February 24th, 2003

We’ve fallen off the internet at work and I feel like a blind person. I keep thinking “Oh well, since I can’t do that I’ll just look up this thing on the net. No wait. Ok, well, since I can’t do that, I’ll just check my email. No wait. Oh, well, I’ll be able to know when my co-worker that can call the people who can fix this gets in because I’ll see him on AIM. No wait. Oh well then I can just ftp these files home….” and so on, and so forth. It’s very strange indeed.

Well, it’s funny what your mind does to you. Maybe you remember last week how I talked a big game about posting my dreams to the blog yadda yadda and how fun this would be etc., etc. and I posted the dream about the house falling apart. Well, three nights in a row I’ve had dreams that were too terrible for me to post here. I wrote them down, of course (though I have to admit I was hesitant to do even that), but I can’t bring myself to post them publicly. The first night’s dream was just weird and embarrassing and made me think, ugh, rather not go into that. My reluctance was then rewarded by two nights of truly violent and horrific dreams, each worse than the last which I am even more reluctant to post, but which I dutifully wrote down in one of my notebooks. Last night was the final revenge, I suppose, because I can’t remember my dreams at all, so it’s like back to square one. Not sure what I’m going to do about that. I suppose part of the blame can be laid at the feet of Nyquil, since for a couple of those nights (not sure which ones, to be honest) I was under the influence. Still trying to get rid of this darned persistent congestion, you see. Still, I suppose I’m going to have to commit to either posting the dreams or not. Undecided.

Today is the day my parents are going back to Argentina. We are all going to miss them, I know, but my concern is mostly for Sophia, who I’m not sure understands what is going on. I’ve explained to her that nono and nona are going away, and we did lots more hugs this morning than we normally do, but I know she’ll ask for them frequently in the next few days. Her developing mind is such that she remembers people even when they are not present. “Where ducky?” she might ask me or “Where daddy?”. I know I’ll be hearing “Where nono? Where nona?” and see her little shape toddling over to the closed door where they stay with her hand extended towards the knob, looking for them. She’ll get used to it, of course, but even that is bittersweet. So she stops asking for them, is that any better? They’ll be gone for a year, that’s an infinitely long time for a small toddler mind, and by the time they get back she will have to meet them all over again. She’s been very fortunate to have this time of closeness and sharing with them. She has relished them, though not because she understood this time together would be brief. Children are wonderful creatures.

I’m doing other things while composing this entry, including mp3 management. No net access means no Shasradio, so that I’m on my own musically as well as everything else. Fortunately, I’m armed with a good many mp3s. Listening to them makes me cringe when I see them labeled “Track 08″ and so forth. So I don’t think I’ve talked much about Shasradio here before. Shasradio is an internet streaming radio run by a friend of mine. He has around 60 gigs of mp3s, mostly in the areas of techno, rock and alternative. What makes his radio different from any of the zillions of internet radios out there? I’ll tell you what : the ratings. If you’re logged in to the radio when you listen, you have the ability to rate songs according to love, like, dislike and hate. Each of these ratings has a weight, which means that when the code my friend wrote to pick the songs adds up the ratings, songs that are negatively rated aren’t picked. In other words, you control what’s played by your ratings. Is that cool or what? Of course you can be outvoted, which means I have to listen to the dreadful, dreadful Smiths all the time, since the majority of listeners have rated that whining drama queen Morrisey’s songs positively, but it’s still a neat concept. The radio also allows you to have one request queued at a time, so you can actually hear exactly what you want every once in a while. There’s also a chatroom, where you can discuss the songs playing as well as countless other topics. Not only that, listeners can actually upload music they like to the radio. You get one upload per day. Anyways, most of the handful of readers I have are probably already Shasradio listeners, but if you’ve never tried it, you definitely ought to check it out. Consider this my go check this out link for the day.

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