A lot has changed for me lately, and I need to get it all out of my head.
Religion:
I've felt connected to Buddhism for a long time, but I didn't really start studying it until shortly before I left Indiana last April. Since moving, a lot of little things have nudged me further in this direction. Meditation is becoming easy again, I found a beautiful (and cheap!) Bhodisatva statue that I was kinda looking for, I stumbled across "How to Practice" again by the Dalai Lama, and I stumbled across the Dhammapada (a Buddhist text) online, just to name a few.
In one kind of meditation, you're supposed to picture the myriad Buddhas and Bhodisatvas and confess your successes and failures to them, and then ask them to teach you. Now, I'm terrible at this kind of thing. First, I have a bad memory. I don't remember what I had for lunch yesterday most of the time, let alone things I did 20 years ago. This morning, however, in my meditation on the train, a flood came back to me. If you know me, you'll also know I can be very critical of myself, even concerning the things I know I'm good at. The flood started as memories of a few things I deeply regret. Then it turned to things I've done right -- compassions that I've shown, good lessons I've taught, etc. I felt guilty about the number of good things that came to me because I know I've screwed up more than that. I caught myself though, and let the good things come through because even if I've screwed up my fair share, I realized it's the intent behind actions that count, and I've never really done anything with cruel intent that I know of. This realization is a tough one for me, for reasons I can't explain or understand. I know it's a step in the right direction though.
Relationships:
Rob and I celebrated eight years together last month. We decided to have a ceremony on our 10th anniversary, which is February 2011. I'm still amazed that another human being has put up with me for this long, but I'm glad he has. I can't imagine life without him.
When we moved to Delaware, it was another major life-change for me. Until recently, I've felt very alone here. Rob had family and friends in the area to reconnect with, but I was alone essentially. I know couples tend to have different classes of friends -- his friends, my friends, and 'our' friends -- but I was missing out. It was, frankly, crushing. The past few weeks have been a respite from that though. I'm starting to get to know some local people who I think may eventually be good friends. They're still going to be people Rob introduced me to, because he's the one with the time and energy for chatting online and coordinating our social calendar, but I have to start somewhere before I go nuts. My only worry is that I'm so starved for friends right now that I feel like I'm going to end up either neglecting Rob or smothering the potential friends. All I can think of right now is a quote from Moby Dick -- "as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it" -- I feel like I'm putting everything into getting other people to like/notice/pay attention to me. Honestly, I feel like a 12 year old. What will be, will be I suppose.
Work:
I hate being in IT. I kick myself daily for not staying with Nursing. It felt right working in a hospital and helping people get well again. I'll never forgive L.S. for driving me out -- or the moron of a department head that sided with her despite CLEAR evidence that she should have her license revoked. All I want to do is go back and finish the schooling, but the longer circumstances conspire against me, the less likely it becomes. I'm grateful to have the job I have, especially in this economy, but I'm miserable. Congratulations to those at UC who took bets on how long it would be before I hated this job -- 6 months appears to be the winner.
And that's all I can bear to write at the moment. Maybe more later. I've just depressed myself. :P
I hate Windows. XP, despite being relatively "mature" as operating systems go, is about as secure as a bank vault made of drywall. You trust it to keep your things safe, but anyone with a good right hook could break in if they wanted to. I have been, and continue to be, a huge advocate of OS X, but even I concede that an OS limited to one hardware platform is lunacy.
That being said, I have to say I'm impressed with Windows 7. I tried upgrading my home PC to vista a while back. It lasted a week. An upgrade from XP took no less than five *hours*. Then there were issues with drivers I couldn't resolve, one of which was with my network card, which meant I couldn't download driver updates. Fortunately I had another computer to use to download them, but imagine my nightmare if I didn't.
Last night I installed Windows 7 beta. It took about 45 minutes for a clean install, and the only things I remember it asking me for were a username and password. Then... it just worked. No driver headaches, no security screens hassling me every two seconds, no spending hours turning off Aero components to make the system faster. The installer either had all the drivers it needed or downloaded the ones it needed (it's all transparent, so what do I know?), it didn't open a bunch of widgets that I didn't want (or have the power to run), and the security warning settings were set to a very reasonable level. I didn't even need to download special display drivers to handle the projector I have on the second video head -- it handled the independent resolutions beautifully. And within minutes of loggin in, I was watching Futurama DVDs using Windows Media Player 8 without codec warnings... and the playback looked better than VLC Media Player under XP.
I'm still installing software, so I may yet come across things that won't work under the new OS, but I understand it's a beta. I'll give it some slack. But frankly, at this point it doesn't need any. Win7 is what Vista ought to have been, and Microsoft knows it -- hence the extension of WinXP support. I'll be very sad to see Win7 Beta expire in August. Here's hoping I can afford the real thing when the time comes.
