Rumors of my demise

I'm used to friends sending me adorableness of those who'll forget I existed if I don't find a way to see them soon, but less used to random people tracking me down. It's oddly cool, if a little overwhelming sometimes as it scales up in number. Appreciated, just been dealing with stuff I don't talk about out on here and sipping the grid rather than gulping. It's helped that it's been an incredibly remarkably boring time when it comes to the Mac and technology in general...

I have a few more things I've set to get off my plate before I can really context switch mentally, but the comments in the last post were reaching a strange climax, I can't login to IM before 3am without getting poked somehow, and every person I encounter seemed surprised I'm breathing.

Worth a note, and since I've broken the self-imposed embargo already with this post, if the shakes have started to really take hold, you can roll up your sleeve and take the edge off with a few answers I sent off last week regarding Mail.app to Hawk Wings but forgot to post them, or rather being a little site I've never heard of and mentioning Brent Simmons will only allow me to break the embargo so much. I'm always wigged by how a week later I'll be outside pacing with a smoke and coffee mulling over something unrelated and my brain will go, "Wait, you forgot to mention SpamSieve as a plugin you dig back in..."

Homeward Angel

I have a tendency to get bees in my head. Little wandering variables and snippets surfacing and have to compartmentalize based on tasks, situations and even groups of people as if you let everything in you often can't focus your full attention where it needs to be. Sometimes, the biggest gift you can give someone is just making them a priority. Thinking about the above made me I lose 25 minutes today trying to find an email from an old reader named Paul that has popped into my head while thinking about things several times this week.

As it turns out was not from a Paul or Tom or Thomas, but rather a Jeffrey (which would have saved a lot of cycles), and if I recall correctly he was some visual communications professor that took a shine to me after reading Convergence Kills. I mostly remember this because I found it amusing that I was now the iPod/iTunes/iPhone/DRM Guy (and then later the RSS guy, and then OSS guy, and then later the Mac Guy™, and then the Citizen Investigative Journalism Blogger Guy, and then the Indie Developer Guy™ among who knows what else in varying orders) and was intrigued by:

  • Why I was feeling labeled and categorized to the point that I should be entering NASCAR.

  • The instinctive need to not only categorize something new based upon their frame of reference, but to also project what they need to onto something they encounter and like so they can then include it within their chosen tribe.

  • How to make someone trying to do any of the above have an extremely difficult time of it over the course of a month.

  • Why I cared about any of the above, and why it irked me under the collar a bit, as usually I'm just amused by such things as it means someone is setting themselves up to be surprised.

Anyways, I remember the time, and Jeffrey would send me these ridiculously long emails going on for several pages about industry related things that I'd read and reply to but that I never had the time to fully digest -- and I'm sure he caught on to that eventually and I'm hoping is why his emails petered off. His last, almost a year ago to the day, was from a hospital room where he'd just finished a treatment and was about to take his girls to Disney World for an outing before a big treatment:

[snipped] my daughters are 11 and 13. I have multiple myeloma, a rather horrible cancer of the plasma cells. I've just finished the "induction" stage of the treatment: i took thalidomide and a really strong steroid along with 8 other drugs (including Zometa to strengthen my bones against plasma cell attacks) to deal with complications. Now it's on to a stem cell transplant. the first part of that treatment involves "harvesting" my stem cells and then sometime later, killing all of my bone marrow and replanting the stored stem cells back into my system. For many people this "works" and results in remission for 1, 2, 5 years and sometimes longer. It also fails in some cases and some people never make it out of the hospital. So these next month or so is rather frightening. [/snipped]

I hope it went OK, but don't really know, and even beyond the sad thought of someone losing their dad or husband, the other ramifications buzzing around in my head can trip me up.

I'd have to assume when one is very well looking at not being around anymore, one is very sparing about where the rest of those remaining cycles go, and it probably meant something that some of them went my way rather than other places, and it probably would have meant something if I'd followed up a week later wishing him luck on his treatment -- where it's me emailing him just to check in instead of a reply to one of his -- even if it's only to "check in" or ask how Disney World was. If he's left the world and I didn't take the time to do that, he'll probably be buzzing in there until I do.

Even if you aren't able to make someone a priority because of other obligations, sometimes it's enough just to let someone know you're aware of their existence. Someone told me the other day that the future will be bees in our head, and if it's true I'm not remotely cut out for it -- my brain is defective in such a way that I have to compartmentalize, prolly more than others, but I'm aware you all exist.

yummy alcohol posted button Posted by drunkenbatman
    February 27, 2006, at 05:20 PM


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