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Not thinking too much about how this will all work out. But I’m learning a lot. And I’m getting older. Went to a “geek lunch” today, and it was nice talking to people.

OK, so the White House admits sectarian violence is the number one thing threatening stability in Iraq ( they are re-deploying troops to Baghdad ), they also had Maliki come and repeat the “the American occupation is really a war against al-Quaeda” garbage to congress. Things are just as poised for civil war as they always were, but Bush is still trying to control the debate by saying any criticism of Iraq policy is tantamount to appeasing the terrorists. Really quite disgusting.

It’s hard to let go When you want something and you don’t get it it’s hard to let go. I’d been visualizing the Thing for so long I thought it was really going to come through. I told S that I was letting it go, but I was trying to convince myself more than anything else. Now that I’m hitting reality, I find myself more tired and less motivated than I was before the thing came into my life. But I’m going to try turning the disappointment into renewed energy. There’s got to be more Things out there.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m working towards goals but with diminished faith. I want to learn more programming. I did set up my Linux machine; I’m teaching myself Java and Emacs on it. I took jazz guitar lessons for a good spell, and this year I know a ton more than I did last year. But I feel like there’s so much farther to go, it’s like there’s all this ground to cover and dude’s getting old. My guitar playing hasn’t been as good as I thought it might have been.  And looking at jobs, I’m seeing they want a lot more experience than I offer. Dude. Maybe I’m unwilling to give myself a break and that’s what it is.

Sometimes your level of confidence is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge you actually hold on the subject that inspires that confidence. I’m thinking about the next career move and it looks like an insurmountable issue. How will I get anywhere without having years of Java experience? AJAX? I’m coming upon some issues of capacity: I’m just not as able to learn new things as I used to be.

So I actually did it. I bought a Micron TransPort GX3 for a relative pittance, and set it up with a Cisco wireless NIC. And I’m wireless. I’m lucky because where I live it’s more or less geek central and there are several hot spots. I couldn’t get the NetGear wireless router to work, but now I can probably eBay it. So: learning Python on my new laptop in bed. Pretty cool. How is it that you can sometimes get what you want?

I’ve been worried that I have no Linux chops at all. So I’m buying a second-hand laptop, I’m going to install Linux on it, and I’m going to configure it for wireless Ethernet. When I told all this to the guy at the Used Computer Store , he sort of chuckled. Hubris? I’ve been checking out Linux on Laptops for some advice, and it looks like many other people have tried it and documented their journeys. The worst thing that will happen is I have a laptop that boots Knoppix.