The Morlock is a round, pale white ghost
in aviator sunglasses
a black polo shirt
two beepers, a phone and black velcro pouches
hide his belt like lichen on a branch
and a purple carabiner dangles a hundred jewels
that open a thousand locks.

He could be a night janitor, pale from sleeping days
but for two details:
long thinning hair, a string of afterthought on his back,
and a porkpie hat, carefully level with his eyebrows.
These two details serve as tokens of office,
signs of allegiance, badges of honor in
the libertarian under-troll brotherhood of bits.

I smiled to myself, admiring how clearly I knew him.
"You think you're such a rebel," I said in my mind
to the Morlock. "You're just part of the machine."

But when the bus came around the corner,
the street was full of shouting, signs and a cloth dragon,
going the other way, desperate anger,
saying "No!" and "not in our name!".

They climb the hill behind us,
hoping to take the freeway
hoping to be noticed,
hoping their resistance can mean something,
just like the Morlock.

And I, I didn't join them, I didn't shout "no",
I let them pass,
I stayed on the bus,
I went to work,
just like the Morlock.

From notes taken Thursday morning, 10/5

Tags: diary, poetry

white hair, and beard, both ending
in a smooth circle around his shoulders
lost look, blue veins under
the delicate hairless skin of his arms

gray pants, too short for his dirty socks,
he seeks an empty seat
in silent helplessness, he pleads
with the black-clad messenger bag man
[ ostentatiously aloof
his ears blocked with digital plastic
his eyes with sarcasm ]

In his faded pink shirt, he settles
next to the young man, twitching
like a deer in the rain, restlessly seeking
a quiet seat of his own. From the
red sack in his lap, he draws ratty papers

a yellowing prescriptionists free pad, bearing the name
of a drug prominently printed at the top of each.
The pages are covered with careful, ancient
script -- his own, with a ball-point pen --

a line of Norwegian -- Finnish? -- a language
with loops and whorls over its vowels, twitchy
diacritics like the flickering of his eyes --
each line followed by its hasty translation

"Friday let us go to the movies"
"This boat is too small"
"Just a dog is having its day"

I get off at the university, but he stays on,
northbound.

Tags: diary, poetry

done with the presentation. was a little stressful getting it all done in time, but it went pretty well in the end. boobirdsfly was looking out for me and made sure I ate breakfast before I left. That helped too and the extra blood sugar kept me on my toes while I was posing and answering questions.

bleh. I look forward to getting back to my real research!

In happier news, boobirdsfly and I found a place and got it! We'll be moving in together starting in a week and a half, and done moving by Feb 1. woo!

Tags: busy, diary, home, school

yeah, I know nobody wants to hear about my dream. But here it is.

in a big field where people were setting sand fireworks off in a coordinated pattern that was going to decorate the moon with a black-and-white image of Marlene Dietrich. Thinking about how it would be better than advertising, and that someday we would need to dust the whole moon with a layer of gray dust to get it all back. And then it would be found by aliens who would see it as evidence of civilization on Earth That Was.

That is all.

Tags: diary, dream

A followup post on installing ubuntu on this laptop:

Install gotcha (and workaround)
getting ubuntu onto the disk turned out to be a challenge. I have no bootable CD-ROM drive -- the CD-ROM drive I do have is a USB device that doesn't mount on boot, so I spent a long time trying to copy the CD onto the hard disk and convince it to boot from there. But _dkg_ suggested that I install the laptop HD into a desktop system (with a bootable CD-ROM), install Ubuntu there, and then swap it back into the laptop -- apparently most of the hardware detection now happens at boot time, not at install time. Pretty neat.

And it worked. But the X (video) configuration was all shot to heck. But in the process of doing this, I realized that the install process installed the base system from the CD, then copied the remaining packages to the HD, kicked out the CD, and rebooted before installing X etcetera. So I threw the HD back into the desktop, wiped the disk again and reinstalled, but killed the reboot. I pulled the HD and put it back in the laptop, and then booted. The auto-install proceeded just fine, and correctly discovered all the hardware on the laptop.

Update management
Other Debian-based system users may be familiar with sources.list, the way to instruct the system to find updates. I find Ubuntu's Gnome-based update-management software to be really easy to use and understand. It took me about 30 seconds to remove the CD repository and include the web sources for security package upgrades, and then another ten minutes to download and install the packages. (why doesn't it automatically include the security packages? possibly because I installed without a network connection available.)

Surprisingly (to me), emacs was not installed by default, but that was easily remedied with the more sophisticated synaptic package-manager -- and could have been done through the "start menu" anyway!

switching to gnome; music management
Because it was the default window manager, I decided to switch to Gnome, and I've been quite happy with it. As a benefit, Ubuntu provides the excellent rhythmbox music manager, which I much prefer to XMMS right now -- the ability to browse by genre alone is quite easy.

By default, Ubuntu does not provide decoders that are legally entangled. After some internet research, I discovered the excellent Ubuntu wiki page on restricted formats that allows you to very easily enable all the decoders to handle .mp3, .mov, m4a, .wmv files. The instructions here are clear, simple, and easy to follow; unusual, in my experience, for Linux video instructions. Like evan_tech, I am amazed at how it all holds together.

firefox version hunting
As yet, I only have one gripe. I'm eager to install the latest version of Firefox, but I would much rather do it through the package management. Apparently this isn't ready for the stable version (Breezy Badger) yet, though it's getting there for the next one (Dapper Drake, scheduled for April). I shouldn't complain -- it'll be ready real soon.

summary
What a cool system! My whole laptop feels new!

Tags: computers, diary

I just spent the last hour and a half backing up my laptop, or at least all the files *I* think are critical.

I'm going to try to wipe it and reinstall, this time with ubuntu. But I want to put the image on the hard disk before it gets any more complicated.

Tags: computers, diary

Sunday was lovely. D and I stayed in all day -- we got up late, and I spent most of the morning on the internet. D. made pancakes with homemade applesauce, and I browsed the web. I worked on a post I've got brewing that may eventually make it into chr0me_kitten's Molly, and eventually I got around to getting to work.

D. did too, and we spent most of our afternoon sitting at the dining room table in her house together, she working on plays and I on software. I sometimes talk to myself while coding (I don't always notice) and by dinnertime, we were cracking each other up with refrains of "dammit, E---" which was my refrain for the afternoon. A certain E---'s software maintenance practices leave something to be desired, and I'm cleaning up after him a lot. But it made D. laugh because I kept saying it.

We decided to go out to dinner, but had a pleasureable detour in the midst of getting out of pajamas and into outdoor clothes. We went out to a big Mexican dinner, and rolled ourselves home afterwards, where I went back to work (fixed E---'s problems! yay!) and she finished her work reading the student plays as well.

D's roommate W came home, and for the first time in weeks, all her roommates were in the house. She and I watched another episode of the really-quite-impressive Cowboy Bebop, and went to bed.

Tags: diary

email from today:

Dear [trochee],

Congratulations! You have been admitted to our PhD program.

Let me know if you have questions.

[Grad Program Advisor]

Kinda anticlimactic if you ask me. But a good thing nevertheless.

Tags: diary, school

I spent Thanksgiving day at the home of some family friends from back in the 404, and got to sit at the "kids table" -- a gaggle of thirty-somethings, with one 4-year-old, who decided to climb all over me like I was a jungle gym. I think she's great, so I may have encouraged her a little.

Friday boobirdsfly and I rented a car and drove to Anacortes, and thence took the ferry to Orcas Island and spent the long weekend together in a lodge on Orcas Island. Was really relaxing and settling for me -- and for her -- to have time just for the two of us, with no distractions -- no internet, no homework, no wondering whose house we're sleeping at tonight. It's so quiet out there on the island; we just spent those two and a half days relaxing, getting a chance to feel each other; to take small risks with each other, and to reassert what good things we have together.

We communicate really well. I felt comfortable and safe there with her; some things that evoke fear and concern for her, she was able to bring up with me. In the way these things always are, they turned out much smaller in the warm sunlight of sharing them with each other, and were replaced by strength and more love.

Coming back Sunday night, we both wanted to go home. Sadly, our homes are still different. But we each wanted to go home, and we did -- but it's clear to us both that we want our home to be together. We've known that for a while, but this just reinforced that feeling -- now we're looking to move together at the end of January, and this trip together makes me even happier that we're doing it.

I'm very happy. It was a lovely weekend and I'm looking forward to having more time like that. And also to have more time like that here in the Pac-NW urban life as well. It feels so good to be happy in my life.

Tags: diary, personal

I woke up this morning after boobirdsfly had left to go to parts East for an acting gig.

It felt quiet and peaceful, but i was wishing she was there. Then I found a little love letter she had written me and left on my backpack before she left, and I felt quiet and peaceful, and full instead of empty.

I feel lucky.

Tags: diary, personal