R.I.P Jam Master Jay

Another influential and talented artist gone.

trick-or-treating

I was surprised that nobody else does their trick-or-treating on weekends.

Personally, I can't see why it makes a big difference. It's like having your birthday party on a saturday instead of a wednesday. Dress up your kids and send them to the neighbors for free candy? What, we're losing the message of the holy day?

My mom says we had did trick-or-treating on the 31st when I was small, but then changed it to sunday. Later on it was changed to daylight hours over concerns of safety. I can't think of any reason those concerns were founded.

cheap oil

After I got done with all that running around yesterday afternoon, I opened my mail and found a coupon for a $16 oil change.

trip

I'm going to Chicago on Monday for the big packaging show. I'd like to plan to meet some people down there for dinner, but I think I'll be playing things by ear that day. I don't know when I'll be leaving the show, or if I'll have anyone else with me.

boo

Scary pumpkin

from Defenders of Wildlife

With the 107th Congress finished except for a November lame-duck session, environmentalists have won major battles to protect the Arctic wildlife refuge and to stop the gutting of the Endangered Species Act -- at least for now. We stopped the proposal to drill for oil in the refuge -- America's greatest wildlife preserve. And legislation went nowhere to give Interior Secretary Gale Norton (no friend of wildlife) nearly sole authority to decide which species to protect as endangered. Also stopped was the Bush administration's attempt to log more of our pristine public lands under the guise of forest-fire prevention.

online personas

This medium - the various forms of online communication and community - drew many of us in because we were looking for a way to be different from the role we had adopted in "real" life. Not because we were looking to be someone other than who we were, but because we wanted to show who we really were. So when we found an outlet (LiveJournal, for many of us), we felt comfortable in acting like who felt we really were. It was so much nicer than whatever role we felt we were locked into when we socialized with old friends, coworkers, fellow church or club members or even family.

The funny thing is, as soon as you've been in a community long enough for people to get to know you, you become locked into another role. As far as your online persona has been developed at that time is as far as you are going to get. When people feel they know who you are, you probably have trouble defying their expectations. Since most of us operate under some degree of need for approval, we don't wish to upset others by acting out of character. Not only do we worry that others will leave us or simply disapprove of our actions, but people can even get angry with us for doing something they think is out of character. If someone has befriended you based on a set of characteristics he believes you possess, and you exhibit new characteristics that he dislikes, he can feel angry and betrayed.

That span of time when our acquaintances get to know us is crucial to who we seem to be. Some people develop their online personas as far as they need to by that time, but some don't. Some are able to retain a certain ambiguity, which makes it difficult for others to develop expectations, while some aren't.

Many people join online communities because real life friends brought them. Many of these people feel even more limited than they do in "real" life, because they can see how liberating online life can be, but can't let themselves go because their friends are nearby. Freedom is tantalizingly close.

How satisfied are you with who you think you appear to be? Is that different than how you feel about your appearance in the "real" world?

trick-or-treating

My favorite part was me and a friend running around trying to get to all the houses we could before time was up, and getting loads of candy because it was almost quitting time and everyone was unloading all their excess.