Monday, January 31

knowledge transfers

lately our team started organizing knowledge transfers. i think their purpose is to make everyone familiar with parts of the project that they don't work in.

sometimes it's cool: you go there, and see this realy cool module and functionality and architecture and you see parts that you know could raise syncronization problems, or help you shoot yourself in the foot, and it's really interesting how they found a solution to this and that and how that stuff is really used in a live application ...

and sometimes ... well ... (like today for example) you barely manage to stay awake; you feel your eye-lids getting heavy ... and this tingling feeling in the top of your head and by the time i finish with the last db table in the presentation you will be in a trance and under my complete control; or something like that;

well, who knew we're doing group hypnosis in cyprus? :)

no meditation

there is no meditation. it's all an ilusion. because there's nobody there to meditate.

you are told you are in the center of sound; and there is no center of sound ...

and you are told to be a witness; but there is no witness there ...

and you are told to not think, just be, and let it be; yet there is nobody to be; and nobody to let it be.


i used to think (there used to be this thought) that you are to be the center of the cyclone (masters said that); but this cyclone has no center; and if it has one, there is nobody to stand in the center of it;

and there is no sense of it all that you can make; and no purpose in life; if somebody tells you to make some sense of it all he's leading you astray.


and i used to think - as Lucian Blaga said - that as soon as you realize that life has no purpose, you're free to give it any purpose you want. and that this is great;

well ... there is no purpose; and yes, you are free to choose one; but it's a mere construction; and after you choose it and live it you will see this; that's why you then have to choose a new purpose to run after.


but "you" (the "you" inside you) are also a construct;

they say that if you look at this construct it dissapears ... like all ilusions; it's another damn ilusion!
because there is noone to look at this construct; to even try means to create a "looker"; which you will also have to look at; for which you create another looker;
and then we all wonder why a spiritual path is so long; IT'S BECAUSE "YOU" KEEP PROLONGING IT.


now there's noone doing the thinking; thoughts come and go; or they don't. and maybe i'll forget all of this (as it happened before) and then choose a new purpose, and a new meaning, and ... well that's the way it will be. because i'm allready forgetting :).



by the way, this is all wrong. and I DIDN'T WRITE IT!

weekend update

ooookay ...

i didn't go to the company party ( that was sort-of expected :) ); i didn't go diving either; and i didn't have much fun at the LAN party (went to sleep at about 12 am). that about covers my weekend plans ...

however, i went with C shopping on friday afternoon, and i found out that my card supports credit, which meant i still had money before salary (i'm not sure this is a good thing or a very very bad thing <grin>).

i bought myself some ankle-weights which i'll be wearing in the office. also, saturday and sunday i went for long walks in the evening (and saturday, i also went with M for a drink at some pub); that was what saved me from spending my weekend within the wonderfull white walls of my room. it was quite fun actually.

oh, and i finished HL2 (ok, ok! i cheated! there was this one place i couldn't get past). and i spoke to A.

i can't take it anymore! next weekend i'm definitely going diving.

Friday, January 28

bunny suicides

i received this bunny suicides link;

preety funny

here is an updated link.

weekend plans (take two)

we're no longer going skiing. one of us caught a cold. (anyway i got assurances that the snow should hold till march - at least, so that leaves time for other opportunities).

so, if i'm in the mood this afternoon, i might consider a dive tomorrow ... (i feel like being in the mood)

anyway, that left the lan party tonight, and the party tomorrow evening, which i'm still not attending, since i still don't feel like formal dressing.

a cool thing that happened was that after i told some people i wasn't going, i got lots of 'come on, you have to come!'; definitely made me feel appreciated ( it's a very nice feeling :) ).

anger management (part one of many)

sometimes, there's this small tiny detail that keeps bugging you; something that keeps repeating ... and repeating ... and repeating ... and then, when you're sick of it, it happens again!

and you snap! and yell at someone who had nothing to do with it; or crash everything within reach; or say something that you know you'll regret three seconds later; or hit somebody you care about; or just have a nervous breakdown;



or, you wake up one morning and hit your small toe against the door, while you're still half-asleep; then, you drop your toothbrush and you lean down to look for it and when you get up you hit your head with the drawer door with a resounding crack; and as if that's not enough, you go to to the kitchen and drop an egg on the floor so now you have to clean up the mess; and when you're done with the cleaning and feel that nothing else could go wrong, you cut your finger;

and suddenly, you feel this huge amount of rage inside you and it's much more than you ever thought you could feel, and it's making your shake all-over, and your breathing is rash and you just know you're going to explode in the next two seconds.


you're usually not an angry person; so, what the hell is going on?


methinks it's a matter of how you react to it all:

in most cases, nobody teaches you how to do it. so, you copy it: if there ever was only one person that you ever saw get angry, then you'll probably do like that person did; if you had a predominant figure in your youth that was getting angry a lot, you'll probably act on your anger the same way he (or she) did; (gosh! i'm an amateur doctor in psychiatry; der Herr Doktor Freud would be so proud of me!).



so, what do you do?



you could try becoming this very strict person with rules for everything and redirecting your anger for something constructive ... right?

wrong! Hitler did that; and took a whole europe with him! (he was a very strict person: vegetarian, never drank alcool, never smoke and all that; maybe if he loosened up a bit, we'd be still talking about the possibility of a second world war instead of a third one; not to speak of the whole holocaust thing).

one could say ok, but that was Hitler, not the average me or you. i think he was the average me or you but with a serious anger management problem. ok, and racism; and a ridiculous moustache (but i'm disgressing).




hey, i know, there are all those mental tricks:

like counting down from ten to one reaaaaaaally slowly, in your mind. there's a good way of controlling your anger!

there is just one little, big, fat mother-of-a-problem with this: the first victim of any truly violent emotion is you mind; i mean here you are, looking for something to hurt (wether it's a person/pet/rubber ducky/whatever), and all-of-a-sudden, you'll say evrika! instead of wasting my energy with being angry, lets do something constructing in my life, maybe start counting, because it sounds like good, nice family fun!

how realistic is that? (one in ten? and whoever sais evrika anyway? and when they're angry?!)


so that's out!


you could say: hey, i'm not counting, but imagining myself in some place peacefull, where nothing of what's making you angry exists; you close your eyes, think of the blue sea, or the mountains or pink flamingo birds wearing green tutus and eating cold spagetti with meatballs while at the same time they try to ... well, never mind that one!

anyway, it's the same situation as before: it works perfectly, until you're too damn angry to start that imagining/visualizing sh..stuff again.


and guess what?


you snap!


yes, again!


and to add insult to injury, if you really tried controling your anger, you feel you failed entirely (so, now you're a failure also; and guess who's going to get angry over it? the government? didn't think so.);


you feel you fail in controling anger because you actually do fail. for the simple reason that you cannot control anger. not really.


here, let me expand on that:

anger is energy; and energy is (if nothing else, then) something flowing; as in not staying still;

the moment you try keeping it still, it's just a matter of it amassing past your ability of control; suddenly you've become a time-bomb ( u! u! now i'll appear in CIA archives forwriting BOMB on the net :) ); and there are whole books, and video tapes, and CDs on how to pretend anger is not there;

this doesn't mean that you cannot control anger (yes, i know, i know, i'm contradicting my highly esteemed self); confused?


i think you are able to control it most of the time. but it's a loosing battle.


right about this place on the webpage, 90% of the people getting to this point will probably ask: so, do you have a damn conclusion to all this damn-long rant?


not really. well ... maybe :) it's just my little advice on how to deal with anger, added to all the other pieces of advice on how to deal with anger. no, really!.


methinks that the only way to deal with anger is to not have it in the first place! so, instead of going with the how to deal with anger thingy, get with the why does anger appear in the first place?


and i'll write about that in a future post since this is long enough allready :))

Thursday, January 27

the corruption started with you

romania is a corupt country ... everybody sais that. but virtually no romanian stops to consider what that actually means.

What usually happens is like this: you live every day in a (more or less) little town, going out and doing whatever you go out and do everyday. Then, you encounter a little problem: say you need to fill in a little income paper.

you go to get the form to the form-management-building, but there are like five thousand four hundred and twenty three people in line (not counting those who went to the bathroom), for the same piece of paper. You know you should start waiting ... and waiting ... and getting bored, going home, then coming tomorrow morning and waiting some more; instead, you go to this little someone that you (or a friend, or a neighbour or your cat/dog/some-other-pet) knows, call him discretely to the side, ask him to get those papers, and in return, you offer this little attention thing, for helping you out.

it's ok. because everybody does it; and if they don't it's not because they don't want to: it's because they don't know a little someone.

and besides, what else should you do?! spend your whole day waiting for a damn piece of paper?! rrright! well ... back to the story:

you fixed quickly your little problem thing;

you get home in the evening, totally spent, after going out and doing what you go out and do every day ... and you open the tv (you have one, right?). you see this story about this government guy charged with getting bribed; it's a scandal!; and you want with an almost righteous fury to see this guy fall on his head as he gets out of the court-room (or get a cake in the face or something!), because it's obvious the guy is corupt; otherwise he wouldn't have gotten a position in the government; everybody knows that;

then you go with your friends for a beer and talk about how the guy on the tv got what he deserved because he accepted bribery.

what happens is that public administration posts are not occupied legally, but they are bought; and everybody knows the prices: i've heard that to get working as a pencil-pusher for the form-management-building costs you 10.000 dollars! / 10.000 dollars?!? god! that's a lot

so they are bought ... so what?

well ... actually the money from that little transaction go further up (as go the money from you little attention), to the guy who managed to buy the job of actually centralizing those money; he's usually called the prefect, mayor, minister of forms-management-buildings etc.

so STOP whining about corruption! corruption is not something related to the guy you saw on the tv! actually, in romania, you're sitting on it! actually, if you're from romania you probably participated to it ... right? right?

now, this is the part you say: well ... no because i never had to fill a little income paper" and "i don't know someone at the form-management-building"

i don't care. because it's not only that; it's going to the doctor; or getting stoped by the police for over-speeding; or getting an authorisation; or getting someone to fix your little exam problem in college.

so stop pointing fingers and face it: the corruption started with you

on boredom ...

looking back i can see that for years i've been getting into new things, doing them as much as i could for a brief period of time, then getting bored and looking for something new. This happened with tenis, judo, voley, swimming, computer games, carting, about 50 personal software projects that i started over the years and didn't complete, and a few other things.

i could probably say that's been the story of my life if there ever was such a thing ... but i won't :).

at the moment i'm practicing t'ai chi sporadically (that is: once a week in the good weeks but i like it, so that's probably not something i'm about to quit), reiki on myself whenever i feel a need to do it (that is about as much as t'ai chi); i took up swimming daily for an hour for about two weeks (that was last year), then got bored with it because it was a loooooooooong way to the pool; two weeks ago C dragged me to a fitness club; it was fun and i'll probably go again for some time if i can convince myself ... but i feel like i started quitting this also.

well ... at least i'm not quitting on chinese food :D ... neither on reading fanfiction. and it seems i'm VERY steady in giving up on things and in getting bored ...

Wednesday, January 26

weekend plans

We're planning to go skiing over the weekend. Have some friends that I want to se with the skies on their feet, so, actually I'm the one planning :D.

This means that if the snow lasts in Trodos (mountains), we'll probably start planing tomorrow. Also, M is trying to organize another LAN party ( no CS this time :( ), and the company is making a "new year's party" (I won't go to that since it requires formal dress-code: perfect way to ruin my evening).

It also means another weekend with no diving :(

So now I'll probably be at a LAN party on Friday night, then Trodos on Saturday, then do some house cleaning on Sunday since B is coming back.

Have to ask the guys ... probably will stay at home on Saturday and go to Trodos on Sunday.

my scuba equipment

just thought i'd post my scuba equipment online ( ahhh! the joys of being obsessed )

so ... here goes:
triple-l orion BC
triple-l laguna gear-bag
a short, one piece wetsuit (3mm) bought from Qdivers
yellow scubapro ful-foot twin-speed fins
Tusa Visualator mask
a cannon a80 digital camera with WP-DC 900 underwater casing.

Still need to get regulator, spg, a titanium knife, and some open-heel fins.

Tuesday, January 25

first post

this is my first post so it'll be somewhat useless or idiotic. i'm at B (& M) & F's place getting ready to get into some CS and i'll stay overnight.

today i voluntered to look into automating some data imports the team do every week; it should make their life easier; ... was ridiculed later by R for voluntering :) ...

I started this blog out of boredom - and with a thought at all those moments when i feel i could say something profound (rrright!) ...

spoke with ra3 yesterday evening ... i was in bed and too lazy (and frozen) to get out. i told him i'll be around tonight ... speaking of which: it seems there's a trend recently with yahoo: stay online, but keep hidden (know lots of people who do it).