Things to do, personal
Write more
Roleplay
Go out with friends
Exercise

Things to do, household
Get rid of desk
Get rid of tv stand
Tighten loose screws on chairs
Figure out taxes
Paint bathroom
Install air conditioner

Wish list
New laptop

Tuesday: Actually rode my bike during lunch today, though I forgot my water bottle. Had to stop twice on the hill of death and cough up something that didn’t quite belong in my lungs. Showered and still had time to grab lunch on the way to staff meeting. Other stuff happened after this, probably involving another meeting and more emails.

Wednesday: Don’t remember much about this day.

Thursday: Did some bits of managing (which mostly amounts to talking to people about work that other people are working on). A meeting, then anime, then a bit more email and taking, then time to go take M to an appointment. Went to dinner with M… Spent most of the evening playing with the palm 3 and installing some free software called avantgo that promises to keep my palm 3 supplied with the current version of The Onion for free (which came in handy during meetings Friday).

Friday: Before heading to bed last night (actually this morning) there was a beep about the International pages, some images broken, I fixed it. Then after sleeping an hour or more (like 2:15) I was beeped again, this time because international translate was broken. I was a bit angry about this, so after deciding that I could not fix it myself, I instead decided to rage at the International team via email for a bit.

Once people started showing up, the problem was fixed pretty shortly, but still nobody can adequately explain what changed to break it. However, much of the “integration with international” problem has been blamed on their having low-grade tools and no network or IT support, so perhaps the working relationship will get better as those pieces are upgraded. I am hopeful that it will.

A meeting and some emails sped by, then lunch at my desk, then some more email and not much in the way of real work. Oh, I did a code push of some pre-release experimental code or other such contraband, told developers and qa noids that I had done it, then it was pretty much time to go home.

M and I went shopping at a couple places, secured take-out for dinner, then came back home and watched TV together for a while. We were hoping something interesting would be on cable, or pay movies or something, but nothing really was interesting.

In the area of friendship, I have certain expectations of a “friend” that I might not have of everyone else around me. Let me begin by describing the expectations I have of everyone, including strangers, and work forward.

1. I expect honesty and general good will from everyone.

Honesty is different from openness. By honesty I mean that what one says is truthful and there is no attempt to decieve, but that doesn’t mean that the other person will necessarily tell me everything. This means that if someone asks me something I am uncomfortable with answering, I would prefer to say “I don’t want to talk about that” than to answer with a lie. In return I expect people to not lie to me.

By general good will I mean that I expect people not to try and hurt me on purpose. I expect that normal people will try to avoid hurting others.

2. From a friend, I expect some openness, and I expect that they will have time for me. I also expect that they will be aware of my needs and wants and respect them.

Some openness in this context is a higher level of sharing. I am a pretty open person, meaning that it is pretty easy for me to talk about things that others might consider “private” even with a stranger. I don’t have a lot of “secrets” of my own, though I do keep other people’s private information private.

However, I don’t expect everyone else to have this level of sharing with me. Not all of my friends will lay out all the details of their lives for me. But, at a minimum, I expect my friends to tell me what they think about me and how they feel about me. These are important details that I need to know in order to maintain a proper friendship. This also means that I expect my friends to not talk about me behind my back, meaning that they won’t say something to someone else about me which they were not willing to say directly to me.

I expect that friends will have time for me, meaning that they will be available to talk or get together and do something from time to time. I’m not going to set out a specific schedule of activities with required attendance, but we should be able to agree on some activities we like to do together, even if it is just talking or something. I want to know that my friend is willing to spend some time with me just because I asked, not just based on whether the activity is interesting, meaning that I should be able to say “I want to see you” and not have to arrange an interesting activity to keep their interest. We are likely to share some interests, so a diversion seems likely, but that’s not the sole reason for our time together.

A friend should be aware of my needs and wants, though in most cases he will not prioritize them higher than his own. For myself, my needs and wants and those of my loved ones come first, then if I am able to do a favor or kind deed for a friend, I will. I will often give up something that I want to give my friend something he wants (or needs) depending on the balance of the two needs/wants. For example, I may give up a few hours of my free time to be there for a friend, if it is something important to him, or I may give up a few dollars of spending money to get him a gift I know he will appreciate.

3. From loved ones, I expect complete openness, and I expect that they will place my needs and wants alongside their own.

By complete openness I mean that I expect my loved one to not keep secrets from me. I expect her to be able to tell me anything and everything, except for something told by someone else in confidence.

I also expect that she will place my needs and wants alongside her own. To me this means that our needs and wants are measured together and we will decide together how to best meet both my needs and hers. This usually means we will pool our resources, but not necessarily.

I may have missed some things, so I may go back and edit this later. Comments welcome, if you think of something I forgot, comment here or write me…

Friday: Don’t remember right now.

Saturday: Went to Healdsburg to visit, got to see M’s parents, grandma, cousin, a few others. Spent most of the afternoon up there. We also stopped to see John and Angie and look in on the cats. Cool.

Sunday: Not much of anything, went shopping with M & C at Frys and also went to the fabric store.

I learned how to use the Memories feature. The name “Memories” suggests a scrapbook or something, but this is more like a keyword index. Cool feature. I am using it to create a topic index of sorts, though there are only three items worth indexing now. Btw the “Add to Memories” icon is on the “Read Comments” page (heart-plus icon)

Apparently you can add your posts or other people’s posts to the Memories keyword index, and view just yours, just others, or all together. You can also make the keyword associations Private, Public or Friends only; I guess this is if you want to link to someone else’s drivel and label it “drivel” you can keep your label to yourself if desired. Hmm.

I have also rediscovered the “Stop” button on the browser, which is good for stopping bouncy mood icons if they are distracting. Ahhh…

I think our beliefs are an important part of what makes us human.

A belief is an assertion, assumption, or expectation, and the collection of beliefs form a foundation for our thoughts and our actions. A belief is essentially a thought which we feel is true, so it requires both thinking and feeling to hold a belief. It can be conscious, such as something we have learned, or it can be subconscious, such as something we have always known and felt and seem to do so without thinking.

Our belief systems are a personalized collection of beliefs, including the unspoken rules by which we evaluate ourselves (and by which we may even change our own beliefs). How our belief systems come to be formed is a complex process.

Most of us will inherit a our belief systems from our parents and immediate family very early in life, like from ages 0 to 7. Before we are responsible for our own actions, or even aware of our own decisions and consequences, we are encouraged by our parents to do “good” things and discouraged from doing “bad” things. Our belief systems are formed as a result of our actions and experiences, most of these given to us by grown-ups who punish bad actions and praise good actions, and as a result, our belief system in early life tends to be a reflection of our parents (who we were basically copying for a lot of that time).

About the time we start getting held responsible for our actions and their consequences, we start to evaluate our own beliefs. This process can be thought of as a continuous cycle between actions and experiences. Our current set of beliefs will determine our decisions and actions. Then, our actions will lead to consequences which we feel are either negative or positive. Finally, our beliefs are influenced by the experiences: a positive experience will strengthen our beliefs, while a negative experience will lead us to question or even abandon our beliefs.

During adolescence, we will be moving away from “doing what we’re told” and toward being a “free agent” and acting independently. The cycle is mostly the same, though. In our early years, we copy what others are doing or we do what we are told to do, and that leads to either positive or negative experiences. Later in life, we do what we decide to do, which is mostly the same as what we had been doing the year before, and we have more positive or negative experiences. All of these go toward shaping our belief systems.

Most beliefs of this type are of the proper behavior type, or the should type. They can be habits or manners that have served us well, so we keep doing them, or they can be skills we have learned by trial and error. Another way of looking at these are as cause and effect assertions. These form the basis of our behavior, and they also determine the expectations we have of others.

There is another type of belief which I will call a faith assertion. This is not necessarily a religious or sacred thing; it just means “something we feel strongly is true but can’t verify through observations.” For example, I believe there is an afterlife. The idea of reincarnation makes sense to me, and I choose to believe in it, not only because it is intuitively appealing as an idea, but also because this lets me go through life without fearing death as much as I otherwise would. There is no observation I can make which will prove or disprove my assertion, so while I am able to believe in an afterlife, I will probably continue to do so.

Our fears are part of our beliefs too. Some fears are based on our reasoning and our interpretation of cause and effect, and some are an emotional reaction to a negative experience in our past, and I think most fears are a combination of both thoughts and emotions each to varying degrees.

Other things I want to write about:
Beliefs and belief systems
Openness and honesty
Hopes, fears, expectations, visualization
Friendship and expectations
Trusting others and expectations

Reviewing…

Friday: Worked later than expected to do a code push, then went to gaming. Gaming was cool! We got some cool experience and got to banish a demon.

Saturday, Sunday: Didn’t do much over the weekend, skimmed some old emails and found old journal entries, so I posted them here. They are backdated, skim back for anything earlier than “Wish for Peace” for the old entries. Mostly about exercise and how I wanted to spend my free time but didn’t.

Monday-Wednesday: Not really sure what I did at work, most of this week I worked and came home, and watched TV and went to bed. I did ride my bike to work and left it there on the theory that I might ride it during my lunch sometime (I think this was Tuesday). I got a ride home with Jason and then went back out with C to the store for dinner supplies.

Thursday: Finally finished the content upload samba server and also got to watch anime. Brought home Chinese Fooooood! (May help you?) M and I did laundry.