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in last couple of weeks i’ve hung out with various friends from different parts of my life. a couple weekends ago iris and i were hanging out in hermosa with some of her friends from college. last weekend i spent some time with some friends from both high school and college. during these outings, i took a few moments to sit back and watch, see how everyone interacted with one another. and in my observances, i kept asking myself: do we inherently have different “levels” of friends? what qualifies a friend? is “someone you know” a friend? is an acquaintance a friend? and is it fair for us to categorize our friends?

i honestly think that we as humans find the need to classify things. it’s easy to see: biology class and our classification of living things. the periodic table. the menu at mcdonald’s. grocery aisles. we seem to be drawn to classifications. so, it wouldn’t strike me to think that people do classify their friends… high school friends, college friends, work friends, family friends. at what cost do we classify these people in our lives and what happens when people mix?

i may be using the incorrect word here. maybe i’m thinking about “labeling” our friends instead of classifying them. like our best friend. how does one earn that label “best friend”? and is there a “worst friend”? how do you earn (or give to someone) this “label”?

this ties in to the notion of “levels” of friends. if someone (or some people) are not your “best friend(s)”, then are they just “friends”? is there some sort of level or criteria that is somehow reached or fulfilled to be “best”? are there people who you might call a friend, but are at a level “lower” than “friend”?

it’s tough to answer any of these questions really, because it really makes you take a look at yourself both how you see you and how you are reflected in the friends that you have. i am a believer in the saying that “you are your friends,” and i think it takes a lot of observation and reflection to look at the people you consider friends and see that part of “you” in them. in contrast, maybe that is why we lose touch and stop being friends with people: maybe we grow or change and we no longer see that part that we “are” in that person anymore.

friendship is one of those concepts that people have struggled to understand and has been deeply philosophically examined through the centuries. i don’t think we’ll ever have a true definition of friendship and i think the struggle of who is and who is not a friend is part of discovering the meaning of life. so, while the modern dictionaries may call upon a group of people to agree on a meaning for the word “friend” (that’s typically how definitions are put in dictionaries if you didn’t know), the words of Aristotle have always been the closest definition for me:

what is a friend? a single soul dwelling in two bodies

thank you to all my friends!

-m

lately i’ve been going gaga over some really, really techy and nerdy stuff… mainly, stuff to do with powering all of my gadgets and keeping an eye on my power usage.

i have been waiting for the belkin conserve to come out ever since i saw it in Wired a few months back. i really want to be able to hook up all of the components at my desk and turn them all off when i turn off my computer… stuff like my speakers don’t have a power switch, and i don’t really want to reach down each time to power on/off my printer. that would be a helpful tool. (it comes out sometime this summer btw).

i also really want to get a belkin mini surge for traveling. the helpful thing is the usb port for charging my iPod and BlackBerry (or iPhone if i decide to upgrade!). it’s small, easy to carry, and is perfect for hotel rooms.

the last power-related item i’m looking for is the kill-a-watt. i’d like to see which of my gadgets is drawing the most juice so i could be more diligent in turning them off.

god, i can be such a geek sometimes. but i love it!

-m

p.s. my birthday is coming, so in case anyone wants to know what i’m looking for… haha!

if you want to see simplicity at work, look no further than muxtape. well done, easy to navigate, and very effective.

let’s keep it simple, stupid!

-m

bonus: check out their hip hop mixtape: hiphop.muxtape.com

…is merely the sign of a very healthy individual trying to do more in a shorter period of time than those lazy, obsessively tidy types who can think of nothing better to do than straighten objects in drawers and stuff like that which only feeds on their own egos and makes them think they’re better than those of us who are truly gifted.

My dad gave me a paper with that definition on it when i was like 10. i’ve believed in it ever since. thanks pop!

-m

finding a huge group of files in the current directory older than 30 days and sending them to a gzip’d tar file:
find . -type f -daystart -mtime +30 -name "file*" | tar -c --files-from=- | gzip > file.tar.gz

finding a group of files and deleting them (useful when you can’t do an rm * on a directory because there are a boatload of files in that dir):
find . -exec rm {} \;

helpful, so i thought i’d post them.

-m

so i wrote this on a server today hoping to kill off a bunch of duplicated processes that were locked up… as the title states, it worked the first time! i think this will work in most linux distros that have the -ef flag for the ps command:

ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep [runaway process]| awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

in a nutshell, it prints out the process id from the ps command and uses xargs to pipe it to the kill process.

whew! it saved me a ton of typing, so i thought i’d share.

-m

so it’s been a while and there were just a few things that i kept telling myself “dangit i need to write this down”… so here i go!

iris and i went to washington d.c. for the cherry blossom festival a few weeks ago… we toured the capital like most tourists, but we’ve been there a few times already, so we were really just catching up on stuff we hadn’t seen yet… there was a bit of a moment i had where, when we were walking thru the Roosevelt memorial, i said to myself: i wonder why we haven’t had presidents like these, who had convictions like these, in a long while?

unfortunately it doesn’t look like 2008 will bring us one, no matter who wins =/

i’ve finally gotten around to building a new computer… i was telling pip today that it’s been almost a decade since the last time i actually put one together myself. the reality of it is, building a computer hasn’t changed much really, but the amount of options that are out there is crazy… there are too many socket types and chipsets and ram types to keep track of nowadays, but a good guide like the ones that are published at ars technica can help… i used the hot rod guide, but with a few modifications to save on the final cost… it’s such a joy, i can’t believe how much fun i’m actually having building it! the sucky part is having to clean the desk to make room for the new comp, AND to back up my old data (most of which i probably will not even bother to use, so i’ll end up deleting anyway)…

finally, the second half of thrice’s the alchemy index came out this week, and i am enjoying it very much. the second half encompasses the elements air and earth. i still think that the first half, the fire and water albums, are a bit stronger, but as a whole the entire set is magnificent. in this set i have been enjoying the earth disc more, but air has some great tracks as well. their lyrics are very profound and i love how the last song is kind of macabre, yet hopeful and simulates someone (or something) being buried. if you listen to their entire discography, you can see their evolution as artists and it’s amazing. go check them out!

so that’s all for now really… pip and i are trying to work out a new schedule and format for 8bit Ideas, and we have a new logo in the works which is being designed by a great friend of mine at seeing spots. please check out their work!

-m

*jumps on the soap box*

this election year is shaping up to be a doozy… we’re very close to narrowing down the republican and democratic candidates, and it seems like there is more at stake this year for everyone across all lines (gender, ethnicity, etc)… the biggest issue of course seems to be the war in Iraq, followed by a number of other issues (the recession, immigration, etc) that, no matter the outcome, will affect everyone…

now, as a techie, there are some issues which, in addition to the ones mentioned above, directly affect what i, and other tech-savvy Americans, will be able to do in the future as far as creativity, innovation, and even writing a blog or posting to YouTube.

a good outline on some tech issues, plus candidates stances on them, can be found here: TechCrunch Primaries

one of the issues that is of particular importance to me is Net Neutrality. i am in support of it, and i hope that when you go out to vote you please consider your particular choice’s stance on the issue.

check out this video for a good overview of Net Neutrality

*gets off the soap box*

-m

Hey just wanted to announce the launch of 8bit Ideas. It’s a podcast that Pip and I decided to start doing, and the results have been pretty good. Please check it out and throw some comments our way:

8bit Ideas

-m

geez how did we get to 2008 so soon?? weren’t we just starting 2007??

i suppose we all ask ourselves that each year, don’t we? it seems like each year gets shorter and shorter, tho’ in reality time isn’t getting faster, i think it’s our lives. i remember when i was younger, a year seemed like an eternity… how many months of school did we have to sit thru?? and didn’t summer feel like it wouldn’t end??

it’s strange to think that the one thing that seems in flux, time, is the one thing that’s actually constant… which means, it’s actually us that is in flux. what is it about us that causes us to flux, especially the older we get??

actually, i think it’s going to be some sort of bell curve of flux for our lives… we start off as slow, and somewhere in our ‘middle years’ things happen in a blink of an eye, then we start to slow down again… guess we’ll see if i’m right in about 50 years, eh??

i’m not sure if i really have much to say about 2k7… i think i had more work to do at work than ever, but i also think i had more play to play also. i mean, work was tumultuous with all of the shakeups in the company… and it’s been my biggest challenge in my career to date. at the same time, i think i’ve been able to see more clearly where my strengths and weaknesses are, and where i want to get better. i’ve definitely had to step up to more responsibilities, and i think i’ve done an ok job at it. can do better next year i believe.

iris and i got to travel a whole bunch this year, which was fun. 2 trips to napa, yosemite, an east coast trip, seattle, and vegas like usual. lots of fun, food, drinks, and friends. i can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year. who wants to come play?

lessee… 1/4 on my new year’s resolutions from last year. oh well, tack them on to 2k8’s list.

finally got a new car, and yet i still miss the teg sometimes.

after all that, sometimes i feel like i’m still searching for something. i just don’t know what yet. maybe 2008 will bring more clarity?

in any case, i want to wish the best 2008 to everyone. i hope everyone’s year doesn’t fly by!

-m