Sometimes, I get the shakes.

I have Gamer's Fever. After reading This Article about upcoming quad-core computer processors, and recalling my current woes of gaming performance (Annie's a good girl, but when a lot happens she tends to get tired), I'm thinking that an AnniePlus may be in the works within the next year or two. She'd probably only need a new motherboard to support the new processor, and I may get her some accessories to pretty her up a bit, but I'm currently fairly content with her sound and video, which are half of gaming anyways (RAM and Processor power being the other two). Depending on power-requirements, she may need a new power supply, too. And, of course, I'm still planning on cannibalizing Unicron's internals to boost Annie's current RAM and hard-disk space.

A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool speaks because he has to say something.

And This, dear readers, is a major concern for me.

I need people. If I go more than a few days without seeing a good friend (physically in my presence), I start to get depressed. Sometimes having honest conversation over the ether (email, LJ, IMs, etc), or better yet the phone, can stave that off for a week or so. But it's more difficult than one might imagine, it seems, to have honest conversation over such media. And even still, if I go for more than a couple weeks without physical touch, I get depressed.

Psycho-philosophical discussions about what this says of me as a person aside, this is why LJ comments are so significant for me. I can write into the ether day in and day out, and you can consume my musings faithfully, but until there's an exchange of comments there's not even an intellectual interaction. I'm just, as the article notes, a 'faceless wall of sound.' That may be less true for most of you out there, who actually know me in the physical realm, but even I find I lose sense of who the person on the other side of the screen is if enough time goes by.

This is also why I'm a proponent of emails, because of the opportunity for intellectual interaction that it offers. It's not guaranteed, of course. Even speaking face-to-face can be superficial and meaningless. And I think it's a rather sad state of affairs when most conversations one has follow the form of "yeah, so, uhm, yeah." Sometimes I think that, interaction without meaning, speaking without saying anything, is even worse than no interaction at all, if only because it tends to degrade all communication.

And that's what I get up for in the morning, these days anyways. I get out of bed and drive to work and fiddle around with electronics so that I can earn money to allow me to keep in touch with people. so that I can maintain my ethereal presence, yes, but also so I can drive several hundred miles to sleep on a friend's couch (er, 'futon') or just spend an evening out for dinner and drinks. Which, appropriately enough, is what I'm doing tonight. (Uhm, the drinks, not the futon.)

(no subject)

Some bits of This Article on things a man should know about fatherhood are pretty funny. Some bits I don't quite agree with. Some bits seems like common sense. All in all, I want to be a dad.

This User Does Not Exist.

The thing that I get most from This Article is that they want to be noticed. And they're not. And sometimes I think that's a cultural epidemic. We're all so caught up in ourselves (myself included).

It actually reminded me of This webcomic, a particularly poignant one, I think.

Discursive research, part 1

So here's a question: why do some religious orders change their names? Which ones do? I'm familiar with the 'typical' Sister Mary Catherine type; is it always nuns? Is it always Sister Mary-Something? what's the significance? I'm mostly asking about Catholic Christian orders (are their protestant nuns?), but I'd be interested in information about other religions' orders that change their names, too.

Anyone out there able to give drink to a thirsty mind?

NaNoWriMo

So, I know some of you out there have done NaNoWriMo. I've meant to, but haven't, and it's coming up again. How did you do it? Did you have an idea of what you wanted to write, or who you wanted to write about, before you sat down on November 1st? What advice can you give me?