DerekMartin.ca web development, spirituality, UFOs & the occult

What’s New?

Well, I did go on that retreat, and as usual it was great.
It was a vegetable juice fast from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon.
No problem though, they were totally filling and tasty. Lots of ginger, which is good for my kapha
Anyway, we basically did a lot of stretching, breathing, meditation, and thinking.
Plus the Sweat Lodge on Saturday night.
Picture sitting in a dark tent that’s 120 degrees and 100% humidity for 4 hours and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like. Oh, wait — add in some people crying, and other people making animal sounds, and a prayer or two to the elements — now you have an idea of what it’s like. No, wait again — picture enjoying all that! — now you know what it’s like
Anyway, it *was* great.

Sunday was Jen’s birthday. She came and did the sweat lodge, too, and we were in there past midnight, so we all got to sing Happy Birthday to her in the dark heat of the tent-womb. Pretty cool / fun. I used to think she was kinda crazy for going to TheLivingCentre(.com), but now I find myself wanting to go more and more. This was the first time that we were both there at the same time, of our own volition. She took me there a few years ago, but I wasn’t so into it then. It was “her thing”. Now it’s mine, too, and we got to share that, which was nice.

I also spent the night at Jen’s place on Sunday, and the day with her on Monday. We hadn’t really hung out and caught up on one another’s lives since we broke up in mid-2003. Neither of us could belieeeeve it was that long ago, but it was. So Sunday/Monday we ate together, and really hung out, and got to re-connect as friends, and it was really nice. On Monday we were at the community garden in London, and some guy named Bob had the plot next to Jen’s. Turns out he’s Bob Krieg, who used to live in Petrolia! and I know his daughter, Anna. Craziness. Small world.

One thing that is both good and not good about a retreat weekend is that it makes you think about what you really want in life… and for me it’s probably not programming. I don’t know what it is. I’ll keep learning computers until I figure out a way to do something I like more, but finding employment in paranormal research is hard at the best of times — especially when you don’t have a degree in physics or something. Maybe that’ll just be a hobby. Maybe I’ll finally get rich off a website. If I did, I’d certainly continue to work, but I would travel a lot more. Work remotely. Visit friends all the time.

Back in 2000 my friends at TakingITGlobal asked me what I thought the future of computing looked like, and I said “It looks like me sitting on top of a mountain, connected, but with no visible technology or civilization anywhere.” I still hope to live that future.

When I got back from the retreat there was an email in my inbox from a girl who liked my profile on a single’s site. She has no internet, and no phone, so arranging a date was tricky, but we eventually met up. She was very nice. We walked her dogs (2) and I met her cats (7) and her ex-boyfriend (1). I asked if she’d like to go for breakfast on Sunday and she said Yes, but when I tossed pebbles at her window to indicate that I was there (no phone/email), she didn’t answer. No more email replies either. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.

I’m excited about the upcoming Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference on June 11th. Can’t wait to find out when I can get an iPhone (yes, my gadget addiction is alive and well). I’m pretty sick of my old phone. It barely holds a charge these days, and doesn’t do any internetting. Also, Fido is annoying. I’ll gladly switch to Rogers and an iPhone.

Lastly, I am selling my desktop computer.
I’ll take $550 or an even trade for an intel Mac Mini, or trade for a 24 inch intel iMac plus I’ll give you some cash, too. Anyway, it’s an AMD 3000+ 64bit CPU, three 250 gig SATA 7200rpm Maxtor harddrives (each with 16meg cache) for total of 750 gig of storage, 1.5 gig DDR500 RAM, MSI k8n Neo Platinum Nforce3 motherboard, Pioneer 16x Dual Layer CD/DVD+-RW, Thermaltake Xaser Tsunami VA3000BNA Aluminum Home Theater Tower (Black-Mirror Coating), 128meg video card, SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum with LiveDrive sound card, deluxe logitech wireless keyboard & mouse. I will toss in the following extras as well, but without any guarantee that they’re great because I haven’t used them in 2 years: 19 inch black CRT monitor, acer flatbed scanner, epson stylus photo professional printer. I’ll toss in a big box of computer cables & parts, too, if you want.

I also have a PVR computer I’d like to sell.
It’s got an awesome Silverstone Lascala LC10M case with irMon remote & VFD (digital display, like on stereo receivers), a Hauppauge PVR-250 video capture card and remote, an Nvidia GeForce4MX video card, a DVD ROM, SB Live soundcard, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and a couple of harddrives (at least 160gig, but I forget). AMD 1800+ CPU, and a bunch of RAM (I think 768 meg). Gigabyte motherboard. Licensed copies of SageTV, SageTV Client, and BeyondTV. No reasonable offer refused.

Why am I selling my PCs?
I’m just not “into” computers anymore.
This has been coming for a long time.
Don’t get me wrong — I still like using computers, I just don’t like fixing/debugging them. When I worked at InstaClick I had a Mac, and I never had to tweak or fix it. I used it every day for 2 years, and it never gave me a problem. I never had to see a Recovery Screen, or boot disk, or registry, or anything like that. I loved it, and I’m going back forever.
The PCs above work fine — I’m just not in love with them anymore.
iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iWork, Firefox, Toast, BitTorrent, and Omni applications are all I need.

I think that’s all for now.