Slaying The Dreamer

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How can you enter a second-hand dealer shop and don’t feel the soul and the past life of those objects/books? They tell the history behind them, the weave of the lives of the people that owned them. Is that so hard to perceive?

How can you tell me that you don’t want someone to share your feelings with and you don’t feel anything special to tell to your significant other? Knock knock, is there a heart in there? No, I can’t believe that you can be so empty; I can’t believe you can limit your existence to work/study and alcoholic nights where you must drink to unblock your thought flow and fill your mouth with empty words. You have caged yourself in cold stone, and you are scared of knowing what’s outside.

What the hell, and you’re contagious, like you have some kind of catching illness; at some point I found myself heartless. It’s not nice to look behind and wonder how can events have turned you like that. But now I’m recovering from this apathetic status, by reading, listening to good music and sharing what I can with well selected people, and it works.

Now everything flows almost regularly. I can focus on my studies, think of projects and relax with something non technical like a good walk, a book, a song. This is the way I think life (of a single person) should be.

I always find myself dreaming of Arcanum.

It’s weird, I thought that the more you live or do something with someone, the more you know him/her because of the time spent together. On the contrary the people who knows me more are the people I meet the less often (or less at all).

Maybe it’s a cowardice and someone,used to chat and other technology-based communications, can’t get close to people that can be seen often because he/she is scared of something; maybe it’s because physical distance drives the chat topics to something absolutely unrelated to the everyday life.

I think it’s a natural advantage-disadvantage compensation: if you live near to someone you can share time and local events with him, if you live away then you must share other thoughts and ideas.

Now, there’s a thing that must be absolutely clear: well working human interactions need a person who has both of the qualities, meaning that he/she must understand your ideas and your reasons and that he/she must be physically near.

So, if there are just TWO the things to find, why are we keeping everything so complicated; hiding to the people near us and talking freely with the strangers? Shouldn’t it be simpler to talk with everyone? I know it’s risky, but again, why on earth should I hit someone when he’s giving me trust? I don’t understand the opportunism, doing dirty tricks will give you a better work, but won’t heal your soul for sure.

Have you ever read the “Coffee HOWTO”? It’s a wonderful piece of document that explains basically two things:

1. How to connect a coffee machine to a computer and automate coffee production
2. Tells you that this automation is worth the effort because computer guys love caffeine

What it’s not said is that IT people would like to automate and connect EVERYTHING to their machines, and possibly remotely, and possibly with the latest standard. I propose several models:

• SNMP coffee machine: this old fashioned protocol is still useful and used for network diagnostic, so this coffee machine can automatically prepare you a coffee when a network problem is raising, for example when the office DSL is congested and you can’t search on Google how to fix the problem!
• XML-RPC : this series of coffee machines can be triggered also from the Internet, customizing each call with several parameters like sugar / milk quantity , temperature, and type of desired coffee. Unsupported fields should be ignored so you can safely ask the coffee machine to prepare a warm tea or a glass full of red wine even if the device doesn’t support it.
• SMTP: HTTP is abused (see XML-RPC) ! Why can’t I send an email to the coffee machine asking for a cappuccino and in carbon copy to my colleagues so that they understand it’s time to take a break? With the SMTP protocol you can do this and much more! For example it’s possible to be notified when more than two coffees are requested in less than five minutes (your friends are taking coffee without you).
• LDAP / Active Directory: really, sometimes you just want to be elsewhere when someone enters the office and log onto the computer.
• IPP (CUPS): An espresso is automatically triggered when the printing queue is too long. Five minutes is enough to drink one! Warning: paper and coffee are incompatible, that is, coffee and paper cannot coexist in the very same space.
• Morse code: CQ CQ CQ (Call to any station) … QMC QMC QMC (Make Coffee) …

During the day, when I’m studying or during a walk I think of many potential blog posts but, when I reach home and turn on the laptop, everything I thought before vanish.

Probably I suffer from the "fast backspace" syndrome. I often write articles and technical tutorials because they’re not subjective: I can write, adjust and review them as much as I want… but philosophy topics or personal feelings are hard to explain with words. Especially in a language that’s not yours! That’s the reason why I put them down in a written form and delete them after a while.

Is this the fear of getting disclosed information potentially harmful about me or is it pure shame? When the blog is online I can’t write, and when I don’t own a blog I would like to have one. What’s wrong in this? Why should I be embarrassed of myself? I’m a normal person after all… am I?

Ok. I got the problem: I tend to switch point of view. As a writer I absolutely need to write and publish everything from the sadness of a badly organized school system to the joy of a realized project. As a reader I’m asking why on earth one should read these things! They are useless if considered literally, the meaning is beyond the text. Furthermore written words when misunderstood have really really bad effects. Consider the case where I talk of melancholy: everyone has been melancholic at least once in a life. I’m not melancholic all the time, but someone happy who is going to read that text risks to consider me depressed even if I’m not depressed at all!

After all… no one is forcing people to read me, and who is reading doesn’t necessarily have to trace a wrong portrait of me. Yes, I’m convinced now. I’ll keep the blog.