May 30, 2003

text into nothing

Text Into Nothing is a weblog by a teenage girl who was interrogated by some FBI agents who weren’t really FBI agents at all. She took down all previous posts, but the article about the whole mess is on her site. Check it.

The original article is here, by the way.

posted @ 6:01 PM

May 29, 2003

the book (that’s the working title)

I’ve become consumed by my latest project. I was sitting in Subway, munching on a veggie sandwich, starring at the pictures and maps of New York. Then some sort of thought about a class I had listened to recently popped into my head and rather suddenly I wondered aloud, “what would it be like if Columbus never ‘discovered’ America? What if the Chinese got here first?” I did some research when I got back to work and found out that it was pretty likely that this, in fact, did happen. They just didn’t stay and get into the whole manifest destiny kick. My project involves writing a somewhat historical fiction book about a modern man of Tibetan decsent living in the “new world”. Five books are strewn about my desk. Some about Native Americans and some about Chinese history. I have no idea what the outcome will be, but I may post some bits here.

posted @ 1:09 PM

May 23, 2003

tsering

I complain about my job quite often. Somedays are bad, so are okay, very few are wonderful. Today was a wonderful day. As a supervisor I’m required to speak to the angriest of the angry people. Sometimes if we are really busy though they ask me to take “agent calls” were I answer the phone as if I were just a front-line agent. Tonight was one of those nights. I answered with the usual schpeel, “... may I have your name and phone number?”

“Tsering, and my phone number is...,” said the lady on the other end. My heart jumped up and down — but wait, what if she’s not...

“How may I help you?”

“My printer is not working. I’m trying to get it setup, but I can’t.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

And then she said the magic words. At this point I knew for sure. “It’s okay.”

“Tsering is that Tibetan?”

“Yes, I’m Tibetan.”

If you’ve never heard a Tibetan say, “it’s okay,” then you probably don’t understand. But if you have, you know when you hear it that it really is okay.

posted @ 10:04 PM

May 22, 2003

they just appear

Growing up in an Judeo-Christian culture, I’ve got original sin ingrained into my psyche. Probably like many western converts to Buddhism, I take karma to mean, “bad things I’ve done in the past.” Of course this isn’t true because plenty of good things are happening in my life at any given moment. This is also a creation of karma and should be emphasized just as much as all of the negative stuff happening in my life. But it usually isn’t.

While listening to class five of the Heart Sutra yesterday, Geshe-la said something interesting that has been bouncing around my head. He asked, “are you a speaker or a listener?” In other words, does that conversation in your head — you know, the one you can’t seem to get rid of — have one dialogue or two? I think mostly we listen. All day long I listen to this person (presumably it’s me about 5 milliseconds prior) telling me what to do, what to say, when to do it and when to say it. What’s really interesting is I don’t seem to have any control over it! Thoughts just arise without having to do anything about it.

“I think it’s gonna be okay, Joe.”

“Yeah, what makes you think that?”

“Who knows where thoughts come from, they just appear.” Lucas from Empire Records had it all figured out. Trying to figure out the “who knows” part is really maddening. And maybe that doesn’t matter too much. The fact that most of the thoughts are not pleasant is disturbing. I consider myself to be a pretty positive guy, but mine are almost exclusively negative. I’m told that you can change this voice in your head so that it will only feed you nice, pleasant, beautiful thoughts. I’m told you do this by trying to shut down the negative ones you have now. I’m finding this easier said than done.

posted @ 7:49 AM

May 21, 2003

oh, never mind

When somebody says something to me like, “hey, did you... oh, never mind,” I usually ask them, “do what?” If they don’t tell me, it might as well be fingernails on the chalkboard. My mind does this broken record player thing, “do what? do what? do what? do what? what did they want me to do?” Sometimes, most times, it is verbalized — pestering the other person until they tell me. It could be any number of things that end with, “oh never mind.”

What is it that sends you — is it you? maybe it’s just me — into this fit of hysteria where you absolutely must know what the other person was going to say to you? Do you feel like they are withholding information? Like maybe they don’t want to ask you after all because they think you’ll react like a jackass, then you wind up acting like a jackass because they won’t tell you.

For about two weeks now I’ve been waiting for someone to finish a sentence. It’s keeping me up at night, it’s occupying all this mental territory and I can’t shake it. I’m afraid I can’t be more specific, but I’m told that tomorrow I should have “the rest of the story.”

posted @ 9:27 PM

tyanboche

The BBC is covering the attempt to recreate the 1953 Mt. Everest expedition. In doing so, they wrote a nice story about Tyangboche.

posted @ 4:58 PM

May 19, 2003

boxes

box one
“It’s a coping mechanism left over from the divorce. He puts things in compartments and can only have one out at a time. He’s got his ‘Buddhism Box’, his ‘Going to the Bar Box’, his ‘Dad Box’, his ‘Mom Box’ and none of them mix with each other.”

My wife is concerned that despite being a Libra, I’m seemingly unable to find any sort of balance in my life. One extreme to the other she says. My dad, however, has it all figured out. He knows what makes me tick. I wouldn’t have probably seen it in this light, but it seems pretty accurate. It also explains why some things are forgotten so quickly... they get put in a box, closed up and never heard from again.

box two
Our trip to Spokane for a post-Mother’s Day celebration was exactly as it should have been. Good car ride over, good visit upon arrival, shopping, eating, talking, drive home.

[I’m going to attempt a dangerous mix of boxes here. You’ve been warned.] My step-mom has this theory that people’s personalities condense as they get older. They shuck off the parts they don’t find useful anymore and you’re left with the core personallity. Well, on this latest visit I really noticed this with both my mom and my step-dad. [My mom and her boyfriend of the last... I don’t know, 18 years(?) are not officially married. Some could argue that he is not my step-dad, but I would argue otherwise.] My mom has ditched any patience with my step-dad when he’s been drinking and my step-dad has reduced his comedic routine down to a precious few jokes.

In high school I would have friends over and they all gathered around for the events that would follow when my parents got home from the bar. It was a good time. We’d all be silly, appologetic, then silly some more. It wasn’t like that much this time. Maybe I’ve changed, maybe they have. It was a great visit if you take out about six hours. Then again, those six hours were to be expected and it wouldn’t be a visit without them. I learned a great deal about my step-dad’s travels with the Merchant Marines, the passenger cruise ships and the Air Force. It took him nearly all the way around the world a couple of times. I felt a bit inadequite pointing at Montana, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Florida and England as the only places I’ve been to.

box three
The moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of 1.5 inches per year. This is one foot every other presidential election. The moon keeps our environment in balance by keeping our rotation around the axis at a pretty steady 23 degrees. They figure that thousands of years ago the moon’s movement away from Earth caused a shift of 1 degree and turned the once lush birthplace of mankind into the Sahara desert.

The coral reefs in various places throughout the globe are in danger and in some cases are dying off. One of the factors is a rise in ocean temperatures of just two degrees. Another is massive amounts of silt being pushed downstream and into the ocean from logging of the rain forests. I used to be more liberal and I used to get very upset when I heard things like this. Now, I don’t worry about it too much because it seems that whether we log the rain forests or not, the moon is still moving away from us and will still eventually cause Earth’s demise. Besides, if Buddhism is correct then the Earth isn’t existing from it’s own side. It exists in your mind and if you see a world with global warming, pollution and a moon that keeps running away then you better fix your karma so you don’t have to see all of that in the future.

posted @ 8:07 AM

May 17, 2003

rebuild

Kindly reload if things are looking odd — a redesign is in progress.

It’s probably of little interest to you and I should probably refrain from even posting about it, but I’ve spent the better part of the day working on it, so I’ll share. All of the posts have now been imported into the Moveable Type system. Even all of the old, hand logged posts are there (minus the missing ones, which is everything before March 2002). I learned a great deal about grep and how to do searches and replacements. This impressed the hell out of me because I usually am not able to figure out programing type logic, but I sailed through this.

As for the redesign. It’s all about KISS (keep it simple, stupid). Gray is nice, sophistocated. The design is pretty straight forward; menu on the left, content on the right with a header graphic at the top. Two div’s and jpg. Leaves plenty of room for flexibility in the future. The downside? No repeating background.

posted @ 8:10 PM

May 9, 2003

club 27

Since I was pretty young I felt like I was going to die when I was 27. I also thought I would be a famous musician, but that never happened. The jury is still out on the death thing. I turn 27 in October and I’ve been thinking a whole bunch about death lately.

While explaining to coworkers today why I felt I might die at 27 we found the club 27 website. You can add to that list Mia Zapata (of the Gits) and blues guitarist Robert Johnson.

posted @ 2:12 PM

unicode update

In yesterday’s post I mentioned that I was experimenting with Unicode Tibetan. “By total coincidence, I’m sure,” Roger P Wright sent the following post to Lotsawa:

This would explain why my tests worked, but didn’t look great on a Windows machine with no added fonts. As for the vowels (and stacking letters) not displaying correctly, I think that has more to do with browser configuration [or possibly OS configuration?] than an inherent fault with the Unicode fonts.

I’d be curious to know if you are seeing Tibetan characters or not and what operating system and browser you are using.

posted @ 6:55 AM

May 8, 2003

unicode tibetan

Inspired by the recent discussions about Asian languages and (more specifically) how they could be displayed online with the use of Unicode, I decided to give it a try with Tibetan. I’ve tested it on Mac OS 10.2.5 using Safari and Windows 2000 with Explorer 6.0. It worked. Your milage my vary. The fonts look great on the Mac and not so pretty on Windows, but display on both. Now I just need to figure out how to get vowels to display... any thoughts?

posted @ 11:37 AM

May 5, 2003

no more study

Right after the monks left, but before we returned to our normal lives, Christina and I talked about what needed to be done. We both decided that if we were going to try and keep “that feeling” alive then we would need to do some serious meditation and study.

I guess the best way to describe “that feeling” would be the phrase, “it’s okay.” That was the most frequently heard phrase when the monks were here and it was really the attitude that seemed to permeate everything. “Pancakes for breakfast?” we’d ask, “it’s okay,” was the response. “I’m sorry, we don’t have a PA system for the dance,” we said, “it’s okay,” was the response. The question that kept playing through my head was, “how the hell can they be so calm about everything.” The answer, of course, is that they have really studied the reasons that things happen. Cause and effect — karma, emptiness, bodhichitta. These are all ingrained into their persona through serious study and debate.

After I returned to my job I found that sleeping in and watching TV was easier than all of that meditation and study I talked about doing. It’s the weirdest thing, but my practice seems to have unravelled rather than get stronger since their visit. When they came over to do our house blessing, Dorje and Lobsang studied my alter setup. I asked if it was setup correctly and they said yes. Lobsang told me how and when to put out the water bowls, the next day I stopped putting them out. Dharma told me about the importance of a good teacher, Sogyal told me that the teacher I was studying under was, “a very good teacher.” I’ve only listened to one class by Geshe Michael since then. Dharma gave instructions on how to meditate — “their are so many different Buddha’s, just pick one,” he said. I’ve only meditated a handful of times since then.

I really feel like I found my root teacher, my true lama, yet I’m only half (actually, probably less than half) heartedly doing anything about it. I did volunteer to drive the monks for the 2004 tour and I figure I’ll get some great one on one instruction at that time, but I don’t think that’s reason enough to just quit now. If anything it should be reason to do more study and practice.

posted @ 8:59 AM

May 4, 2003

prayer flags

Just what exactly do prayer flags have to do with this site? Well, nothing really. Other than adding some good color and making for a nice header background. I toyed with several ideas before deciding on them. I was never really all that happy with the last redesign. Something didn’t sit right with me about it. I’m pretty happy with this look, so it might stick around for awhile.

One other thing of note: I’ve turned the option to use HTML on in the comments.

posted @ 9:06 AM

May 3, 2003

repeating backgrounds

I was thinking about doing a redesign on my site. Just a slight facelift, nothing real major. This morning I sketched out an idea which included using a repeating background. Then, by total fluke, Zeldman talks about background images on his post. How weird. I feel so cutting edge, so hip. Maybe it’s because I’m now able to purchase music whenever I feel the need.

posted @ 7:52 AM

May 2, 2003

iTime

So much to do. All of it involves working on my home computer and I’m stuck at work just drooling over all the new toys I want to play with. I read Matt’s idea a few weeks ago, but didn’t figure I would ever implement such a thing on my site. Well, last night I tried to add that feature, but didn’t have any luck. I don’t know why, but I don’t seem to be actually pinging my weblog — therefor, not actually displaying what songs have been playing. Turns out life doesn’t really need to be that difficult thanks to Kung Tunes.

I probably wouldn’t want to add this to my site if it wasn’t for Apple’s latest release of iTunes and Quicktime, which allows you to purchase music from the Apple store. My guess is that I’ll be listening to more music real soon and might want to share that with you. If I ever have a chance to use my computer.

posted @ 10:20 AM