Coming To

May 24, 2003 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

Af­ter a bit of strug­gle the MT ver­sion of my blog has come to. It is still be­ing de­vel­oped, and I have a num­ber of things to get down pat be­fore I can re­ally launch the site, but for now, these words.

Soldier and Citizen

May 15, 2003 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

It has been a while since I wrote about my thoughts and feel­ings about what is hap­pen­ing in Iraq. It’s not that I no longer feel strongly about it, but that there is noth­ing clear to fo­cus on. Every­thing seems in ut­ter chaos. And so much of the news is just sad. More and more peo­ple get­ting killed and be­hind it all, more and more of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment slip­ping away un­touched, get­ting away with all their lies and deceit.

I’ve been keep­ing up with the news in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent places, but mainly I am seek­ing more per­son­al­ized and eye-​​witness ac­counts of what is re­ally hap­pen­ing. I’m try­ing to make out a more re­al­is­tic and hu­man pic­ture of what is hap­pen­ing every day, not just the aw­ful stuff from the big me­dia. Two sites, one a blog ( Salam Pax ) by an Iraqi liv­ing in Bag­dad, and one an on­line jour­nal from an Amer­i­can sol­dier ( Sgt. Rock ) sort of give me bet­ter views from av­er­age peo­ple. I of­ten dis­agree vi­o­lently with the Amer­i­can sol­dier, es­pe­cially his go­ing into an­other coun­try and as­sum­ing so many things with­out know­ing a thing about its peo­ple or cul­ture, and es­pe­cially with his be­ing so eas­ily in­flu­enced by the Amer­i­can me­dia. Still, if I want to un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing in the world to­day, I must lis­ten to every­one… re­ally lis­ten. Sgt. Rock is a hu­man be­ing and a good per­son. Go­ing to Iraq to kill peo­ple is not what he wants to do with his life. I have to re­mem­ber that as I read his words. All he re­ally wants to do is go home and be with his family.

Salam on the other hand presents a lot grim­mer pic­ture of what is hap­pen­ing. His let­ters and de­pic­tions of his friends and fam­ily and what he sees on the streets re­ally opens your eyes to how ter­ri­fy­ing and chaotic war re­ally is. The let­ter about the bomb­ing was numb­ing to read. There is a real per­son, a per­son like you and me, be­ing sub­jected to the hor­ror of the bombs that ap­pear like video games on TV.

The con­trast of the two has made me both hope­ful and sad. Both of them re­spect the other side and have made a real ef­fort to talk with peo­ple on the other end. It is in­ter­est­ing to watch Sgt. Rock’s let­ters change as he spends more time in Iraq and gets to know peo­ple there. Salam is try­ing to come to terms with what the oc­cu­pa­tion means to him and his coun­try. His ex­pres­sion of deep pain when he watched a beloved build­ing be­ing de­stroyed re­vealed what a lot of Iraqi’s must be feeling.

I hope that one day both sides will have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and re­spect for one an­other out of in­di­vid­u­als’ ex­pe­ri­ences like these.

Cabin Fever

May 13, 2003 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

Too much time sit­ting in front of the com­puter. It’s Spring out there and I’m miss­ing it! And there I had been telling my­self that I would work hard to strengthen my­self and get ready for the moun­tains this sum­mer. I’ve got to start to get back in shape to­day. The moun­tains are call­ing and I won’t miss them this year!

What a Week It’s Been!

May 11, 2003 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

What a week it’s been! A week of in­tense study, a week of learn­ing, a week of frus­tra­tions, and a week of con­clu­sions. The biggest news, for me that is, is that yes­ter­day I FINALLY paid off my uni­ver­sity stu­dent loans!

*small pri­vate celebration ”\(^?^)/” *

I also FINALLY fig­ured out how to re­in­stall my wife’s Win­dows setup (could any­body tell me why any­one would sub­ject them­selves to such a mad com­puter sys­tem?) and get it onto the home net­work I have set up here. She’s back on­line now!

And all through­out this I have been steadily study­ing HTML, JavaScript, XHTML, CSS, XML, and such so that I can put to­gether my personally-​​designed new blog through Mov­able Type. I also re­ceived my new 3D CG soft­ware Car­rara Stu­dio 2, which I am ea­ger to start us­ing, but will wait un­til my blog is up and my de­sign work for my father’s uni­ver­sity home­page is done. For now I am read­ing the rather hefty manual.

It’s ex­cit­ing when the brain is ac­tive and there are new things to learn and be busy with. This Spring has been more than just a reawak­en­ing. There are new shoots sprout­ing, too, from long dor­mant seeds.

Next Page →