brett's logjam

Can’t talk now. Must go run errands.

As I was downloading pictures from Merrystar’s old digital camera, I came across this:

Doesn’t it look like one of those pictures taken from the ‘70s that was developed using those faulty chemicals that turned everything brown after a few years? All my childhood photographs are tan. The historian in me cries whenever he sees them, even though they match the old M&M colors.

Played Nexus and Agora (from Cheapass Games) with Merrystar tonight. Nexus was easy to learn but the unrestricted board placement made Agora our favorite for the night. Repeated fires and floods through the marketplace that sent customers screaming for cover didn’t influence our opinion any.

At the beginning, what holds us back; the blank page, or the one with words?

There came a point where I had to start over.

Perhaps you know the point; something you’re associated with both repulses and fascinates you. You can’t stop looking at it, editing it, trying to make it work. It becomes something you detest, despise, denigrate; slowly, you stop hating it and hate yourself instead for staying with it. At some point - perhaps when your disgust with yourself becomes more important than your disgust with the thing - it’s too late. Time to reboot.

Perhaps you know the point; perhaps not. I hate to say it doesn’t matter if you do or not, but that’s because I don’t like being impolite to people, not because it does matter. It would be great, for the sake of understanding and politeness and civility and whatnot, if you knew what I was talking about, but if not, that’s okay too.

Regardless, I had reached that point with a something called a website and trying to fix it was too much to bear. Even thinking of it as something that needed fixing is symptomatic, I believe. It was’t broken per se - the pages loaded fine in most browsers, the layout was readable - but it wasn’t what I wanted for myself.

So I gave up, and started over. Does that make me a coward, or merely honest? I don’t know. I just flipped the switch in an automatic, thoughtless motion. The system isn’t working, so try rebooting.

Perhaps one shouldn’t dwell too long upon the thought that rebooting returns you to the very same system you just exited, without necessarily addressing the issues that kicked you out in the first place.

Evenings seem shorter on this coast than in Texas; I think it has to do with when prime time TV is scheduled. Even people who don’t watch TV are affected by the masses of people who do.

Merrystar thought I was a little nuts when I mentioned this, so I let it drop. Arguing the relativity of time with a physicist is a little like saying “I like to breathe air.”

We talked about wedding plans instead, since it seemed I could make more headway there. She had contacted the photographer down in Virginia Beach we’d met with and made arrangements; one major hurdle out of the way. Also looked at an online card/invitation designer that looked really good.

Two more boxes checked on the wedding to-do list; oh so many to go. Six months doesn’t seem nearly enough.