Few years ago I learned about forums and started exploring the various threads and conversations on topics of interest. These constituted chiefly car web sites, specifically DSM (related to eagle talon, mitsubishi eclipse, and plymouth laser), and theology forums. I found the dialogues I had with people on theology forums tremendously helpful and fun and they did help in forming many of the ideas I hold both through positive and negative means.

At any rate my Plymouth Laser sits rusting in the driveway and so go the car forums. For a few reasons, including having them take up too much time, and running into the same old garbage continually on particular issues, around the same time the theology forums went by the wayside as well and I’ve visited them vary rarely for the last couple of years. Recently I found out that my favorite old hangout was closing for good. Seems funny for a virtual place to have any meaning to me, but I had a lot of time invested there, met a lot of people, and had a lot of valuable – very un-virtual- experiences as far a communicating with actual people. So it saddens me to see it go.

What was neat, though, was going into the archives and picking through my old posts. It’s so funny to see how your ideas change. Quite often imperceptibly, and even with drastic change the tendency is to feel “well, I always thought that really”. It’s also amusing to see the difference in tone in my old posts. I can’t imagine speaking like I did in many of them.

As well, I had worked through many things that are not so clear to my mind now and going back is a refreshing refresher. I think it may be a valuable exercise to re-read my adventures, compile a summary of sorts, and use them in the beginnings of a confession. It’d be nice to have some concise idea of what I currently believe, and I think my past ‘work’ may help in no small part.

I’m drinking too much coffee. This isn’t really a revelation of any kind, and I had come to terms with the fact that this was the case long ago and was unwilling to change. But I’m thinking though that maybe when my son at two years old says, “Daddy go drink coffee” when I put him to bed, and “Daddy make coffee” when I run the grinder, and likes to point out coffee wherever he identifies it whether the mall or on TV, that perhaps it plays too prominent a place in this household.

I really envy those who have limited interests and focused passion. It seems to be they are a lot more productive. Having your interest and passion coalesce on fewer things means you have more time to devote, less distraction and more efficient learning.

When younger I fancied the idea of being a ‘renaissance guy’, imagining some ascot wearing intellectual who could as easily discuss classic literature and put a brush to canvas, as tell a good joke, fix his own car and tell you what was so cool about the latest hip hop artist . Evidently I imagined this fellow was fantastic at all these things.

Well it turns out I do have quite varied interests, I suppose coming by them naturally. But what I failed to realise is that if you have a lot of interests it would be quite uncommon to actually be good at all of them…or even any of them. Passion can only be spread so thin, and time is in short supply. Further there are things which you might not consider an ‘interest’ per se but are a passion by default-or at least should be- that further limit development and growth in any given interest…things like family, friends,…life…

I’m not giving up on my dream though. I’m gonna try my best to be great at everything, and hopefully succeed at being moderately adequate at most of them.

So imagine it’s a dark and stormy night. You’ve just volunteered to give someone and their bike a ride home. It’s late and you’re in a rush as well as wanting to avoid the pouring rain. You pull the car up to your friend waiting under some shelter and get out to open the back door and put the rear seats down so the bike will fit. The door’s locked. Ah, when it was unlocked only the drivers door opened, I see.

You open the front door, reach in and hurredly press the lock/unlock switch and close the door so the pouring rain does not drench your seat. You try to open the back door and find it still locked. Hmmm, the ‘unlocking’ procedure didn’t work. I’ll try something else. You go to open the drivers door again…but it’s now locked too.

There you are in the pouring rain with a friend waiting and a running car with the keys locked inside looking like an idiot. Why did this happen?

Because Subaru poorly designed the door lock/power window panel-thats why! Who puts the lock and unlock button in the same rocker switch with ambiguous labeling?! Subaru apparently and quite a few other cars I’ve driven. Why do they do that?

Can I suggest Mr. Subaru that you make the lock and unlock functions operable from two seperate clearly labeled buttons? Is that too much to ask? Maybe it would even be possible for you to put the buttons in close proximitiy if they each felt significantly different when pressed. What about some clear icons? There are ways around this simple problem Mr. Subaru. Help me out.

I was under the impression that Flash heavy site were going the way of the Dodo bird but checking out Plasticpilots and Design Snack.com I’m quite surprised by the number of Flashy entries.
I have nothing against Flash and I love it where used appropriately, but I ended up closing the browser on most the Flash-driven sites I visited in impatience. It’s a cryin’ shame. Some of them look fantastic. But the sites only good for one look if I have to wait for a pre-loader to tell me how many percent till I can get any info. Nicely layed out but I have to watch a long animation with every button click. I wish these beautiful sites were constructed in a more accessible way and that the animation and life they incorporate would be better implemented.