That was December 24th – 27th 2009. (4 planes total.)

Next was another trip home mid-April to see my girlfriend perform in her senior recital.  I don’t remember the exact departure days of week and don’t feel like looking it up so let’s just say it was April 16th – 13th 2010. (4 planes.)

Next plane ride was October.  I had finished my co-op by then but Stacey was then doing her internship in NC so I wanted to visit and take her out on the town for a weekend.  That was October 22nd – 24th 2010. (4 planes.)

Then I went to the career fair at RIT and shook a bunch of hands and convinced one of them to have their company fly me to Florida for an on-site interview.  That was November 6th – 7th 2010 or something like that. (4 planes.)

Then for _that_ Christmas, Stacey came up to us all in NY and I flew back with her for New Years.  That was December 27th 2010 to January 3rd 2011. (2 planes, my first ever direct flights.)

Then not too long ago I got another company so bedazzled that they flew me to Texas.  That was February 28th – March 1st 2011. (4 planes, and a total of 14 hours in various airports.  My first time dealing with delays.)

Now, I am in a plane in Detroit about to fly back to my personal version of home.  We have had a saying this last year or so, “Home is where the Stacey is.”  Now how is moving back to NY and I will be there to help with that.  That was (is) today. (2 planes.)

That is a grand total of 24 plane trips.  In a time span of less then 16 months.  I think that is pretty neat.  All in a desperate rush and need to try to get closer to home.

(I’ll give you all a moment to catch up on those previously discussed topics, if needed…)

I am told by several reliable sources now that I am going to be moving to San Antonio, TX immediately after graduation to start a new full time, big-boy job with Rackspace.  I would be pretty excited.  For almost a decade now I’ve had this thought in the back of my head about working for a web hosting company, on the front lines of globally applied information technology.  I guess it’s really going to happen.

Mother is all excited.  Not that her “big bad beautiful baby boy” is moving 1,706 miles away to a different time zone, but that I am succeeding and all that general proud-parent stuff.  She has even started to plan the party, before I even officially accepted the position just this afternoon.

In the next 2.5 months there will be a lot to plan and arrange and get figured out.  Ideally we (Stacey and I) would have a while longer after graduation to get things figured out and plan for our future, but I guess that will have to come later.  It was commented to me about the quickness of everything, “Welcome to the real world.”  I’ve heard all sorts of commentary and complains about how quick and fast paced American culture and business is, so maybe this is it.

I don’t complain, though.  I am really quite fortunate.  I have been most of my life.  Maybe a prolonged record of good fortune means I’m good at what I do?  I make my own good fate, as it were?  Nah, those ideas are (a) too self-centered for this site and (b) thoughts that I will have to later expand on for a new class I’m in this quarter, and don’t want to get carried away too soon.

I’ve had all the toothpaste I want for a while now, but soon I’m going to be able to make decisions about things named after parts of US legal code, like 401k and IRA.  I personally can’t wait.  It feels like I’ll be more in control of the little universe that exists in my head.

But for now we have to wait still.  At least we aren’t waiting in faithful uncertainty anymore.  I know it’s going to be there waiting for me.  ”Your future awaits” as they say in the movies.  (And bad TV commercials.)  Although the uncertainty was a little soothing to the mind.  I was able to be confident still, to some degree, about being okay in the future, without having to actually know or prepare for any of the details.  But if my LAN party planning experience is any indication, I sort of like the details sometimes.  Again, master of my universe.

I feel like starting a huge poster board checklist.  And since I suck at arts and crafts, it will be a web-based poster board checklist.  Interactive progress bars and everything.  ”Here are all the things between Andrew & Stacey and the real world.”

I’ve never thought that my life story was that interesting.  Compared to what we see on TV or in stories I do just about live under that rock.  As one gets older and meets new people we learn at least a little about their lives and that puts our own lives into perspective.  Today I don’t have such a “low” view of my own life story.  I have had the opportunity to do a lot of things that other people may not of.  I forget if I’ve mentioned it on this blog before or not but I know I have had a fairly fortunate and good life so far.  These opportunities as they come in and out of our life story are how we are able to start to define who and what we are.  Our awareness of this and the ability to see the wider perspective around our lives are the pinnacle principals of self-awareness and enlightenment.

Today I was walking through campus.  Outside.  Not normal for me, but there was no indoor path which was nearly as efficient for where I wanted to go.  It happens to be a nice day out, so there were a lot of other student-types out and a few other people too.  (They must all have the same path efficiency requirements.)  RIT is a famous enough and attractive enough institution so there are a lot of people from all over the country and the world that come here.  This provides for pretty good people watching.  Just walking to my destination I lost count of how many people I spotted that merited a few seconds of deep visual analysis and later mental decomposition.

This probably sounds a little stalker-ish.  If you are another current RIT student reading this you may even feel a little violated.  Tough.

Warning: The indented section is a tangent I accidentally started off on and didn’t have the heart to delete.  Read it for what it is if you wish, but the main point of this article continues after it:

I have always been a people watcher.  I attribute it to my lack of general social acceptance at a young age that I became so interested in what makes people and groups work.  Why do they make the personal decisions they make?  What makes one preference better then the rest?  Why does this group accept this but this other group does not?  Elementary school is all just confusing nonsense based on childish expectations and viewpoints.  The higher grades of grammer school and then eventually high school is where you see all the social cliques formed.  It will vary a little from demographic to demographic but in general you even get the same cliques being formed all over the country, or world even.  (This would lead one to believe there is some scientific determinate involved here that it is reproduced all on its own so many times, but that is beyond tonights discussion.)

In my current social battleground, a high end university campus, everyone has already been through the stress and the fun and excitement and the turmoil of social cliques and all that and (just as I literally saw myself the week we all graduated from high school) there is eventually a realization that “everyone is alright.”  People start to learn how to accept other people.

Since it is nearly impossible to know each and every person I see on campus, and downright ridiculous to know them all deeply and completely, I start to wonder.  The logical and “socially conscious” person in me says that they are none of your business and you are not immediately effected by their existence in one bit.  You can just leave them be and move on with your life. But that isn’t good enough.  Something in me wants to know more.  When I see someone who catches my attention (see after the jump for list of things that will catch my attention.) I want to know even more about them even more badly.  I start to wonder at first about how the speak, what frame of mind they are from, what their world views are, why they are here now, what they are doing now, what they are going to be doing tomorrow, if they plan for tomorrow or if they just wing it, do they even have a plan for tonight, do they have a plan for 5 years from now, 20 years from now, etc…  Those are all the simple questions to me.  Those are the sort of things that if I were to sit down with one of these people for some amount of time I could get answers to.  If I am unlucky enough to not have anything else to think about at the time however, I will start to think more deeply about these people I see.  I will start to wonder all those sorts of questions, but then I will realize that it is not realistic that I will be able to ask them any of that so I will have to get the answers to this problem some other way.  I will have to divine their life story in order to answer them myself.  Since a persons life story is the very definition of who they are, then it shouldn’t be too hard to do that then.  The hard part then of course becomes figuring them out from just a casual look.  (Okay I’ll be honest, sometimes I will stare for a while to gather more data.)  I feel like I have met enough unique and different people in my short life that I can use all these little qualities about them all that I remember and piece together someone else’s life.  It’s like putting together a puzzle, except you only have a vague notion of what the image is and the only pieces you have are from other puzzles.

This can get quite exhilerating if you let it.  It is so easy to get caught up in the idea of “creating” this entire life story for someone you have never met and only just once saw briefly.  You know this person exists since you just saw them a moment ago, so whatever attributes and ideas you apply to them seem more real, no matter the fact you have nothing solid to prove any of it.  Do this enough and you will have a whole little village worth of made up lives in your mind and it starts to get a little overwhelming.  All of a sudden the village implodes on itself upon realization that none of it is real.  Like all the little people of Whoville waking up on Christmas morning and realizing they are talking funny, and deciding to just sleep it off.

The scientist in me wants to then fix this situation by finding out their real life stories.  I want to meet each and every person I see and learn all about them.  Everyone should wear t-shirts or jackets or something which sums them up in a few sentences that I can skim as I walk by them.  Do you think most people can do that?  Describe who and what they are in 2-4 sentences?  Lets see:

I am a somewhat-outgoing computer nerd with a fairly mellow and excited view on life.  I like to think I know everything, but actually know I don’t and will always embrase a chance to learn more.  I seek comfort from my girlfriend and cat, happiness from my computers and Star Trek, and wisdom from the universe around me.

Not bad I’d say.  Does a pretty good job of describing me I think.  Does it cover my whole life story?  Not at all.  It more or less covers the summery of what resulted from the last 23 years of reading through my life story.  I would of liked to squeeze more in there about pastimes I never get the chance to participate in or my feelings towards eating while doing something you enjoy but we were already pushing it for a t-shirt design.

There are some common sayings that imply that no one wants to know about or hear your entire life story.  That it is yours and yours alone.  I think that is bogus.  I think everyone can learn a lot from everyone else and what they have been through.  (If you look at it mathematically, assume it takes 90 years to reach ultimate wisdom.  Just as a somewhat random figure.  Combine the life experiences of five 20 year olds and, while you would not equal the wisdom of a 100 year old it would be much closer to it.  What about three 30 year olds?  Two 40 year olds and an 18 year old?  Somewhere in there those few people have something to share with the others and advance each other.)  Even beyond just wisdom from more or older people, there are all the raw experiences they have had.  All the places they have been, other people they have met, things they have done and tried, etc.   We start to share some of this information online at some websites even designed for people with a particular interest to gather around and communicate.  You see it happening all over the place, but it is very rarely ever so broad.  A person is interested in getting a puppy (I wouldn’t know why, but we’ll go with it.) and so they log onto a forum of current, previous and want-to-be puppy owners.  They all talk about puppies.  The sharing ends there.

I don’t know if anyone else out there wonders about other people like I do but I have enjoyed it so far and you may too.  Maybe we can all sit down for coffee one day and tell each other our life stories.  That would be fun.

An incomplete list of things that will catch my focused interest: Unique colored body parts, funny clothes, pointy clothes, shinny clothes, clothes which appear to have more volume then the person wearing them, very small people, very large people, ugly people, pretty people (yeah mostly girls but I will recognize that there are some pretty boys out there. I see one in the bathroom mirror every day ), old people, young (baby/toddler) people, someone who appears physically/emotionally/mentally/personally attached to anyone else whom I would otherwise find interesting, quiet people, (not loud people, hate them), people moving slower then the group average, people staring off at things I cannot immediately see what they are staring at, people who appear to be on a mission, people who look like other people I know, people who look like me*.

* I have not yet met anyone who I think looks like me.  I just know I would be interested if I ever did.

In summary, I want to stop pretending and make the Inernets work for realz.

Second, I’d like to share that I am, once again, seriously considering getting a Macbook. I even applied for the “instant credit” they have just to see what it would give me. They approved me in less then 5 seconds for twice what I indicated I would be using.

Third, I would like to also share that should I get this macbook, I have already decided that when it joins my network (currently consisting of ADR-super, ADR-media, ADR-icecube, ADR-bytes, ADR-linus, ADR-laptop, ADR-wii, ADR-love and ADR-server) its host name is going to be ADR-steve.

P.S. Yes, ADR-wii is my Nintendo Wii, ADR-love is my iTouch, and I left out my cell phone (ADR-blueberry), my two compile servers (ADR-timone and ADR-pumba) and my new “thin-client” system named ADR-appliance.

I want to own a private jet that goes between Rochester and North Carolina whenever we want.

I want security.

I want to feel secure in my future.

I want to not have to worry week to week or month to month about anything.

I want to be happy.

I want to have all the latest and funnest stuff.

I want to be able to  decide what and how I use the things I have.

. . . . . . . . .

I don’t want to sound like a brat or ungrateful or anything.  I’m just saying.  I guess there are a lot of various things that everyone wants for one reason or another.  That is life.  That’s being human, with all the desires and hopes and dreams that come with that.  Being happy and content is about finding a way to “make do” with what we have and can achieve.  Happiness can be a choice, even.  Forget the fact that you don’t have everything you want, forget that you are only mortal, forget that you do not have access to limitless resources.  Just forget it all, and be happy.  Blissful ignorance.  (I have to say, in the last couple years I have been finding connections to that phrase/concept a lot more…)

I mean, what is “make do” supposed to mean anyways?  Again, are we supposed to just forget what we want and what we need to achieve it, and do something else?  Be something else?  That is not the same.  I’m sorry, universe, but I will not be fooled like that.  I cannot just make do with what I have.  I can accept what I have.  I can accept it as a temporary condition which will be changed in the near future.

But to me, it sounds sort of sad and a lot of hopeless, to just be happy and make do.  What good are these dreams if not to be achieved eventually?  Whatever process it was that created us and our minds gave us this ability to desire.  It has to be good for something.  It is at the very core of all of human progress and innovation, isn’t it?  Is that its only purpose?  Are all desires supposed to be for the betterment of mankind alone?  Looking at the most accurate guide to the future we have, the Star Trek timeline, it was not until the human race went through a third world war, first contact with alien races, and the total collapse of the global economy that all the nations even started to come together for any actual common purpose.  It was another 150 years or so until the Utopian ”United Federation of Planets” came together.  Look at what had to happen first, before man was ready to want only for his fellow man.  Are we just not there yet?  Am I still allowed to want for myself, at least until the men with the pointed ears land?

I don’t have any real answers here.  As with every other existential question I pose to myself, I will answer just with what I have been doing so far.  I will continue to want and desire and dream.  I will continue to be driven by that towards my goals, and I will achieve them.  That is not a question.  That is a statement.  Period.  Another period.  (I want to make sure you feel as final about that statement as I do.  Period.  End parentheses.)  There will be some day when I am completally and 100% content with life, the universe and everything.  That is not today.

For now I will continue to “make do.”  I will try not to whine and moan too much about what I don’t have.  Although, right about now I would really like that airplane.

Basically, I just want my dang degree so I can do something else with my life.  If you get bored with the pace of this blog, I am not sure if mine is the best to suggest but you’re welcome to check it out. 

Oh, and the most important thing about me that I like to crochet and I also am currently cheating on Andrew with a grey female cat who thinks she is the center of the universe. 

This entry is all just for the purpose of (a) making another update because my girlfriend says that I don’t update often enough and (b) to see how the feel of this silly raised keyboard will work.  That’s because since this is the lowest level macbook, I will not be getting it for anything intensive.  Therefore the only thing it will be good for is to do work.  The typing kind of work.

So far i guess it is okay.  I could get used to this quick enough.  (Shut up amanda about my grammar.  And my spelling.  Brat.)

Hey, it works a lot better when I look at the keyboard when I type.  I don’t know if that is cheating.  I don’t think that I care.

Hmmm, well I guess that is enough for now.  Now time to see if I can get this thing’s CPU to melt….

There were some unexpected things that happened in that time however. Such as about 6 months ago, this girl insisted on being my loving, devoted and epically-fantastic girlfriend. So that was a happy surprise. She is back in North Carolina being epically-fantastic in her own internship now, and I am here going to classes. Yay me. Yay us.

Life has a way of being randomly unexpected at times. People say things like that a lot. I see that it makes sense. What we call “life” in this context and all the things it consists of are “controlled” by a countless number of separate variables/people/things/events. There is no way at all we could predict it all. (Not until Skynet takes over that is…) Given this situation, the logical person adopts a philosophy of “Hakuna Matata” and moves on. This is what I have done for the last several years. Up until recently, this hasn’t been an issue for me really since all the random and unexpected things in my life were either trivial or really good/fortunate happenstances that I was able to gladly accept.

A while ago I was talking about a method of emotional self-protection I’ve observed which causes a delayed reaction to major changes. This major change is still in the process of reacting. The delay was assisted by the fact that I have had unfortunate amounts of shit to shovel and deal with (professionally, scholastically, domestically) in the few days since and it isn’t going to slow down soon. Some would say that is a good thing. Others would rather there be nothing to distract the mind and soul from dealing with the present. Honestly, I once thought I knew but I don’t know on which side of that argument I stand.

Here are some things I do know. I do know that if I were the kind to profess my undying love and infatuation for someone on a public medium this would be the time. (Whenever I see it, it just looks and sounds tacky and a little ridiculous. I guess I can understand it but still, some things are better left in private.) If I were in a movie with a low special effects budget and they were in for a close up of my face, there would be stars and little hearts and puffs of pink smoke in my eyes. If money and future stability were not an issue I would be in a different state right now. If the world were kind enough to work the way I wanted it to, I would not have to be in classes to get a diploma to get a job to get success and all the toothpaste I’d ever want. I could instead spend the rest of my life with the one who makes me happy and her willow tree.

But the world is not that perfect. Here we are in reality, and here I am with my next little chapter of existence. Here I am with my next obstacle on my sprint to success. Now jump.

Due to the typical schedule I work down here, I only meal I eat at my own apartment is breakfast.  I wake up late enough that there isn’t usually time for a lunch before leaving for work.  We also usually go out to eat on our “lunch” break, which is a dinner to most people.  I get home well after midnight and try to have a little snack before going to sleep.  That’s as much of a third “meal” as I get.

Yesterday I got some bananas as I was shopping.  It was completely spur-of-the-moment.  (Well, not entirely because a co-worker brought one in a few days before and the idea was in my head already.)

See how nutritious they look???  My mommy taught me well.  I do what I can to stay healthy and promote good habits for staying that way.

Well, not that well.  I can still have fun.

This time away from my previous world has brought things into a different focus.

Avid readers will know of my previous fixation on toothpaste.  I now have the means to get all the different kinds of toothpaste I want.  It feels good to have those options.

Along with the toothpaste we desired other qualities of life.  Some are even starting to fall into place.  In the past couple years I have kept my cosmic expectations fairly low.  I do this for practical reasons.  I know what I want, I know what my priorities are, and I plan to live a long life so there is no rush.  This has helped my general happiness too, as described in my previous post.

But things never work out as you plan.  That is something else I have always been aware of, but never really had to contend with.  Does this also apply to when things work out better then expected?  I have always accepted the things that happen to and around me which I have no direct control over.  (Because, I have no direct control over them.)  These days life has been such that I am just accepting all these wonderful things that happen to me just as I would some trouble or turmoil I would have to deal with.  My fail-safe for getting through anything is starting to catch false-positives.  (Just a little computer scientist reference there.)

What has this all caused?  Well, life still happens.  All these wonderful things still do and have happened.  The interesting part is that I don’t know how I feel about it all yet.  If I do know how I feel about it, I don’t know if that is how I should feel, or will end up feeling about it.  I am aware of the fact that once this c’est la vie attitude wears off I may feel something different.  Is that normal?  If there were hypothetically other people out there who reacted to good and bad fortune in the same way like this, would this all be normal?

The worst part about it all is that there is a delayed ultimate reaction to everything.  I can think about and mull over anything to my hearts content, but I am in the end stuck waiting on the sidelines for my heart to make up its final decision.

Again, no worries.  No rush.  What will happen will happen and I’ll deal with that too.  Eventually.

I would like to note to the bulk of the handful of readers out there that this is all meant to be somewhat vague.  The exact specifics are not mentioned in here as to not clutter up the rest of the discussion.  Also, they are not mentioned here because I haven’t decided yet how I ultimately feel about them.  Oh bother…

This is one of those post ideas I came up with months ago.  Actually, just the title and general idea I came up with.  All this text is new.  Because of all the elapsed time between concept and reality, take the title as more of a metaphor then anything literal.

I’ve always been a happy kid/person.  (I don’t believe kids are people.  That’s another topic.)  In my entire memory (and I have memories daing back to age 2) I cannot remember being exceptionally depressed for more then a day.  It was not until much more recently in my life that I realized this is not the way for all, or even most people.  Why that is is again a different topic.  What I’d like to discuss this evening is what I believe is responsible for this overall outlook.  I see these things in myself and I don’t see them often, or at all, in the people I meet and mentally evaluate.  I will apologize now for the elitist attitude this probably will end up having.

1. Compartmentalized thought process. This may take a bit of practice for some, but you can divide your mind into compartments or categories or sections or whatever you want to call them.  The point is that you are able to identify where one issue ends and another starts.  This is something you have to maintain just about at all times or else things can start to blur together and you will have trouble separating them in the future.  At this point it may sound like I am taking the analogy too far but in fact I’ve been talking literally for the last 3 sentences.  As you are dealing with one issue, you do not want to be worried about something else which in reality has no ties to the issue at hand.  Programmers do this all the time to better understand what they have to do.  It makes things easier to comprehend when there isn’t so much so look at.  It applies perfectly to programming and to life in general.  Even when two issues may in reality be connected and/or originate from the same place, your thought processes do not have to be merged.  You can consider one problem on its own before beginning to consider something else.  This ties into number 4 below, prioritization.
2. Detach from yourself. This is something that can be very bad.  You see it in TV or movies sometime, where the character is some part delirious, part schizophrenic and exists in the show as either comedy relief or as some statement about intra-personal turmoil.  Often this character is played by Summer Glau.  What I mean by it is that you would be well served by the ability to be aware of all the things around you and all the things in your mind, but not attached to them to let them affect how you handle anything else.  This is not a mental state you would stay in all the time, but only when mentally dealing with problems or anything else that can lead you to stress, fear, worry, etc…  The ultimate truth is that all those emotions are over something you may or may not have control over, but in any case do not have control over now.  If you can do something about it, you would be doing it.  If you haven’t thought of what you can do yet, starting the worry or fear now is just going to make things exponentially worse.  So just detach from it.  For those with only a beginners level of mental-self-reprogramming ability, you can pretend that you are someone else trying to solve your issue.  This entire mindset leads to a much faster and clearer thought process.  And that’s what you need.
3. “All-ways look on the briiight side, of life!” One of my favorite Monty Python music numbers aside, it is never a bad thing to recognize something positive.  If not positive then non-negative.  (This is where I have to put the computer scientist in me aside, where there are only the two options.)  Everything is a murky shade of gray.  That’s the way the world is.  Unfortunately, the universe and nature and people are not programmed in binary so there will always be more then one way to look at something.  Even when the situation prevents you from taking immediate comfort in the brighter outlook you have recognized, it will at the very least be something you can look back on in the future to prevent that point in time from being a total black spot in your life.
4. Prioritize everything. This does not have to be an entirely conscious effort, but you can be aware of how one thought or issue is more or less important then another.  Especially when you are feeling overloaded by whatever issues you are dealing with at the moment, you need to be able to not only compartmentalize, but also to recognize what you should do first.  That is the beginning of any plan, and a plan means a goal for happiness and success.  (Unless you plan to be miserable.  Then you should seek a better source of self help then blogs.)  When you can recognize the different facets of your situation, you can see what needs to be done first and how that will help everything else.  Additionally, if you are an O.C.D.-mathematician like me, you get great pleasure out of discovering the shortest path between two points, be them physical, mental or emotional.
5. Trust yourself. Arrogance is like this, but on the outside.  On the inside, in your mind, this means that you have made a promise to yourself to always trust something you have previously decided.  Now of course this does not mean you can’t change your mind or re-evaluate or something like that.  This means that you will not do those things needlessly.  You will actually take action on something you have already decided to do.  Not only does this prevent stagnation, but it encourages a more adventurous and laze-fare attitude.  This can also be a great source of stability in your life, even when nothing else it.

Marginally-clever title’s aside, this isn’t a statement of things that will always work for everyone.  I however have found these to be great truths in my life.  From these ideas and others along the same line of thought, I feel comfortable that I can handle anything, and that I will always be able to do so.  I have no idea what the future may hold, even a mere 2 years from now.  I am not worried, however.  The last 22 years, 10 months and 2 days have prepared me to the point where everything else from this point on is possible.

So, things have changed in the last several months.  I finished my third/second quarter at RIT.  (how do you count a class durring summer quarter?)  With all that out of the way I’m not on co-op working for Cisco in their CALO lab.  (Think of a really cool internship you get college credit for, for those  non-RIT people out there.)  I start Monday.  I’m just about all settled in my new apartment in Morrisville, NC.  (didn’t I just move to Henrietta in the last post?!)  I may post pictures of my new place here.  I’ll decide later on how large a scope I want to brag on.

In these last several months as all this was happening I’ve gotten lots of ideas for posts here.  Some nice yummy topics for us all to chew over.  (it’s about lunch time for me at the moment.)  I even started a few draft posts to get some ideas down.  I think over my 9 months down here I’ll be making a concerted effort to come by here more often and write some more.  Sort of like an online journal of me and my thoughts in this new era of existence.  (did that sound too grand?  too corny?  probably.)

People keep telling me I’ll do well down here.  Either I’ve done a really good job over selling myself or I am some kind of technological prodigy child.  Or something in between.  I’m leaning towards the latter half of that spectrum.  Hope someone’s out there to watch me stumble through it all.

This was the first assignment given in my “Networking Fundamentals” class.  We were asked to write a short fiction story describing how we believe devices communicate on a network.  It was not graded but used as a way for the professor to get a feeling of how much we know about networking before we got into the course material.  I perhaps took the assignment too seriously, or not serious enough.  You decide.

The land of Kinterneon exists apart from yours and mine.  It is a world which follows a strict yet completely foreign set of protocols.  The inhabitants are uniquely talented in the ways of multitasking and optimizing their efficiency.  With these skills they are able to evolve and develop with astonishing speed.  In-fact, their entire existence has come to be and developed to what it is today in just the last 40 years.

Kinterneon is divided regions, which are added and removed at to fast a pace to count.  These regions exist to allow their regional administrators preside over their domains with better focus and grace.  A region is totally autonomous, much like individual countries are in our world.  They have the ability to manage all their own affairs however they may see fit, while still being able to interact with other regions.

Communication in Kinterneon is one of the peoples proudest, and oddest, achievements.  For a region to convey a message to another region, the message has to first be brought to an interface junction on the periphery of their territory.  From there the message is broken up into smaller chunks and each chunk packaged with information such as the source, destination and a count of the number of places the package has traveled through.  All of these packages are then numbered in sequence and then sent through a very large tube to a central switching authority.  Each switching authority manages incoming and outgoing messages for a set few regions.  They are neutral when it comes to region affiliation and they will route messages from their sender to the desired recipient without bias.  In some cases, when a messages intended destination is not within the scope of address served by the authority, the message has to be sent to a planetary master authority.  There are nine of these master authorities in Kinterneon, aptly designated K-1 through K-9.  (See “A Tale of a Doctor and His Phone Box” for a wondrous journey with the K-9 authority.)  Each of these master authorities have direct connections with each other via very fat pipes.  In a world where communication is so very important, this level of redundancy has proved useful in the past.  The master authorities keep records of the ranges of addresses accessible from all of the other switching authorities connected to them.  With this information they are able to route any unknown package to its ultimate destination.  If a package’s included travel count gets increased beyond a particular limit however, the package and all of its data are discarded.  When a package ultimately arrives at its destination, the receiving region places it in an incoming buffer which holds all the communication chunks sent to them.  As contiguous pieces are received, they are reassembled in the labeled sequence to reform the original message.  The daemon is then free to act on the message in whatever manor he or she has been instructed to.

With the ever increasing volume and cleverness of the people of Kinterneon, they have become so adept at this communication method that they can even send images, audio, video and even thoughts and ideas encoded and broken up within their packages.  Many years ago a convention was convened to decided on a standard method of encoding and delivering such unique message contents.  The Regional Fairness Convention is the unifying force behind the diverse forms of communication now possible.

The cities within a region in Kinterneon can also communicate with each other in much the same way.  They follow the same protocols and format as regional communication, but just on a smaller scale, communicating city-to-city.  If a city wishes to communicate with another region, it only has to make a request of the interface junction controller at the edge of their region.

As you can see, the land of Kinterneon must be vast and full of wonder and innovation.  However, despite our differences, we here on Earth have learned a lot from their model.

I know how the game is supposed to end.  The main character (me, if you haven’t been following along) gets the girl in the end and they ride off into the (Martian) sunset together (in their hover car) to start a family together and live happily ever after.  (Some details filled in from personal fantasy.)  I look at myself and my peers, and I get the impression that I have a clearer picture of this then most.  Additionally, I seem to either be more worried, less concerned, or more sure of how I will achieve these life goals.  I have yet to come to a definitive conclusion on which of those three it is.

Popular belief is that I somehow acquire either (a) copious scholarships or (b) lots of debt to attend a college of my choice for several years, get a nice middle-class job afterwards with which I can manage any debt I may have, buy a house, car, wife, kids, and all the toothpaste I want.  But what if I can’t find all that on the store shelves?  What if, assuming for the moment that I manage to get to this fanciful point in life, I end up not finding the right car, or the right person, or the right brand of toothpaste.  Falling back to popular belief, I would “move on.”  Settle for the peppermint when what I really wanted was wintergreen.  (they never have wintergreen these days…)  Personally, I refuse to settle.  I am willing to “make do with what I have” or to “improvise”, but I will never settle.  I know what I want, and one way or another, I will have it.  (even if I have to cut down my own wintergreen tree…)

But remember, we have assumed that I will be given the honor of being presented the choice of toothpaste or woman or car.  I still have to get that job with which to buy her/it.  (Lets pretend I’m referring to the car as “her” and save the slavery/prostitution implications for the next post.)  To get this job, I either have to be the luckiest person I know, or have to jump through all sorts of high-strung hoops to prove my worth.  Even when it seems like you will never get the degree or job you want.  Even when the fiscal and logistical requirements to get the degree or the job seem impossible.

I just have to keep on going.  Never ending, never wavering.  Or else, no toothpaste.

Today I was among some friends at a magic (Magic the Gathering, a trading card game) tournament. I started to talk about this sort of stuff, and the people I was talking to seemed to be completely foreign to these concepts. They stated that the common thoughts of an American are on the “important things” like money, sex, and food. Now, I am not going to dispute the importance of any of those three things. This society requires money to trade for other needs, sex is needed for procreation of the species, and food to sustain our biological bodies. But how can one’s life revolve around just that? How is that enlightened? What long term good does that serve?

About now you are probably thinking to yourself, “This loon sounds like he is trying to start a cult.” Well, that would be fun and all, but I have other obligations in my life at the moment. No time to become a spiritual leader. In any case, that isn’t the point here, but in a way I guess it is. What I am talking about is frame of mind. An awareness of who we are, what our minds can accomplish, our position in the cosmos. This does not require a conversion to a new spirituality, whatever one you have now will work just fine. It just requires some thought.

And that is the point of it all. If you are able to give things like this the thought, you have already started the “enlightenment.” If you are able to comprehend, understand, and even accept what I am talking about, then you have just proven to yourself that you have the mental ability of self-awareness. You have validated your sentience.

You have proven yourself to be a worthy reader of M.etaphysical E.xistance.