Hiding from One’s Self

On this blog there are some things that I avoid mentioning about my life because it is something that somehow doesn’t pass my mind as something that should be public knowledge, but yet with other blogs I read, such things are open and discussable. Maybe I am afraid that someone might read my blog who doesn’t know the information about me (such as family members, etc) and then my interactions with that person might be changed drasticly. My name doens’t exactly blend in to a pool of names, it is very distinct and recognizable.
Perhaps it is time for me to open myself up a little on this blog and just let my purest thoughts pass to it. Of course my more private events would remain private. I can’t live my life fearing what other people think of me. Ive done that for way too long. There are people in my world who try to push me back into my life of being overly self concious, such as Kyle Mulligan. His criticism scares me, his opposition to me enrages me. I can’t let people like him have that type of control in my life.
My bigest problem with me feeling like I am constantly being judged is the fact that I know there is always someone doing it and that they always have a negative opinion. The person is myself. I am usually the quickest to find flaws in myself and want to eliminate them. Last night was a very unusual situation for me. I was sitting here like I do every night, talking to people online and doing other stuff. I was working on some Physics homework. I allowed myself to get over-stressed on the homework and on other thoughts in my mind, at that point I cracked and found every flaw in myself and identified it. From that point forward I began having this disorganized thought pattern. It is very atypical for me to have many thoughts out of sequence or not logically arranged. I began to panic when that happened, most people who are attentive to my online statuses knew it. I have to learn to be less concerned with perfectionism and more open to being a flawed human. In my years before UNCC I was able to handle most things that were thrown at me and theings I couldn’t were flawed in some way. My ideal self (super ego) has been transformed from its high school version of wanting only to be accepted and high achieving, now to its college version which is more perfectionistic than ever. I MUST have an A in all classes, I MUST be present when it is physically possible (exclusion for overrides by my need to be paranoid). In my first 27 hours of college credit I have perfect scores, a 4.0 GPA. I was dealt a swift blow when my 28th – 30th hours were completed with only a B. This displesased my super ego greatly, putting more stress on my ego to excel at everything it does. My question to myself is where is my Id in all of this? Superego is definately accounted for, and the ego obeys superego, where is the Id to throw illogical desires into my life and make me not so perfect and squeeky-clean all the time? Last night I found myself planning a spring trip for hiking in the mountains as a fun and relaxing way for me to enjoy myself with a friend. All of my previous “perfect” role models in high school, Matt Lamb and Guy Broome, primarily, have started social drinking now that they are at college. My primary presenting-self would find great embarrasment in ever doing anything like that. But why? Why I am I not now normal? Can I ever be normal or am I doomed to live this life of needing to be perfect based on my pre-disposed images of perfection.
For “Perfect Curtis” to be achieved the following must exist:

  • Must be in a happy relationship
  • No smoking or drinking
  • No excess induldgences of any type
  • 4.0 GPA (present insituation only, lifetime total is forgiven)
  • A strong core group of friends
  • Hated/Disliked by no one
  • Very little body fat
  • 6 pack abs, formed just right, but not in excess
  • Some sense of style
  • Ability to appear cool and concentrated in all situations
  • Stable job doing something I enjoy
            OR
    My own company, loved by my employees, and able to handle any situation that occurs

  • My own house built to my specifications
  • GITI completed to my standards
  • Sufficient knowledge of the world around me
  • The logic of a Vulcan without the ears or coldness
    A lot of this list is obtainable, some of it may never be, but it will all day a large amount of work on my part to make it happen. I am the controller of my own fate for most of it, I just have to do it and push myself forward to attempt to be as close to my ideal self as I can be, but I need to be able to realize that my limits do exist, I have faults, they will pop up occasionally.
    I haven’t performed a life assesment in a long time, since October 2003 (but I still have a copy of it). I think it is time for me to perform another and determine what my life currently looks like on paper (unlike college essays, I can’t bullshit my way out of this one). The assesment, of course, will NOT be public. For those of you not familar with my assesments (everyone except Jeff), they are an itemized bulleted list that states current challenges that I face, my goals and other various aspects of my life that might need to be micro-managed. Once the main bullets are established I add sub-bullets for why the item is a problem, or if it is a goal, the obstacles blocking me from reaching it. I give the items ratings sometimes to help me know their priority and difficulty levels. For me I make the assesments a permenant record in my electronic data, but keep it out of normal view so I dont always have to look at it. It is refreshing for me to be able to go back to the old ones about 6 months after they were written and laugh off the issues I had and sort of be proud of what I have done.
    This started as a blog about me not being very open about some things in my life. I am still not quite ready to do that, but I dont know where I pulled the deviated topic from. Oh well, maybe next time we will explore what REALLY goes on in my head [cue Crickets chirping].

    • Overload – Vectors, Syllogisms and Old Art

    It finally happened, I am experiencing mental burn out!
    At one month into my college career I am feeling as though my brain is having to wrap around huge, ungraspable concepts and we aren’t being successful. My primary problem is vectors in physics. I am used to having equations for everything pre-derived for me(thats what we have old guys for right?) and just having to essentially “plug and chug” the numbers. I am having to do a lot more conceptual modeling than i previously would have ever done. I have tried using Google to find information on the topic, but nothing is revealing itself as being very useful. I had a similar problem in high school physics, and I was hoping to be able to find my old notebood and use information in it, but it is no where to be found. Wait, nevermind, found it in the other closet. Oh well, nothing usefull in there anyway. I guess its back to checking Google and attempting to piece together some amount of a clue. Physics test Monday, yippee!
    In Dedeductive Logic I am having some minor syllogism issues. It was worse last night with homework than it is now. I feel like I understand it a little better now than I did last night at least. I think I will just need to practice with these, I remember when I was first introduced to oppositions, I thought for sure I wouldn’t get it, but now I do. Once Dr. Preseler explained the stuff a little more today it was a lot clearer. I asked her for an extension to the homework, she agreed, so I get to go at it again, this time with fresh knowledge of what I am doing.
    Western History and Culture is a class that has only met a few times, the first test is Tuesday evening. I am worried because I don’t know the material that well. There are too many things that we have looked at that I just simply cant remember every detail about. I will review thoroughly this weekend and hope for the best. It is really becoming a history class and I just dont have that type of a mental proccess to handle that. I am logical in nature, as such, I work with things like GITI to keep my factual information in order.
    With Abnormal Psychology there is a lot of material, but I am doing fine with it and I think I just need to become a little more absorbed into the material (as long as it isnt in the form of a case study).
    Writing In Academic Communication is going fine. I am a good writer, all it takes for me is just a little work on some areas where I have preferences away from the accepted standard.
    Today in general went OK, with the exception of the fact that my father was home. I was expecting him to be at work and therefore wasn’t in my nicey pleasant mood to deal with him. Repreccusions of this unknowledge remain to be seen, but the total result likely wont be good.
    For those of you who are familiar with my beverage scale for day judgement: I am presently sipping on a 20oz Mt. Dew Code Red and there is another on standby in the fridge.
    Reccomendation for anyone in contact with Curtis in the next 36 hours: stay alert for sudden mood shifts, volitile temperment is likely.

    Procrastination

    procrastinatus – literally translated it is forward tomorrow. It is sometimes a pleasurable thing, other times it just bites you in the ass. I personally am a big fan of procrasination. I work well under the pressure of a deadline and as such this isn’t such a bad thing for me, especially when I don’t really mind doing what I am putting off. I am the type of procrastonee who can put things off and get them done if I really want to, but I can also put things off until the 12th of never, if I really don’t want to do what it is that I am putting off. GITI is designed for me and therefore designed for people who procrastinate. GITI doesn’t give major warnings when something is overdue, it simply presents the list in order of what needs to be done when. The user sets their own pace, draws their own conclusions and sets off their own alarms.
    I have been known to put things off for many reasons, pretty much everything except for I have something better to do. Some times I would rather stare into space for 5 hours than get started on my logic homework a little early. A lot of this has to do with my moods I suppose. I have moods when I don’t want to do anything, then I have other moods when I am in an overachieving persona and have the need to make GITI’s lists show zero items (basicly do everything that needs to be done in the next 15 days). Another thing that makes me procrastinate is my fear of getting started. If I have a paper to write I will likely not start it until I know exactly how the first sentance will read. I can’t just start writing a paper and have no idea what I will open the paper with. I can’t stand having papers to start with a line that sounds like it should be the conclusion. I have been told by many instructors that I am a talented writer, but I don’t see this most of the time when I can’t even get started. Sometimes my procrastination is fueled by a pure lack of motivation. Something to do exists, I am doing nothing and there is nothing to make me think that I would actually want to try to start anything. I have had close calls before though when I have felt like I had to get started and I sort of made myself have a pseudo motivation in the form of a deadline to push me towards getting started. Once I am started with something I dont typically end until I finish it, unless it is something that is obviously too time consuming for that. Projects that seem insignificant to me usually end up being done at the last minute because I know how I want to do it and it doesnt involve me actually spending multiple thought sessions on the project. In High school I always hated having the library day for projects. There was no point for me, I always had my research already done and the project couldnt really be easily constructed while I was in the library. Got to love having only inferior technology at your disposal. At least at UNCC I feel like I can do some stuff here. I have a decent Internet connection and the other technology is ok.
    I have found that in the event I need a reason to procrastinate I can always find one or create one. Making excuses is an art for for the procrastinee.
    Procrastination is an enemy for many students, and simply a temporary block for others, but in some way or another it affects us all.

    is today a day of scheduled fuckups that someone forgot to tell me about?

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Can today get any weirder? First I had issues with my vehicle on the way to the campus this morning. This displeased me only slightly because it has been acting strangely anyway and was expected.
    In Logic I recieved my test back, it was a lower grade than I expected, it was a 90.25, which isn’t too bad, but adds to the general pattern of the day. I am overall doing ok with Logic, but I want to make sure I have an A in the course at the end. I enjoy the course, but today was a day of high stress. I moved on to Physics after Logic, this went better, kinda…. We started with vector quantities and using angles to discover certain details about a problem. This is floating a little over my head and making me feel lightheaded. Physics overall wasn’t that bad today, but I am having the same issues with it as I did in high school. I have to keep reminding myself that I have done this before and I can do it again. English was worse than usual. There was an in-class timed writing done in the form of a reflective essay. I am not certain that mine is even legible, or coherent. I don’t do well with timed writings, especially not when I have to do it by hand. I need to be able to type to effectively use my time for writing.
    The trip home was relatively uneventful. When I arrived at home I discovered that FedEx has been operating differently from their normal pattern, a package due for arrival tomorrow, but arrived at their facility early arrived here today. It adds to the oddity of the day, but is a good thing I guess. I also noticed an oddity with the gate when I entered it this afternoon, it wasn’t locked and my father was the last one out. Typically my father always locks anything that can be locked. Upon entering the house and attempting to connect to AIM to chat for a bit I discovered that the AIM network wasn’t allowing me to log in, after a while I could log in but without appearing as being there or having access to by lists. That issue was eventually resolved, but not before I was getting myself close to panic attack status.
    Tonight I started on my physics homework that is due Monday. I am having issues recalling how to work with angles to determine 2 dimensional motion. This stuff sucks, I dont want to have to do this. Why didn’t I just sign up for biology or something? Or maybe use Anthropology as my other science and then take Psychology lab to meet that requirement. I have for now stopped with my physics homework until Friday when I can get more of an explanation from Dr. Naeini as to what I am doing. Worst thing this evening is that I managed to frustrate myself by looking for my old high school physics notebook to get assistance from. I couldn’t find it and got irritated, then I felt that I needed chocolate, none is availible in this house, my mother has even depleted her spare supply. I have now calmed down a bit and can now get agitated over the Abnormal Psychology test tomorrow, this should be fun.

    Being An Adult

    What does it mean to be an adult? Is it linked to maturity, age or a set of other factors that must be met?
    I don’t presently consider myself an adult. I live with my parents, I don’t presently have a job and am reluctant to do a lot of things by myself. Why is that? I wish I knew, but I don’t know. I want to be able to do things by myself, but I have just always feared doing anything around a lot of people when I am alone. Could I be worried that I would be jelous, or perhaps afraid of being the odd one out because everyone else would be with someone? I am scheduled to get my hair cut next weekend, this is something I have always had my mother to schedule and I always go with her when I get it done. Shouldnt I at this point, being a person capable of driving, be able to go there by myself and take care of it? I can manage to get to the drugstore to pick up things I need occasionally, but I can’t go to see a person I am familiar with without feeling the need to have someone with me. I do fine on UNCC’s campus, I suppose because I am an individual amoung a lot of other inviduals, there is no collectiveness here. There are a few groups of people, but mostly individuals.
    On another aspect of adulthood, I am a very responsible person and meet all qualifications of an adult there. I don’t act abnormally disrespective to people, I don’t do things just to do them (a flaw in my personality) and I conduct myself as I feel an adult should. I observe the wild and unmanaged behaviours I see on campus and I can’t believe that the parents of some of these people let them out of their sight without a leash of some sort. I could not live a life of being so non-caring of what I am doing or what others may think of me. Does this make me adult-like or just paranoid?
    I do not know the answer to any of these questions, all I know is that I am not ready to grow up yet.

    Short Days Are Fun

    Today was one of those short days that you don’t expect to be short.
    Awoke at 10AM to an alarm clock, a cell phone and a laptop. Im getting better at getting the three to go at the same time. I really need to find a nice loud MP3 that starts with like trumpets or something for my laptop. I opened my eyes to a beautiful North Carolina autum sky, this was adequate motivation to get me moving for the day. I ate breakfast and watched some television while in bed in an attempt to stay warm. Today wasn’t one of the warmest fall days weve had.
    I drove to campus to take a Logic test (doesn’t that sound like fun?). Given that some logic tests are easy, we can not conclude that All logic tests are easy (superalternation). The test was fairly easy and yet still required thought. I at no point was concerned about my grade on the test. I think I did very well. It only took me about 30 minutes to complete the test, so I had about 30 minutes left to do stuff. I went to Barnard labs for a bit, checked my email and dealt with a situation with the Assistant Dean of the college of bussiness administration.
    Later I went to Physics, Dr. Naeini took 65 minutes of his availible 50 minute block. We went over homework that I already know how to do. Very boring. The class went by slow and not much was learned.
    Went back to Barnard Labs after Physics to take care of some homework and stuff, then it was time for Enlgish. Betsy wasn’t feeling very well today so we went to class and exchanged our Peer Review forms and then kinda left. Thats where my day concludes and I returned home.
    Not much done since then…

    Evaluation Time…

    I have a practice of evaluating my instructors in a typed document each semester. Some semesters it stays private (usually the bad ones), this semester it is public. It has been about one month now since classes began.
    Mrs. Dr. Judith L. Presler – Deductive Logic – MWF 12-12:50 –
    Dr. Presler started off a little shaky with me. I was almost certain she would be the evil instructor. She started off very strict and a little overly professional acting. After the first two weeks Dr. Presler became this kind and friendly old lady, sort of like a wise instructor from ancient Greece. There must be something about philosophy instructors that makes appear the way they do. Dr. Presler and Dr. Morton act a lot alike. Dr. Presler gives reasonable review before tests and writes the test to not be too challenging, but also not a snooze. With the test today I was especially appreciative of the little logic guide with the square of opposition that she gave us. I am still planning for an A in the course, the work is easy, the concepts are simple (and logical ;-), and I enjoy being in the course most days.
    Dr. Jeff Naeini – Introduction to Physics – MWF – 1-1:50 –
    Dr. Naeini is a lebanese French-Canadian. He speaks English well, but has a heavy accent. Sometimes it is difficult to understand him, but I have had no problems in the course so far. If a student in the course is attentive then any missed words aren’t a problem to figure out. Dr. Naeini is one of the instructors who you can tell loves his job. Even though we are in a lecture hall situation with 85 students I still feel like I am connected to him. Homework exists in the course, but is only moderately challenging. The homework really helps me understand a lot of the concepts in the course. Dr. Naeini loves to work with technology, but sometimes it doesn’t always enjoy working with him that much. He makes an attempt at using bold new teaching methods. So far this semester I have been introduced to WebAssign and Clickers. I enjoy WebAssign and think it is a valuble teaching tool. Clickers on the other hand are just annoying and should never be used in any serioud academic setting as large as what we have. Dr. Naeini is doing a fine job and is very understanding. My present grade estimate is in the A or B range, depending on the way the tests go.
    “Betsy” Newman – Writing in Academic Communication – MW – 3-4:20 –
    Betsy is nuts, but is a decent teacher. Betsy is probably the youngest instructor that I have currently. She relates to students very well and tends to act a lot like us. She looses things, gets confused, talks to herself and can be a complete spaz at times. Can anyone think of a better person for teaching me? Mrs. Newman is good at what she does. Her techniques for teaching rely heavily on student involvement, something which a lot of instructors think college students are too old for. Peer learning is one of the most successful ways of absorbing knowledge that exists. Betsy’s style is not so lecture oriented, but yet the material gets covered, and no one falls asleep. High school was never as much fun as Betsy’s class. I suspect an A in this course as well.
    Mr. James Frakes – Western History and Culture: Masterpieces of Western Art – T – 6:30-9:20 –
    Mr. Frakes is purely a lecturer. He cares about the subject matter, but isn’t directly interacting with the class. Im not truely sure of what I think about him yet, but I think it will be a very dull semester with him. I can make no grade projections for this course.
    Mr. Kamran Ahmad – Introduction to Physics Lab – R – 2-5:00 –
    Mr. Ahmad is a TA, he directs the lab and is very effective in doing so. He is strict with procedures, but is very helpful. Mr. Ahmad is a very understanding and flexible instructor. I don’t know of anyone else who has that much paitience with blonde chicks. Not much else to say about him, he is a TA and my grade is based upon lab attendance and my lab notebook.
    Dr. Kieth Noland – Abnormal Psychology – R – 6-8:50 –
    Dr. Noland teaches the course quickly, but yet efficiently. He is nice about the way he does things. Dr. Noland does not take attendance because he believes that if we don’t attend class we will wreak havok upon our own grades. I have no indication of a grade in the course as of yet, but I think I will do well, I always seem to with Psychology courses.
    That concludes the instructor evaluations for now. Maybe this will give my readers more of an insight into the instructors as well as give me a point of reference when I fill out a RateMyProfessors.com evaluation at the conclusion of the semester.

    Sex

    What is the real purpose for sex in our society? How has the way we view sex changed over the past few hundred years? From the coldest and most technical definition sex is for the purpose of procreation. Why do we as a society shield our children from how they came into being? Sex is considered by some people to be a very natural and wonderful thing, while others (most) feel it is something to hide and keep in the unknown. It is obvious from the amount of masterbation that occurs in our society that sex is a thing of pleasure, not just purely procreational. There are very few males that I know who don’t masterbate. Some do it just a few times a week, others do it many times per day. It is pleasurable to them with no chance of anyone becoming pregnant. One of the things I find strange in sexuality is that some people view raw, instinct provoked, animal-like sex to be the “purest” and “most beautiful” form of sex. I personally find it disgusting and a little on the barbaric side. We are in a society that values refinement and dignified ways of handling things. We as humans are supposed to have some amount of self control and not have the need to go around humping on each other all day when the urge strikes us. In my world sex should be something that is at least semi-planned between two (or more) adults who have some capacity of caring for each other, not just to satisfy a sexual desire.
    One of the worst topics that can be covered in academic discussion is “abnormal sexuality”. In order to have an abnormal there must be an established norm. How many people have sex in only the form of heterosexual vaginal intercourse? Not as many as would try to claim it im sure. Homosexuality, Heterosexuality and Bisexuality are all normal, but just not to everyone. Those 3 (or 2, since one is a variation of the others) are about as simple and normal as you will find. It is when we probe the depths of all of these variations and begin to look into the different fetishisms and other related interests that exist that we find a maze of different things that people find to be sexually gratifying. The normally thought of things are revealing linguere, and mild bondage. All of which still involve some amount of interaction with the primary sexual desires and the “want” of sexual beings to interact with their partner’s sexual organs. Some things that aren’t so normal or so thought of in the normal relam of sexuality are things like footwear fetishes, things that involve pain and the more drastic dominance and submission based relationships. Can any of us truely say that these things are not normal or aren’t acceptable? With the way this culture tends to do, does it even matter? If we as a society don’t care about what goes on in other peoples’ bedrooms, then why is it such a problem for someone to be openly homosexual? Being homosexual isn’t a direct admission to participating in anal sex with another male, or whatever it is that lesbians to. It is possible to be homosexual/gay/queer/faggish while being a virgin. It is the same as most normal teen guys who are virgins to be considered “straight” even though they haven’t “gotten any”. It is my opinion that it is better to be homosexual than to be someone who hates everyone and abuses women (or men). Perhaps the problem in this world with all of these tenancies towards violence, backstabbing bussiness manuevers and other assorted issues of ill ethic is that several very natural forms of love are being supressed, some violently. Before you southern baptist bible thumping convervatives decide to put me on your list of people to be burned at the stake (or have you backwards hethens converted to lethal injection?) and added to your email list for your supposed reasons why homosexuality isn’t natural, look around you. Dogs have no serious predispostion to either gender, they take what they can get when they get the urge. The thing that annoys me most about the southern baptist clan against homosexuality is that they love to screw with the facts, draw pictures of events occuring where none did. I don’t put much faith into a religious group who has a large number of people who wish to kill or do servere harm to fellow humans because of who they love. There is a select group amoung the religion who are ignorant of the truth about what homosexuality actually involves and don’t show any hate towards anyone. They follow the real word of God (the one that carries a message of love all living beings). I am of the opinion that real Christians don’t seek out members of any group for any reason with the purpose of scaring, hurting or killing them. In this world it is fine to disagree with opinions, ways of doing things or whatever, and you can dislike someone because they are short, have blond hair or whatever you want, but nothing in this society should trigger the need to kill. I think I was near a point before the image of an angry southern baptist bubba popped into my head.
    Sexuality is one of those topics that is about as cloudy as origins of the universe and the reason why humans are truely existing on this planet. We all have our own definition of what sexuality is, and what love is. Love is actually very underdefined in our culture. When we were moving from older languages (Latin, Greek, etc) we certainly fucked that up. How did we loose such an important concept? There is more that one type of love and in English all we have is love, LOVE, love, love and love [insert cute little tennis ball icon here]. Greeks had many clearly defined words for love, one for a brotherly, a friendly love, an erotic love and a purely sexual love that was mostly empty (can you guess with one 9 out of 10 college frat guys reccomend?).
    In a weird twist to this entry, lets analyze the actions of some of the most macho of straight guys…jocks. The things that go on in a locker room could probably be applied to about 10 shades of sexual harrasment, homosexual activity and pure cruelty. Jocks participate in ass slapping, wet towl snaps, wedgie giving and things like that. There are also other things that go on that are less violent and more normal, such as when football players take time to hug each other and show affection through other forms of bodily contact. One of the weirdest straight guy obsessions has to be the need to inflict pain upon the testicles of other guys. What is up with this? Does it take knocking someone’s nuts to establish pure manlyness or something? Jocks are a central figure of another aspect of sexuality. Jocks are the most physically fit of people, therefore they are natureally more attractive to women and idolized most by men (and the opposite). The key to most of the diet and excercise enterprises is the focus on the rock hard six pack abs. Abs are the most central and most relied upon group of muscles in the body, everyone either wants great abs or wants to be sexually involved with someone with them. Its a weird obsession that centers upon humanity’s goal of becoming more perfect and being based upon the strongest and most reslient of the species.
    All of you are probably wondering what got me started on this, as far as I can tell it was started by a combination of my reading for Abnormal Psychology and the closeted nature of one of my gay friends, even though he has met a guy he thinks might be gay and is attracted to. Sometimes it takes guts and balls to approach things like that, but if everyone in this world wants to be happy it has to happen. I
    I leave you all with this thought: In order for your world to more perfect, someone elses must be more scrambled and confusing.

    Future of GITI

    “Welcome to The Interface”
    “Good Evening, Curtis. Today is Saturday, September 18, 2004”
    It took so many lines of code and so much time coding to get those 2 lines to show up exactly like I wanted. That was over a year ago, when GITI was still under primary development. GITI PIM – Gettting It Together Interface Personal Information Manager has been a primary project of mine since the joint completion of Address Book Database utility in Spring 2003. In my quest to learn PHP I started the project. It is now one of my most prided accomplishments, but I find that its needs are quickly outgrowing its current limitations as well as my developmental knowledge. GITI v2 was esablished a few days ago in its own little development space. So far its design is becoming more complex, but at the same time more limiting as far as GITI module inclusion. Im going with the file drawer approach with little tabs used for navigation, there is potential for more than 1 row of tabs, but moving to 3 rows would be pushing asthetic design rules I impose on myself.
    For GITI v2 I invision a smooth design with all menu options availible from all pages via a hover menu. Catagories (or Classes for EDU module) should be located on the side of the page where they can be easily accessed when needed. GITI will have to become a lot more user customizable (for additional users as well as for my own convienience). Because of the reinvention of GITI I will be able to fully utilize CSS and make GITI able to have themes. This could be really cool for holidays and stuff.
    In additional to the layout changes I have some proposed modules that could be added: Shipment status (via XML manifests availible from shippers), Recipe Manager (per my mother’s request), Wardrobe Inventory (this one might not make it if the usefulness isn’t there), Bookmarks, and a re-write of Journal. One of the things I have considered is having the ability to link all items between modules if needed. This would be most helpful between Schedule and Journal I believe. I theorize that based on the concept that GITI keeps a running record of your life, so why not let it also keep your narratives about it stored in relation to scheduled events in your life?
    After I started working on the screen shots for my last post (which are still availible at http://curtis.kularski.net/GITI) I determined that GITI is a very good record keeping system for knowing all of my past events and other things. I didn’t think of it that way when I originally created it and as such doesn’t have nearly as many datestamps in it as it should. I think with version 2 I will have a lot more notations and transaction tracking. I am sort of inspired by IETF’s Internet Draft Status tracker for that aspect. Every major action that occurs with a document that is submitted for the RFC Editor is logged. This could be a nice system for tracking the status of different types of records in GITI. Recipes in the theoretical recipe module obviously wouldnt need it, but ToDos and schedule items could use that ability. A lot of the statuses themselves were written to be binary values, but through much experience with GITI I have determined that statuses can’t be Yes, No or On, Off. There are a lot of in-betweens. More In-Progress things would probably be helpful.
    In preparing for this redesign of GITI I am learning a lot more about practical coding than I ever thought I would. I will be posting more screen shots of GITI as it nears being ready for active use in v2.
    I guess I will be off to my world of writing GITI for now…

    Ivan

    California has their earthquakes, midwest has their tornados, we, the wonderful east coast of the United States have hurricanes. In a normal year we barely recognize the fact that they occur. The spin up, live for a few days, blow some stuff around and then they go away. This year is a little odd. We are having about a hurricane per week and we are getting tons of rain, some wind and other assorted goodies from these massive thunderstorms. I used to not mind when the occasional hurricane would blow by my way, but now I have a 33 mile commute each direction each day. This is not fun in rain and wind, especially not with the way I drive.
    Hurricane Ivan’s eye passed on to land at about 2:45am, I didn’t know this until about 11AM when I woke up and found myself glued to Weather Channel. Storms are more interesting when they will be passing by your way and possibly be causing problems in your life. I personally do not want any more rain. When I go to class I have to go outside and between buildinds that don’t share a common covering.
    I just came back from a particularly long and confusing physics lab, at this point with the hurricane coming closer to us I am contemplating returning home early. I still have another hour left until my next class. It would take extra time to get home from this point because of the excess traffic, but I am starting to think that it would be safer than attempting to wait until late tonight after the rain gets heavy to return. I will decide in a few minutes what my course of action under these conditions will be. I can get just as much out of my Psychology notes that the instructor posts to the web as I can from being in class, so the benefits of staying on campus are not currently justified in the entire safety to education equation.
    There is supposed to be rain for the next several days, im not looking forward to it and I would like to return to my nice calm days of summer again. On that same thought, I miss my CPCC classes now. I didn’t even have to leave my bed to take those classes, just do the assignments online and have no physical class to attend. That method would be bad for me though, I need to be out here in the world and be around people near my own age, at least closer than my parents who are currently acting about 5 and 90.
    I guess I should do something productive, like revise a draft or analyse a nut…ooooh…chocolate, Ive got things to do I think….