Never been one to let the carrier drop

maybe we’re going to have lots of nasty earthquakes because the oil that we are busy pumping out of the ground and burning was supposed to be a lubricating system to make the plates slide all nice and smoothlike..

It’s a difficult time to be alive.

Never mind the challenge of figuring out what God might want, the real challenge is figuring out how to overcome the results of running out of oil (and they aren’t pretty.. all our food gets here because it moves on semis which are fueled by hydrocarbons.. and we’re quickly running out) and the repeated willingness of our leaders to blow things up.

Nuclear weapons are terrifying. Resource depletion is terrifying. Pollution is a touch disturbing. Excessive numbers of humans are leading to truly scary situations.

I suppose the Christians must be thrilled.. it seems entirely plausable that we are living in the end times, that civilization will collapse, or worse..

I beg of humanity to try to grow up as a species. How many times have we reached this level of technical sophistication and collapsed? The answers are in front of us – solar energy, diplomacy, battery electric vehicles, a willingness to do something smarter than starting wars over resources..

I know. I’m a broken record.

A broken record who is suffering from a bit of depression at the moment, too.

At least I’m doing some EV things again..

Imagine you are a life form. You are terribly lonely, and you want to communicate with other beings of your type. You’re stuck in a spinning universe, with everything moving around you. You’ve no idea who is right or wrong – one side insists that the answers to life are one, and the other side insists than they are zero.

Imagine the human race trapped inside a RAID array larger than we can imagine. All life is precious, and all of it must be held onto at all costs. If you can stand up and say that you’re worthwhile, you are.

How do you find life?

More to the point, how do you find life that looks anything like you do, when you’re stuck inside this machine that is spinning enormously fast?

Sometimes I wonder if the Earth is a egg – intended to bring to life the race of man. Sometimes I wonder if I am a cosmic antenna.. picking up gravity waves – a sattellite of earth, helping two different sides, micro and macro, communicate. Growing between both of them.

My god doesn’t have a absolute right and wrong, I don’t think. My God says ‘all life is precious – we’ve got to find some way to hold onto it and send it on at the same time’.

I mean, sex is just communication on a microscopic level. Everything wants to talk, it seems like. I look for a purpose to life, and so far, about all I can find is communication.

I would love to know some greater purpose – I’d love for either micro or macro to do something to help this make more sense.

As near as I can tell, Elton John was right. All life is precious. Every day is a prize.

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:00:17

You have been automatically removed from the EDEALSPASS1AOL list (eDeals
Permission Pass 1 AOL) as a result of repeated delivery error reports
from your mail system. This decision was based on the automatic error
monitoring policy in effect for the list, and has not been reviewed or
otherwise confirmed by a human being. If you receive this message, it
means that something is wrong: while you are obviously able to receive
mail, your mail system has been regularly reporting that your account did
not exist, or that you were otherwise permanently unable to receive mail.
Here is some information which may assist you or your local help desk in
determining the cause of the problem:

– The failing address is sheer@SHEER.US.

– The first error was reported on 17 Apr 2005.

– Since then, a total of 2 delivery errors have been received.

– The last reported error was: Probe failed.

PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE THIS MESSAGE. While you can of course re-subscribe
to the list, it is important for you to report this problem to your mail
administrator so that it can be solved. This problem is not specific to
the EDEALSPASS1AOL list, and also affects your private mail. This means
that YOU HAVE PROBABLY LOST SOME PRIVATE MAIL AS WELL. Anyone trying to
write to you during the same time frame will probably have received the
same errors for the same reason. The EDEALSPASS1AOL list is but one of
the many people who may have tried to write to you while your mail system
was malfunctioning.

DO NOT LET TECHNICAL PEOPLE CONVINCE YOU THAT THIS IS NORMAL. It is never
normal for a mail system to claim that a valid, working account does not
exist, just as it would not be normal for the post office to return some
of your mail with “addressee unknown” when the address was written
correctly. It is true that some mail systems are less reliable than
others, and your technical people may be doing the best they can with the
tools they have. But, ultimately, the level of service that you are
receiving is the result of a business decision, and not something due to
a universal technical limitation that one can only accept. Reliable mail
systems do exist, and it is ultimately up to you to decide whether this
level of service is acceptable or not.
————————————————————————

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have just been lectured about email reliability by a spammer.

But, wait, there’s more!

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 01:57:15

LISTSERV@LISTSERV.VERSUS.COM has just received the enclosed delivery
error as a result of a probe sent to your SHEER@SHEER.US account for the
EDEALSMERL list. If you are reading this message, it means that your mail
system is successfully delivering mail to your mailbox, while at the same
time reporting that an error has occurred (or, alternatively, the error
could be due to a system problem which has since then been fixed). At any
rate, LISTSERV has no way to know that you have actually received the
present message, and is operating on the assumption that your e-mail
address is no longer valid. Typically, LISTSERV will send you one or more
additional probe messages, on a daily basis, to determine whether the
failure persists, and if so you will be removed from the list eventually.
Some lists are configured to remove users on the first failure.

Assuming you have not been removed from the list yet, you can stop this
process by sending the following command to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.VERSUS.COM
as soon as possible:

CONFIRM EDEALSMERL

This will tell LISTSERV that your account actually does work and that you
still want to receive mail from the EDEALSMERL list.

While the CONFIRM command will solve your immediate problem, it is only a
matter of time until you find yourself in the same situation again.
Please take a look at the enclosed error report and try to determine
whether it is a genuine error, or just an informational message. Bear in
mind that this error report was processed by a computer that cannot tell
“User JAIME24 does not exist” from “Please note that the Department of
Microbiology will be closed from December 19 to January 2” or “Attempts
to deliver your message have been unsuccessful for 300 seconds; will keep
trying for another 431700 seconds.” These informational messages, while
possibly useful to a human reader, should not be sent in answer to a
message coming from a mailing list (it is very easy for the mail program
to determine whether a message is coming from a mailing list). Genuine
errors should be reported to your computer/network support staff as soon
as possible so that they can be corrected.

————————- Delivery error report ————————-
Return-Path: <>
Received: from gateway.sheer.us (206.124.136-146.blarg.net) by listserv.versus.com (LSMTP for Windows NT v1.1b) with SMTP id <20.0003EA6F@listserv.versus.com>; Wed, 20 Apr 2005 1:57:14 -0400
Received: (qmail 7382 invoked for bounce); 20 Apr 2005 08:18:32 -0000
Date: 20 Apr 2005 08:18:32 -0000
From: MAILER-DAEMON@gateway.sheer.us
To: owner-EDEALSMERL*sheer**SHEER*-US@LISTSERV.VERSUS.COM
Subject: failure notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at gateway.sheer.us.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.

:
Sheer is phasing out using this address. Please address correspondence to **censored**@sheer.us (for work-related communications) or **CENSORED**@sheer.us (for non-work related communications)

— Below this line is a copy of the message.

Return-Path:
Received: (qmail 7376 invoked by uid 500); 20 Apr 2005 08:18:32 -0000
Delivered-To: sheer@SHEER.US
Received: (qmail 7315 invoked from network); 20 Apr 2005 08:18:32 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO listserv.versus.com) (206.83.39.10)
by 206.124.136-146.blarg.net with SMTP; 20 Apr 2005 08:18:32 -0000
Received: from copernic (copernic.versus.com) by listserv.versus.com (LSMTP for Windows NT v1.1b) with SMTP id <70.0003F1F0@listserv.versus.com>; Wed, 20 Apr 2005 1:03:10 -0400
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 01:01:39 -0400
From: Dent Repair
Subject: Dent and ding repair kit
To: sheer@SHEER.US
Content-Type: text/html;
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
Importance: Normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Return-Path: Dent Repair

|

It’s the one pros use.

I just reread a book that I haven’t read since middle school. Interestingly, I didn’t remember any of the literal writing, but I remembered all of the story. This really makes me wonder how we store information internally, since obviously it’s not that connected to language.

I’ve finally given up on sheer@sheer.us – although I will still be receiving mail there (at least for a while), I won’t be reading it very regularly. Instead, I’ve set up a couple of different email addresses for work and personal corrispondence. A autoresponder at sheer.us will give out those addresses. (If I start publishing them on the web, it will sort of ruin the point of changing addresses, which is simply: I’m being overrun by spam)

In addition, there are special whitelists for friends and work. I don’t think that I missed any of my friends in compiling these whitelists, however if you would like to make sure you’re included in the whitelists (which just mean that emails to sheer@sheer.us will be shuttled over to the appropriate box automagically so you don’t have to update your address book), just send a comment here. Or send me a mail at sheer@sheer.us – if you do not get a autoresponder, you’re already on the whitelist.

I’m guessing probably none of you care. 😉

I finished my taxes today. Well, I’m going to check over the 7(!) forms tomorrow to make sure I didn’t make any excessive errors, but from where I currently stand, they’re done. Tomorrow I get to call the IRS and try to get a payment plan. Wonder how that will go.

S.

For some interesting (and maybe even enlightening in spots) reading, do a google search for ‘The meaning of life’.

We have a number of theories. There’s the perception is reality theory, which seems to be coming up with alarming regularity in my life (certainly I can’t offer much in the way of a counterargument). Then there’s the purpose-of-life-is-to-design-or-father-our-successors theory, which if nothing else, has sheer numbers going for it. (6.something billion the last I looked) A really interesting twist on this is the suggestion that our successors will be intelligent machines. I don’t find this possibility completely unbelievable – especially since we ourselves would appear to be intelligent machines.

A question I’ve been asking many of my friends lately is ‘Do you think you’re more than your physical body’. For the record, I do. Yes, I recognize this is a 100% reversal from my position on this matter as recently as a few months ago. So I changed my mind. Deal. I reserve the right to change it again at some future date when more data becomes apparent, too.

I think I’m doing better.

Woke up and dealt with all email, started in on programming. No longer lying around watching star trek reruns and thinking nihilist thoughts. So yes, I think I’m doing better.

Several have argued that the opposite of entropy is order. I don’t think this is true.. entropy isn’t a state – well, normally, although I suppose one could argue that my house is in a state of extreme entropy.. but order is. Order isn’t really normally thought of as a process, or a continuim (sp?), although I suppose that it is as well.

Anyway, somehow it just ‘feels’ like there should be a better word for a process by which things become more ordered, organized, etc..