Jason Griffey

Meanwhile, back in the real world…

I’ve been spending some time brushing up on RSS and RDF and other things that I don’t really understand. First impressions: cool as fucking hell. I’m running Amphetadesk .93 right now as an RDF aggregator, and it’s like seeing pictures on the WWW for the first time (when my buddy and I managed to cobble together a connection on our campus network that would support Mosaic). Really is a completely different sort of interaction with information. More reflections on this as I understand it better.

Well, we’re still searching for clues about what happened with my grandmother. She may not have actually had a heart attack…the EKG’s and enzyme tests don’t support that. If she did, she had a very, very mild one. So that’s good. What’s bad is that if that’s NOT what it is, then the doctors aren’t sure what it could be.

But it’s better…she’s recovering. I’m not driving to KY to see her just yet. It appears that she will recover (given the way things are going now).

I just got off the phone with my sister.

My grandmother just had a heart attack. She’s 74.

She’s recovering, and it doesn’t appear that she’s in danger right now.

I’m not sure how to feel yet. Relieved that it’s not worse, or scared to death that it happened.

Realized that this blog is becoming very random. I suppose that’s a good thing, since I’m kind of doing this for myself moreso than other people.

So, in the grand Blog tradition: a list of favorites….

Right now, I’m listening to probably my favorite band: Counting Crows. Got hooked on them with August and Everything After, and just love their use of language, Adam’s voice, and the layers that the now HUGE band create musically (they’ve got like 7 members currently…3 guitars, drummer, bass, Charlie, who plays everything from accordian to keyboards…and of course, Adam on vocals, ocassionally harmonica and piano).

So I’m listening to them, and trying to make sense out of RSS and XML feeds. It’s not often that I run across a tech acronym that I don’t know, but RSS was one of them. I’m fixing that now, hopefully.

Blog MeetUp last night…very, very interesting stuff. Discussion about the reason for the blog explosion, the interesting social implications, the voyeuristic side of reading blogs (as well as the exhibitionist side of writing in one). Lots of interesting stuff.

In other thoughts…trying to plan for the summer. Lots of travel options, just have to work the finances out.

Currently awaiting the Blog meeting at Strong’s coffee in downtown Chapel Hill. Should be interesting, and will report later (maybe during!).

have a handful of stories in my head now…one having something to do with geomancy and a character who discovers that they are one, and another having something to do with the grail myth. Both fall squarely in the genre fiction realm, and as such I’m a little wierd about getting them going. Anytime I start anything genre, I always end up thinking that it would work better as a short stories.

Been thinking about story a lot lately.This tends to happen when I read an author that I love, and Gibson certainly counts in that regard. Thinking of plots, characters…how to string them together. Person and perspective.

What it comes down to is that I really do need to find time and try to make myself write.

Need to write fiction, that is, not blog.

🙂

Well…after a half inch or so of ice and sleet, we’re stuck at home today. No school, and probably not a lot of moving until the stuff melts…a chance to catch up on some work and get some stuff done.

I was attempting to make any sense out of some of the recent political events here in the US, and I found that framing them with Orwell has become just a little to appropriate.

Ministry of Peace:

We spend the better part of 2 years looking for bin Laden. When it becomes clear that hunting down one man isn’t what our military is trained for, we are told that Saddam is the real enemy. I have only seen ONE report on the major news networks about the recent bin Laden tape broadcast on al jazeera, but daily updates about the upcoming war in Iraq.

It seems that even now we are seeing the switching of opponents at will.

In addition, we get our dose of Two Minute Hate in our little terrorism scale…want the public to jump? Up the “threat”.

Ministry of Information:

I suppose that everyone saw the report by some in the government that Duct Tape and plastic sheeting was a good thing to have around in case of a terrorist action involving a dirty bomb or biological agents.

First off, as someone who worked in a pathological microbiology lab for the better part of 4 years, I can ASSURE you that the likelyhood of a modified smallpox virus caring that you have plastic over your windows is next to nothing. Unless you plan on locking yourself in for several months, and recycling your own air supply (and water….)….this is just ludicrous. But I suppose if you tell the plebes what it takes to scare them, it does make it easier to predict their behavior.

I have yet to see even one report on the major news networks questioning the upcoming war.

*double sigh*