Sono umane situazioni
Quei momenti fra di noi
I distacchi ed i ritorni
Da capirci niente poi
Gia come vedi
Sto pensando a te…si..da un po’
They’re just human contradictions
Feeling happy feeling sad
These emotional transitions
All the memories we’ve had
Yes, you know it’s true
I just can’t stop thinking of you
No I just can’t pretend
All the time we spent could die
Wanna feel it again
All the love we felt then
Confinanti di cuore solo che ognuno sta
Dietro gli steccati degli orgogli suoi
Sto pensando a te
Sto pensando a noi
Sono cose della vita
Vanno prese un po’ cosi
Some for worse and some for better
But through it all we’ve come so far
Gia… come vedi
Io sto ancora in piedi perche
Sono umani tutti i sogni miei
Con le mani io li prenderei, si perchè
What’s life without a dream to hold??
Take my hand and never let me go
It’s part of life together
But what future does it hold??
Sono cose della vita
Ma la vita poi dov’e
Yes, you know it’s true
I just can’t stop thinking of you
Questa notte che passa piano accanto a me
Cerco di affrontarla, afferrarla
If our hearts miss a beat
Or get lost like a ship at sea
I wanna remember, I can never forget
Can’t stop thinking of you
Sto pensando a noi
Can’t stop thinking of you
Can’t stop
-Tina Turner and Eros Ramazotti
I Bought A Sword
The title says it all….
I went to Concord Mills on Tuesday with no real objective, but for some reason I felt the need to enter Black Lion… not really sure why, it just sort of happened. I had looked at the swords and daggers two weeks ago when I was there, but they hadn’t crossed my mind much again until an unusual series of events occured which lead me to be extreamly drawn to the area where they were, more than just a casual glance this time. I had made a decision that a certain sword was to come home with me, so I went to find the annoying BlackLion employee who had been pestering me most of the evening and had her to open the case and get the sword out for me. After having my ID checked 4 or 5 times the sword was mine and I began asking myself exactly why I purchased it… purchase of fate? purchase of stupidity? purchase of “this thing is so fucking cool”? who knows… anyway, I don’t have any regrets about buying it.


Things Must Change
In my March 7, 2005 blog entry I discuss eros/love, but several events have lead me to determine that I am not very good at expressing my emotions, especially when it comes to love. Two instances on Wednesday shine brightly as to how bad I am at emotional stuff sometimes. Chris and I went to Best Buy in search of a surge protector for a little project we came up with to do (more on that later), and when checking out I was accused of being unfriendly by the sales clerk. She asked me several questions, to which the answer was “no” (do you have a rewards zone card, do you want 8 months of Sports Illustrated, etc), at this point she made the statement “Well, I won’t even try asking for your phone number”, and I directly asked “Do I come across as being that unfriendly?”, to which she seriously replied “yes.”. That shouldn’t have happened, I should never let anyone think that I have anything less than the best intentions with my interaction with them. In another instance, this time with my long distance friend Oscar, I denied him a phone call because I thought it would somehow ruin my schedule… and somehow be not appropriate. That is total bullshit… I should always be able to make time for people, especially friends and especially when there is a situation where they NEED to talk. I make it a point to tell people who enter my life and gain significance that they can call me whenever they need to talk and that if they have a problem I am here to listen. Well, lately this little policy of mine hasn’t be carried out very well on my end. I should never turn anyone away who needs to talk to me… Im not exactly a psychologist, or even a therapist, but somehow I am usualy able to show people the bright side of things and help them better understand the nature of whatever their problem may be. I have always considered this to be something that I should share freely without hinderance to anyone who needs me. When did my time become so valueble that I can’t make time for someone important?
I am learning that as I get farther away from my high school days, the more cold and robotic I become, this is a proccess which must be reversed if I am to survive socially. People have been joking with me more about “needing to make an appointment with GITI” lately than used to, I didn’t think about this much until now, when I am finally realizing that GITI is controlling my life, and for the moment, the only thing it is giving me is my assignments that are due in the next 15 days… no events on my social calendar seem to exist. To all of you who have experienced this issue with me, or those of you who will experience it in the future – Remind me that I am human and that GITI doesn’t rule my life, I do. Also to you people, read my February 21, 2005 blog entry again, it applies more to you than to anyone and it seems to hold more meaning now, for me at least.
How many email addresses are enough?
This evening I signed up for a new trial account with an old email service provider of mine, MailSnare, for the purpose of having an email account that I can use with my personal website once its redesign is complete. After doing so I realized how many email addresses I actually have. I have 2 or so real addresses locally (on my server), 2 at Gmail and now 1 at MailSnare (temporary for now though). Does a person truely need so many email addresses? I seem to be able to find justification for each account, but can I really? All email accounts are essentially the same in functionality, and I definately have enough capacity to serve all of my needs on 1 account…. so whats up with this? My latest aquisition is justified as being clear of most SPAM, so it can be used publicly without much hassle. The other 4 could truely and logicly be 1 account…. probably a single Gmail account. I could sort the different classifications or whatever and from what i’ve heard, it also is low-SPAM. I seem to feel attached to each and every email address I have, so convinving myself that I only need 1 account is a loss, but this is still something that bothers me. If email is such an advanced commucation form, then why can we not consolidate to 1 and have our lives totally together on that address? As an electronic identity method email isn’t very analogous to the real world.
Do we really need a spare address for every possible presenting self?
john@bussiness.com
john@church.org
john@porno.us
john@poker.net
john@personal.info
it really is excessive…. but we do it… all for our own various reasons
My Thoughts on Eros
Last week the assigned reading for my Plato course was “The Symposium”, the objective (from the point of view of Socrates) is to speak on the topic of Eros, or Love. There was an interesting discussion that occured during the lecture following that. There is a claim made by Socrates that to be complete a person must find their “other half”. “Other half” in this context is understood to be the person’s true love. The Women’s Studies minor of the group spoke up on this topic, with the expected objection of “a woman doens’t need a man to be complete”. This is where I interjected that because of Socrate’s own status (single and refuses to play with his boy toy), it is likely that he meant more than human companionship. It is my personal belif that Socrates’s argument is acurate, but that current societal views are a little skewed on this. The example I used in class was a single painter who is completely happy being alone with his paint, brushes and canvas in a room for days. Loving an activity is no different than loving a human. People who love other people are probably gasping for air on that comment, but its true. Love is based in passion and seeks things like wisdom (in an exchange of thought, or experience in the case of the arts). In most of the symposium love is seen as being a “messenger” between the world of mortals and the realm of the gods (or of divinity/perfection). Humans can’t experience perfection, so we seek love. Some of us require reciprocity of love, we must have human response to be happy. Others are fine with just expressing love whether to someone who doesn’t reciprocate, or in the form of art for others to enjoy. Even in art there is a form of reciprocity when it is possible for feedback on what has been created. Parallels between human relationships and art don’t stop there, think about the symbolism in each. In relationships there is a tenancy for symbolism to allow the relationship to progress, or in some cases it affirms a relationship. Flowers, rings and candy are things that used as symbols of love in our culture, perhaps overused as symbols. Art on the other hand is the direct result of passions being focused, and most of the time will have some sort of abstraction of the artist’s emotions hiding in it. The art of philosophy (translated to mean “love of wisdom”) involves a life long quest for the ultimate wisdom, other motivations are irrelavant for people who take on the title of “Philosopher”. I used to think that philosophy was basicly greek history, but now im finding out that it is highly active currently and just happens to have old roots. I consider myself to be a student of philosophy, but not really a philosopher yet, primarily because I can’t think like one, perhaps some day thought.
I personally seek love in people, in my hobbies/arts and in aspiring to romance wisdom. I find that I tend to love people who are incapable of reciprocating the feelings and I also tend to be attracted to people who are out of my reach. In the realm of loving arts I express myself through culinary arts, ceramics and various other creative endevours. With Philosopyhy I am fairly new, but I have an obsession towards mentally exploring abstract concepts and viewing things in abstract ways.
I really am not sure of the true nature of eros in the modern world, it is very confusing and the level of abstraction of messages in relationships is becoming too high.
Birthday
Woke up this morning and my neck was sore, this aging thing really sucks…. At the moment I have about 38 mintues to go until I am officially 20, but the many people around me found it neccesary to wish me a happy birthday already (you people suck, wait until it’s time). I don’t want to be reminded that it is the 20th aniversary of my entry into this planet when I have to do boring shit like go to Accounting and spent countless minutes wasted sitting here in Barnard Lab doing pretty much nothing. If it weren’t for the Internet and this lab I would be bored out of my mind right now…. or would I? Maybe I would be doing something exciting like perusing the many floors of Atkins Library looking at books on various topics and then sitting and reading small sections for the time I would otherwise have spent idle. Since the Internet exists and I am an addict I can’t really say for certain, maybe if there is an intenet connectivity failure during a time I have to be on campus I might actually figure that out.
I dont feel 20, should I? Recently I have had this little issue of failing to acknowledge certain events, first there was Christmas, I pretty much ignored it until it was time for me to prepare things for that day, and as far as Valentine’s day, well….. whats love got to do with it? Another event I failed to acknowledge, even though there was chocolate and a card waiting for me when I got up that morning. This morning there was no chocolate, but there was a card, I just sort of ignored it… for some reason I suspect that it will follow me to dinner (yes, parents are like retrieving canines, you can burry the thing, but they will always bring it back). I planned today badly, there is too much idle time involved…. I even managed to leave for class on time today (which places me here about 15 minutes early) so I was waiting for Mrs. Yarbrough, then I ended up waiting for Vannessa so that she could sign the project, Chuck got tired of waiting, so he signed the page for her…not sure how that works with the academic integrity policy, but he had good intentions (making sure she got credit for her work, even though she wasn’t there to sign for it). Mrs. Yarbrough finished 11 minutes early (i think she stated this so that she would remember to credit the intangible academic asset account and make the appropriate adjusting entries when she goes over her allocated time). Mrs. Yarbrough’s closing line for the day I found to be somewhat humorous: “Have a good spring break, and don’t do anything stupid”. She states this, but has been mentinoing for the last week that we should spend spring break catching up on our accounting reading, me thinks she contradict herself. Since she finished early, I was early for Calculus, so I spent some time waiting for Mr. Jeong to show up, then the class waiting as a group for the class before us to decide to make their exit, 10 minutes after their time had elapsed. After they left we sat down, took our test and then left one-by-one. I wasn’t very quick in leavning, but still had some time, so I waited Mrs. Scott, there were two students in class. Mrs. Scott gaves us back our test and told us we could leave, so thats how I ended up here. Ironicly, after all this waiting I am going to Economics, where I will do no waiting, she will start as soon as we leave and finish exactly as her time concludes…my kind of woman ;-).
Enough rambling for now, I will head off into the sunset and learn some Econ (or take a solid nap).
Aging and the Passage of Time
On Friday I will turn 20, two decades, one-fifth of a century old. In the past few days I have been analysing my life and trying to determine what I can do to make my 21st trip around the sun better than the first 20. The only thing I can determine is that I should focus more on the task of making myself happy rather than trying to impress people and trying to fulfil superficial goals that will eventually end up not improving my happiness much.
Preperations for my 20th birthday haven’t been light. I spent most of last week and Monday this week worrying about my license renewal session. I was convinced that for some reason the DMV didn’t want me to drive in this state, but I eventually got over the feelings I was having and landed at the DMV on Tuesday morning. Just a routine renewal, read a line of text, and tell the little man what the little signs on the slides mean. For the first time I got them all correct on the first try. The picture on my new license is horrible, but I guess it will be ok, I will only have tht little card for 5 more years anyway ;-). In anticipation of turning 20 I began working on my personal website (in private, not live), but it will not be done in time. I think I am making good progress though (more than I have in the first year). The most anoying part of turning 20 is the need for a list of what I want for my birthday. When you are 20 the gifts don’t matter that much, especialyl when your environment is full of stuff that you barely use anyway. I have managed to come up with a minimal list to appease my mother and my aunt.
This birthday I feel like I am actually on-time for once. I remember my 17th birthday being a very sad day for me because of regrets that I held with myself. The primary regret was that I hadn’t obtained my license yet and that I was scared to do so. This year the only way I was able to get myself to go to the DMV was to get my father to go with me. Somehow having him around makes me feel less bad about myself. Last year my major conflict was the fact that I hadn’t made any major progress towards mentally preparing myself for college. Most of my birthdays in the past have been about regrets due to some milestone that I hadn’t handled, or something else like that.
My birthday seems to be pretty well planned out this year (Jon, I know you hate these, skip to the next paragraph). I am to get up at 9am, leave at 10am, go to Accounting and turn in my project, go to Calculus and retake the first test, then go to Business Programming and hear about the test, Finally for the academic day I go to Economics and stare blankly at a monotonous instructor. After class I will go through with some form of a plan which requires me to show up at my aunt’s house before I go with my family (and maybe a friend) to dinner. The rest of the evening after that is pretty much up to me… so we shall see, worst case scenario – I end up back at home with my pottery wheel and I spin the night away 😉 (hey, worst case doens’t always have to be bad).
The more I age, the more I don’t like it, but I don’t really have a choice, so I deal with it as best as I can. I want perfection in my life, but the more I experience life, the more I realize that will never happen. I have passed all of the ages for which I can be the youngest to do something amazing/heroic/noble, so that whole prodigial ship has sailed. This means that all universal goals I could hope to meet are no longer an option, but this doesn’t stop my personal goals for growth and achievement (read as: “learning more shit and finding things to waste time on”).
20 is coming very soon and in less than 48 hours I will no longer hold the title of “teenager”. For your personal amusement see http://curtis.kularski.net/countdown.
Wet Bat, Dry Bat


Here are some of my most recent creations, they are still quite wet and haven’t finished drying/shrinking yet. They should be ready in a few days.

These are dry, they came off the wheel a few days ago and have been almost completed. I think I would still like to dip some of them in glaze to make them really smooth, but they truely look better in person than they do in these images, the flash catches every defect, got to love technology right?
Tout le Monde
I would like to appologize to anyone who has ever had contact with me that has been hurt by my stupidity, ignorance, insensitivity or general selfishness. I only recently realized how damaging my brief contact with the world has been. I have no mountaintop to retreat to, so I don’t know what i’ll do to stop further hurt from occuring. Once again, im sorry for the pain I have caused.
.NET Registry Successor
On June 30, 2005 the .NET Top Level domain registry agreement between ICANN and Verisign will effectively terminate. I have been watching the proccess off and on, staying informed, but not getting involved. This change is so different from the .ORG transfer of several years ago. With that transfer there was a specially created organization (PIR) under the guidance of a trusted internet authority (ISOC) who was almost certain to win the appointment.
The reassignment of .NET will be a much more major issue. The primary factors involved aren’t relevant to the operation of the TLD though. The issue of focus for this fight amoung potential registries is the cost of registration per domain. I personally think that the issue should be the amount that ICANN can trust the operator and the amount that the operator respects ICANN and IETF. The TLD registry function has become too much of a bussiness, it really shouldn’t be. The operator functions used to be totally non-commerical, until the creation of InterNIC. InterNIC was created because it had to exist to keep the number of registrations in .COM, .NET and .ORG to a managable number and to fund a more stable root level TLD DNS system. Once the Internet reached a level where it was no longer just some noble experiment that was being funded by the government and educational institutions, it basicly became responsible for its own funding. During the change from the open registry (pre-incorperated InterNIC) to the days of InterNIC and Network Solutions one TLD was spared the evil fate, .US, also reffered to as US-DOM. The .US TLD was adopted and operated by Dr. Jon Postel from its conception in 1985 to 1998, when Dr. Postel died. During that time there were no registration fees in .US and everything was conducted on a very personal level. When Dr. Postel died ISI continued on with his tradition until March 2001 when Verisign was appointed to succed them, in an attempt to make the TLD more widely used. On October 29, 2001 the Department of Commerce expanded the namespace to allow commerical registrations in the TLD, however, the locality namespace was preserved, allowing the tradition to continue. There is room for commericalism in the operation of a TLD, but it cant be the only reason for being a registry operator and be able to do it effectively. Verisign-GRS has burned too many bridges to retain its position, which is the reason for the selection proccess occuring instead of the registry agreement simply being renewed quietly. The application proccess for the new registry position has gotten quite ugly in the past few weeks, every applicant (with the exception of Afilias, “the Irish applicant”) is using the application forums as a place to mudsling against the other applicants. Aflias is currently my choice for .NET successor for that very reason. Judging from the letters to ICANN from various forces in the domain universe, the general concensus is that DENIC is the prefered successor, although I haven’t seen why yet. I can’t tell from the poor quality of the letters (see http://www.icann.org/tlds/dotnet-reassignment/dotnet-correspondence.htm) what the reason for this overwhelming support is for DENIC. Anyone who is for keeping Verisign wants to do so due to the simplification of the proccess by not breaking up the COM/NET team. I’ve got big news for those people, the team was COM/NET/ORG, and if one member can be removed, so can the others. On the other hand, it is very possile that COM/NET will be back together in 2007 when COM is considered for redelegation.
Many people are probably wondering why I care about this issue so much, well, its very simple: Chris and I both own three domains in the .NET TLD. I want to see the TLD treated well and operated with dignity. I don’t feel that Verisign has done very well at that. Sometimes things just need to change…