a house half full

forced burst of energy.  a few more empty packing boxes.  some graphic novels and a few DVDs consolidated onto existing bookshelves in living room.  some classic pictures of my former selves mixed into the decorations on the refrigerator.  a young kermix with juggling clubs atop his parents’ beat-up car.  a Rorschach Halloween costume that, on reflection, looks a bit like an alternate-universe anti-hero Charlie Brown, avenging his childhood football nemesis.  a young adult kermix in my favorite rented tuxedo, white with black trim and red handkerchief accent, playing my upright bass with my dad at my sister’s (unbeknownst to anyone, at the time, of course) ill-fated wedding.  those huge glasses and that rat’s nest of a ponytail.  a tie littered with question marks that I wish I still had, and I have no idea where it ended up.

still no closer to having any clue where I will put the Monolith of a desktop PC.  Invaders Must Die on the shuffle, Red Bull nearly empty, the moon slowly filling.  the more boxes I can empty, the more real estate I reclaim in pursuit of workspace.

still, a lot of unanswered logistical questions.  do I get another set of speakers for the to-be-rebuilt desktop, having attached the monitors to the living room’s Future Media Center of Doom?  do I get a desk, or set a monitor (or two, or three) on bookshelves, keyboard on my lap, mouse on … something?  is there even room for a desk when everything is done?

most of that doesn’t even matter yet until I finish “moving in”.  empty more boxes.  stack remaining boxes of stuff that doesn’t need unpacking.  assess space from there.

the moon is eyeing my cigarette.  when it’s full, I quit.  I almost waited until it was full to start running around moving things, just for the added burst of energy.  but that’s not how it works.  it’s a good time to fill the house with myself.  the getting rid of things happens later.

The Joy of Tech

this article by a really smart friend of mine (and I’m not just saying that because she likes my music) details, using the example of Angry Birds, how modern technology in the hands of a child does not teach them as much about how the technology works as it did many years ago.  the example makes sense; I remember trying to recreate the simpler mechanics of some of my favorite games with TI Extended BASIC as a kid, with varying successes, and forcing myself to learn how to build and upgrade PCs as the parts became available when I got my first 286.

I’m still trying to decide exactly  what I think about this; I know I’ve got something to say about it, but my thoughts aren’t quite ripe.  there’s still a lot of interest in How Things Work and How To Make Things, and there are still child prodigies, despite the majority of the low-level work already having been done by the grand-daddies of computers and technology.  but should we be worried?  still working on that one.  it definitely feels like it’s worth discussing.