ztraffer

Today is the last day of the year, and I want to dedicate this post to that fact. Amazingly, we are one twentieth of the way into the not-so-new century XXI. Thinking back to the year 2000, I realize these past years have brought radical change to my life. The disquieting part is that I can't say if my life is better now or then. I realize this means it is probably both. Though I have not traveled society's mainstream lifestyle since my childhood, I was pretty close to it around 2000. Many things were good, but I now realize I was heading in the wrong direction. Today, things are still not perfect, but at least I can see where I am headed, and it is a better place. May the next twentieth of a century bring peace and happiness to us all.

A few days ago, I saw Peter Jackson's King Kong. The movie was very good, no question about it, though not quite as memorable as I was expecting. But what I found most incredible, were many of the critic's reviews. At least two or three of them talked about the hinting at sexual tension between Kong and the girl. At least one of them went on to "explain" how it was a clear message about interracial sex, society's taboos, etc., etc. Since I admire Peter Jackson's work, I was looking forward to see how he had accomplished this aspect of the movie. I was sure it would be done in a tasteful, subtle, and enlightening way. Therefore, I paid close attention to all interaction between Kong and Naomi Watts. I found absolutely no hint whatsoever of any sort of sexual tension. Nada, zippo, nothing. There was however, a very intense affective relationship, which was masterfully done -and which, at times, found Watts' acting outdone by Kong's -a CGI animated charac...

On the third land out from the light-of-life, there lived a simple people. They thought of themselves as “the makers of things”, or sometimes, “the thinkers of ideas”; but for simplicity’s sake, they just called themselves “the people”. The people were, for the most part, quite happy. Not so much because they had found an excellent source of fulfillment, but simply because they saw no reason to be unhappy; so they just went about their business. The people liked to know things. Most of them liked to know how; many liked to know why. Thus they slowly began to amass a body of knowledge shared and agreed upon by all of the people. The people thought this was a good thing, and it made them happy because it was the one thing that they could always agree on . On occasion two or more of them would enter into conflict, with unpleasant consequences. However, they knew that there was a common bond beneath the disagreement. They knew how their opponents thought. They knew that they were motivated...

What can I say, it is my version of Nutella ;) I am really starting to like this blog idea. Reading my good friend Cecilia's blog, and the comments posted there by others, it feels like a conversation, only without the limitations of time and distance. Perhaps this would be a good medium to conduct online forums... I have to give this idea some more thought. original | easy

Merry Christmas! For those who celebrate this time of the year, it is a special season. I remember with some nostalgia the holiday atmospehere where I grew up. Because it takes place at the beginning of summer, it is doubly special. The days are long. Most people try to take their time off at this time, and most students are off school. After a long, cloudy, and stormy cold season, winter clothes are no longer necessary. The sun shines most days, beaches fill with sunbathers, and the coastal resort towns come to life. Like walking into Galadriel's forest, you can tell that you have stepped into a different kind of time. There is a happy, relaxed mood in the air. People stay out late into the night, you can see them in the streets and parks enjoying the warm air and clear skies. In a city where most people don't greet strangers, suddenly everyone greets each other with a "Feliz Navidad" (Merry Christmas) and "Feliz Año Nuevo" (Happy New Year).

I have wasted countless hours flying around the Earth, like Apollo in his chariot, from continent to continent, zooming in and out, looking at old homes in familiar streets. In spite of the birds-eye view of rooftops and treetops, I have managed to find every place I've ever inhabited, they’re all still there. Yet I have spent even more time looking at places I gave never visited. From Greek beaches to African lakes, from canyons to mountaintops, from cities to jungles, from Buenos Aires to Bangkok, from Usuaiah to Reykjavik and on and on while the minutes turn to hours. Help, I am addicted to Earth

After working as contractor for different IT companies, I have discovered some interesting patterns. When you want to take time off, contract offers will come to you, unsolicited. When you want to work, all opportunities will elude you. If you only have one contract offer, it never meets your requirements. The lower the number of requirements met, the less likely it is to have alternative offers. When there is more than one offer, the best contract offers are never confirmed until the least appealing deadlines to accept it, expire. If you turn down the least appealing contract in favor of the more appealing ones, the latter will always fall through. However, if you do take the least appealing contract -and as soon as it is too late to back out- you will receive a phone call with a definitive confirmation for one of the contracts that did meet all your requirements. This seems like another manifestation of Murphy's Law: "if something can go wrong, it will". The truth is, t...

I am a tinkerer. Sometimes I just can't leave things alone. In the case of blogs, when I see old postings I always catch something that I need to correct, improve, or change in some manner. I've found some bugs in the built-in spellchecker; sometimes, instead of replacing the whole word, it inserts the corrected word inside the old word, making it worse than before. Also the apostrophes are sometimes replaced by strange characters. I guess I should go and recheck everything, but perhaps I'll just leave it alone for now ;)

Prologue: I have resisted my initial temptation to name this posting "Earth", or "Air". Instead, this is a posting inspired by another, old blog of mine. Since it's been called to my attention that I haven't posted anything for several days, I will make this one extra long to make up for lost time. You'll notice that I did not record my dreams most days... unfortunatey I have no DremerID so I don't know whose dreams I missed ;) Dreams My dreams never make much sense. As a matter of fact, they are usually utterly ludicrous. I envy those people whose dreams are almost like movies, and they actually reflect believable situations. A few years ago I learned that some people have lucid dreams, that is, dreams where one is aware of the dream, and can control what happens in it. I also learned that one can train oneself to do this. Thus, my Lucid Dream Project blog was born. The idea was to record my dreams immediately after waking up, to become aware I had ...

I recently saw a documentary about firefighters. When I was a child I was fascinated by fire. When camping I was always feeding the bonfire. At home I would secretly and impatiently wait to be alone so that I could engage in my forbidden passion. I didn't see substances, or materials, or the occasional, doomed insect -I saw fuel. Everything was fuel waiting to burn in different and fascinating ways. One of my favorite things was to turn all the lights off and then trace circuits of alcohol across a large marble table to see the flame follow the path. Back then the little lab sets for kids had both sulfur and carbon... Salt wasn't hard to find in the kitchen cabinet. My first explosion was blind luck; I had no idea of how to make black powder. I never burned the house down. I don't know the origin or cause for this fascination with fire, but even today I like to see things explode, and the attraction isn't fading. Perhaps I would have been a much happier person if I had ...

Another beautiful blue winter day. I went for a bike ride again. Not far from where I live, there is a park on the shores of the lake. There is a beach, grass, and marshlands. A boardwalk making its way through the marshlands allows visitors to observe the environment without damaging it. On the beach side, a pier leads well into the lake, and is wide enough for a bike. I like biking on that pier, it feels like I am biking in the lake -technically, I guess am biking in the lake. Whenever I find myself in front of a large body of water. I experience calm, peace, a certain change in the perception of time. As if all worries were made smaller, less significant, dilluted. When I am on a ship I like to spend most of the time outside -the bow, preferably-, just staring at the sea. For some reason I cannot get bored nor tired when I do this. But summer is best, when the air is warm, and sun, sea, and sky paint each other with fiery color, and the breeze carries the scent of the ocean.

I've noticed that most of my posts have to do with ideas or thoughts not, rather than specific events of my life. Possibly a reflection of my personality; perhaps an indication of what my focus is. In any case, I want to make this entry a little different. Yesterday I realized that I need more socks. Not enough socks translates into having to do laundry too frequently. A great number of "finer" clothes require ironing or dry cleaning, those that can be washed will exchange dyes, thus rendering them inappropriate for use in public. Others will shrink, rendering then unwearable. Others yet cannot be dried in a home drying machine. One would expect that in this day and age, clothing shouldn't be such a hassle. How come we can send robotic probes to other planets, yet have such backwards clothing industry? To be fair, there have been a few advances, such as stain-proof and wrinkle-free fabrics, but there's still much to be desired. Today it was nice and sunny, since I...

It's amazing to me to observe how much of how people react to us is a reflection of our own mood, attitude, and behavior. This thought led me to think about the following: 1) It is true that we cannot always be cheerful, happy, and fun; it is also true that action accompanied by a positive mental attitude usually translates into better results. To give a simple example, consider how, in general terms, an optimistic person with a positive attitude is less likely to give up before succeeding. The more you try something, the more likely you are to accomplish your goal -simple statistics. 2) Another known fact is that, as I mentioned before, our moods an attitudes tend to be influenced by those of others -comedy shows use this principle by having people, or recordings of people- laughing so that we will think their jokes are funny. 3) It is often commented upon by foreigners living in the US, how American culture has this expectation that people should always show a positive face -some...

7,360 kilometers away as the crow flies, in the former land of the Vikings, lives a good friend of mine. Though I haven't seen him for the better part of four years, the sense of familiarity hasn't changed; and I keep in touch with him more than I do with others who live in my city. In our last chat, we exchanged some awful poetry with as much ease as if we were sitting across from each other at the local Stabucks. http://www.earthdrifter.com/tamepoetry.htm http://www.quyrx.com/writings Another, closer friend, lives 11,240 kilometers away, in a corner of South America most people have never heard of -but he's just a keystroke away on my cell (OK, 3 keystrokes.) He's married and has a very busy professional life, so figuring out a good time to call is the toughest part of staying in touch. This planet of ours is just a village; isn't it time we left it behind and went see what's out there...?

Humans evolved as diurnal animals. Perhaps for this reason the night has always been a time of magic, danger, and mystery. Some of us, if not quite nocturnal like cats, or vampires, are less diurnal than others. It is in this realm of darkness and quiet that our creativity seems to flow with the most ease; when we are most sociabe and in our best mood. Night is when we can see the stars in all their glory. When scary books or movies are truly scary. When music, whispers, and words are most meaningful. Are you one of the less-diurnal beings that can relate to this post? If so, you know that we don't necessarily dislike the merciless rain of photons from the sun, or the clear blue skies of summer -as seen from behind our shielding shades- it's just that some states of mind can only happen when the sun is but a memory, and most people are dreaming with their eyes closed.

It's snowing slushy snow in Seattle -I can tell because it falls too fast. It melts completely as soon as it touches the ground. It will probably turn to rain soon as the temperature rises a bit. Snow is rare in here, maybe once or twice a winter the snow will make it to the next day, but it rarely lasts that long. I remember the elation felt when, back on the east coast, the first snowfall of the season fell. For some reason the white, slow precipitation brought a unique, good feeling that is hard to describe. The white-clad trees and roof-tops, the eerie silence, the luminous calm; this clear assertion of change by mother nature always brought the feeling of anticipation at the new season. And of course, the smiles. I don't recall a single time when upon announcing the first snowfall of the year, people didn't smile -and knowing that later in the season we'd be complaining about messy traffic and slippery stairs didn't change that fact. I wonder, do we smile becau...

Greetings! This is yet another attempt at a diary. I have made a few short lived attempts in the past, but I guess that was not enough. Inspired by some fellow blogger friends, I will give this another try. The name of the blog comes from my handle for a game I used to play long ago. The word is a mutation of "strafer"(pronounced stray-fer) , one who strafes. As defined by Webster's dictonary, to strafe: "to rake (as ground troops) with fire at close range and especially with machine-gun fire from low-flying aircraft" Or to shoot continuousy at a stationary target while on a relative tangential trajectory. The move I used in the game does not fit exactly the traditional definition because instead of firing perpendicular to the vector of motion from the side of the vehicle, you are moving sideways firing from the front of the vehicle, making continuous adjustmens to keep the crosshairs on the target. Now, wasn't that worth reading! Hasta la vista