I believe everyone experiences empathy to a certain degree. To me, empathy means a combination of sensing what someone else is feeling (receiving) and pushing a feeling at someone else (broadcasting). However, a lot of people use “empathy” to mean receiving and not broadcasting, so perhaps there is another word for sending/broadcasting which is better used here. In order to receive feelings from someone else, I need to be intensely aware of my own feelings first. Picking up on a feeling from someone else is easy, but if I’m not in tune with my own feelings first, then it’s difficult to tell which feelings are “mine” and which are being picked up from someone else. So, it’s important for me to take my own “emotional temperature” often, so that I know when it changes, and I can be aware of whether the new feelings are triggered by something in my life, or being picked up from someone else. ...

This is a repeat of some earlier material. Emotions serve us well, whether they be fear, sadness, anger, joy, contentment, pride, etc. I think of these as the lights and dials on the instrument panel, by which we can evaluate our own state of being. In a car, we might see a light that says “oil pressure low”, and our usual reaction is to try and figure out why. It does no good to try and argue with the light, or cover it up, or ignore it, or blame the instrument panel, or become embarrassed or ashamed of our awful indicator lights. ...

Thursday: busy day at work. Met with David B, Luis and Jason on how to recover repository2. Met with David B and Angela to discuss how to communicate changes to people on various aspects of the site. Spoke to David B about anomalous test times from David H. Break for lunch and Anime, watched Lain. Gather performance numbers from QI and send them to David H. Spoke to David H about what the numbers mean, agreed to drill down more on gladiator and network factors, since QI latency seems to not track test tool latency. Asked Bruce to look into gladiator latency with Doug Young info, and try to simulate David H’s test. Started file move on Repo2. Opened keystone slip. Spent an hour talking to David B about issues of the day. ...

Quick rundown of what has happened so far this week. Monday: Held training on Fetch and DNS. This went well. David B. is not back yet, but there is not much needing attention. I spent some time in the afternoon faxing letters to my representative and senators asking them “Please don’t give up my civil liberties today” - see www.eff.org for the Draconian wiretap provisions and other concessions to the “wish list” of law enforcement. I got my three reps, then went on to bulk-fax the members of the conference committee. ...

I have not been motivated to ride my bike or anything. I think I rode it once this month. C and I are probably going to go for a walk today, that will be cool. I have also not paid much attention to my diet and have been stuffing myself with whatever tastes good. Not a good plan to lose weight. In general I think I eat pretty healthy, but usually eat a bit too much. I think my diet would be fine if I were more physically active, so the exercise is really the most important thing.

I’m still frustrated at not getting the type & amount of sex I would like. I haven’t talked to Michelle about this, because she seems to break down, get defensive, etc. when I talk about it. So I just masturbate more frequently and play with my toys… I have some wild fantasies about having sex with Michelle, others, or mutliple at a time. My favorite one is with Michelle (or some female) in 69 position on top of me, with some male screwing her from behind, so I get to see both of them up close and lick them as desired… ...

Dave and Busters was great. I got to spend some time talking to Notch about things we should be working on or watching out for. Michelle was there with Laura and others, so she stayed with us to go to dinner. Michelle and Angie both got plenty of doofy prizes. Tied House was fun, got to see and greet all kinds of folks from work. Michelle felt a little out of place and tired. I still can’t really imagine what life will be like without Bryant, Ambar and Tara around the office. We’ll see… ...

I am taking the team to Dave and Buster’s for some off-site activity. We are all meeting at Tied House for the Bryant Farewell dinner after that, including some folks who were laid off. Not much is happening in my life… I’ve been tired all week, but this is not a big deal.

Since I am new to LiveJournal, this is my first “real” post. I dug up some material I had written in other forums (regarding the recent tragedy, and my thoughts, feelings and beliefs) and I have posted two of those messages “backdated” to Sep 12 and Sep 15. Things are still up in the air and a bit morbid here at work, since we had layoffs yesterday. I am now going to go home and tend to my sick weety.

This was something I posted to a mailing list, and I’m reposting it here… Regarding a comment “We are not fighting a mental state, we’re fighting actual individuals that carry out criminal acts”… This is true, but I can also see the truth in what [the previous poster] was saying as well. Terrorists do exist in a vacuum, sometimes, but they usually turn out to be fringe-dwellers whose own society considers to be wackos – take Timothy McVeigh for example. However, the more organized “terrorist group”, whether it is the one supported by /bin/laden or the IRA, has a level of support in their homeland that we cannot ignore. The “support” ranges from “I don’t believe it’s right, but I’m not going to turn them in” on up to “You can have your meeting in here, and if you need weapons, I’ll give you a discount”. ...