nemantanthus in north-east filtered sun window; columnea in sunny south-west window. Phalenopsis in dark south-west window has made one new leaf.
accomplishments respond responses	Have beaten head against wall for several days, and accomplished nothing except the emptying of brain. This is why I shouldn't be trying to do this. But what I am trained for it utterly worthless, as people are happy to tell me every chance they get. So I try to do this instead in one last desperate attempt to avoid slavery and it's not working.
capitalism respond responses	There is a difference between open-source and free. Unix people traditionally have not made this distinction, being unphilosophical and completely immersed in technical trivia 15 hours a day. "The internet should be free" is a welfare entitlement statement if I ever heard one.
folk psychology examined respond responses	What Have I Got To Live For? There's seems to be something wrong with this question. When people contemplate suicide, other people entreat them to consider all they have to live for, hoping to remind them of all the benefits of staying alive. People contemplating suicide sometimes ask themselves, or other people, "What have I got to live for?" This method seems to rely upon an implicit comparison with the state of being dead, wherein the benefits will be lost. I don't think people are normally making this comparison in their perpetual choice to live, so it doesn't seem likely to impress someone who is contemplating suicide either. Yes, the benefits of being alive will be lost--but lost by whom? If one is dead, one won't feel the loss. The real question should be "Is the cost of living worth the benefit?" Or, to put it in terms I like better, "Would it be fun to continue living, or will I on net suffer more than I enjoy?" People don't normally ask themselves this question either, because they are just busy living. But it seems to me it is the salient question for someone who is suicidal.
in progress respond responses	cookies for money. ha.
perl respond responses	When I finally figure out what I am working on, I am going to put an explanation of it on the web. This will piss everyone off, as no one yet has seen fit to provide an explanation of it. There always seems to come a point in working with computers where people don't want to tell you how to do something, and it seems that the only reason is that then they wouldn't be the only ones who know how to do it. Very often someone will guide you through a trivial process like choosing an option from a menu; then when the crucial information point comes, they ask you to move over and type at lightening-speed on your keyboard, and are then completely unable to explain to you what they did. Installing an Apache web server on a windows machine to run locally is like this; even after you've figured it out and got it working, people will come along to tell you there is something--they can't say what--wrong with the way you've done it and it will destroy the entire internet if you leave it that way; they'll sit with you long enough to break it completely, then shrug and go away. I haven't published my Apache notes yet but I wonder if I'll get hate mail when I do.