NTOP

I found a really really fun toy yesterday. I noticed early in the day that internet connections to many of the servers we frequently use were very slow. Further research showed ping times to the servers to be averaging around 600 ms. The usual ping times to these servers was around 100 ms previously. In addition ping times across the VPN to our other office were around 400 ms up from around 90 ms.

Clearly something was up. Traceroute information showed me that the congestion began at the first internet hop on the other side of our T1. Prior to that all hops were very responsive, however, since each of those devices is on a 100 MB switched network I concluded that someone internal to our network was overloading the 1.5 MB T1 connection.

I use a Netscreen firewall at the border and brief research showed me that the software running on it was woefully unable to show me who was using our bandwidth. I configured the switch to deliver a copy of all packets to the firewall to our old firewall, a system running LINUX. I found a program called NTop. After compiling and installing the program I ran it. Within ten minutes I was able to identify the workstation hogging all our bandwidth. The firewall was by far the largest user of all our bandwidth, that makes since since all traffic goes through it. The next highest workstation had nearly 75% of all traffic originating from it. NTop indicated that the workstation in question was running file sharing software.

I contacted the user who sheepishly admitted to running a file sharing program. He was politely informed that he was hosing everyone else and it was in violation of company policy to use company resources as he was. He turned the software off and promised to never do it again at work.

Since then I’ve run NTop all night and through out the day. I keep checking on it from time to time to see how it’s working. It has managed to resolve almost all the workstation names by sniffing the traffic to and from the internet. I’m very impressed by the program. I don’t think I’ll run it all the time but it was definitely useful yesterday and I can imagine it continuing to be so in the future.

IDEAL DAY

Filter: 7
PCI: 28



What would an ideal day be like?


Wake up close to someone. I like physical touch and I dislike waking up alone. Ideally I could start my day by being physically close to someone.

I like time to myself and mornings are a good time for it. It would ideally I wake up in time to avoid having to rush right off to work. I take some time to study and be alone. Ten minutes with the newspaper. Ten minutes to eat something (ideally something easy to prepare or prepared by someone else.) I would like someone to have prepared a lunch for me to take to work.

I dislike having to think about what to wear and what to make and what needs to be done today. I prefer to take care of those chores the night before so that the mornings are more peaceful and contemplative.

I like to get to work before most others do. I find that time of the day to be highly productive for me and I can accomplish many of my daily goals in the morning. I like my job to be challenging and interesting but not stressful. I do well in work crises by responding calmly but my internal stresses go up. Ideally, work challenges would be evenly paced and have reasonable deadlines. Ideally, the people I work with would understand the reasons why I balance jobs the way I do and not complain that their particular job is not given enough priority. In an ideal work day I would have moments of relaxation between jobs. I think a brief moment to read a web comic or check out the headlines before turning back to work is refreshing.

I like to leave work at 5. I don’t like to think about work when I’m not there.

I like to see my boys and play with them. Ideally I would be able to see them every day and spend some time on the floor playing with them and finding out about their days. I like to hear about what they have done and what they want to do and what they thought about things.

I would like to be welcomed home. I would like a wife that appreciated my hard work to provide for the family and that liked to be around me. I would like to be touched when I get home. I would like to share the challenges of my day with someone interested in them. I would like a wife that shared her day with me.

I enjoy just being at home. After work I would like 15 more minutes with a newspaper. I would like to help with homework. I like the house to be orderly and I would help by straightening rooms, doing dishes or other chores that I thought would help. I like reading stories to the kids. I would like them to settle down when it’s time for lights off.

As the house settles down I would like to sit on the couch next to my wife and watch a TV show or movie. I would like to be able to talk about our days calmly but with genuine feeling. I would like to be touched and not feel isolated.

Before I get to tired I would like to prepare for the next day by setting out anything I need to take to work. I would like to take a few moments to read something in bed as my body and mind relaxes.

I would like to go to bed with my wife, not before and not after but together. I would like to be cuddled or cuddle and feel close and not pushed away. I would like both of us to feel free to propose further intimacy and for either to accept or postpone it freely.

Bah, this seems a bit silly since life rarely is so orderly but there is a glimpse into how an ideal day might go. I’ll have to work up some ideal weeks, moths and years too.

MISSION STATEMENTS

Filter: 9
PCI: 25

Negative Mission Statement:


I will be sent away, left alone and abandoned by people that should love me. I must be lectured and coerced into doing the right thing. I am used by others for what services and goods I can provide; I have no intrinsic value to others. Things I love and cherish will be taken away from me. The only person who consistently cares for me is myself. The things I enjoy are wrong and bad.




Positive Mission Statement:

I am loved and accepted and people like to be around me. I can make the right choices. I am kind to others but I don’t allow myself to be taken advantage of. I am intrinsically valuable. I will keep the things I love and cherish. I care for myself and allow others to help. I enjoy many good things.




Well, I’m not sure of the value of that exercise. The negative mission statement comes from my egg. It seems to make sense so far. The positive statement is a reverse mirror of the negative statement. It seems much easier to believe the negative one. In fact the whole affirmation thing is hard to buy into some days. I’m writing a book of LDS affirmations and I’m questioning the value. Irony. I look at the positive statement and I wish that they were consistently true but the fact is that only parts of it have been true so far in my life.

I have lately been falling into the trap of negative self talk. It has been harder to believe in positive outcomes in my life lately. Part of the reason for that is that I got out of the habit of reading my list of personal affirmations during the holidays. I’ve kept up with the ones from the book and converting them into LDS versions but long ago I wrote thirteen or so personal affirmations. I was reading them every morning during my personal time. I was reflecting on that this morning and realizing that this may be part of my negative feelings lately. I’m going to write them down again and put a copy of it with my daily affirmation book so I have them handy to review.

I’ve also been thinking about boundaries because of what the guys in my group were trying to teach me last night. I’m not very good at my boundaries yet. I need to set some more I think. One of them has to do with talking with my wife. Often when we talk lately we fight instead. We go around and around the drama triangle. I need to set a boundary before hand that when I feel that I’m in a triangle I need to say: “Being in the drama triangle isn’t good for me so I need to stop now. I would like to continue our discussion but I can’t do it like this. Let’s take a break and talk about this later.”

This boundary is hard for me since one of my core issues is trying to win approval and affection from my wife and my old brain tells me that when I do something risky like that I’m jeopardizing that goal. My old brain doesn’t understand that I’ve been doing it his way and it hasn’t worked either. It’s time to try a rational approach instead.

LOST

PCI: 27
Filter: 7

So I feel lost. I don’t know if I should trust my own feelings or if I should trust what my wife tells me or if I should look for some other reference frame or what.

I argued with my wife the last few days. She found an excel spread sheet with the names of books and their authors that caught my eye at one point in time or other. Some of the books had content that just isn’t good for me. By that I mean that some of the books had elements of sex or bondage or drug use or slavery or other concepts that I have a hard time getting out of my head once they get in there. Basically those are bad for me. Some of the books were completely harmless. Some of the books would some people wouldn’t like and other would. For example murder mysteries or forensic pathology detective work or creepy supernatural horror stories.

The place I’m at is like this. I though I was hearing the message that I can’t like any of those books above and still be a good person.

I don’t believe that. I agree that it would be a mistake to read books with unhealthy content but what about the others? It was a mistake to even list a book that I knew might feed my lustful desires. And I hope that if I came across some of the books I had put on list then that I wouldn’t now.

I believe that it’s not inherently wrong to enjoy the fascinating blend of science and detective work found in a compelling story of forensic pathology, or to enjoy the story of a contest to stop a killer before he kills again. I don’t think it’s wrong to enjoy a story where the hero faces monstrous or frightening supernormal phenomena wondering all along if he can escape the dangers. Or to enjoy a book discussing social and political relationships or structures set in the guise of science fiction.

I know that my wife really doesn’t like the type of stories I just mentioned but I really do and I always have.

Her point, as best I understand it, is that these stories violate her principles of goodness, respect (especially towards women), kindness, reality, purity and nobleness and she doesn’t want them in her life.

My point is that some of them are OK for the occasional use as entertainment and those that aren’t I want to avoid.

My fear here is this: I am afraid that this argument is just a justification for her to believe that I’m some sort of creep and that I’m hopeless and unable to improve. Furthermore, I fear that if I agree that all the stories I like are bad that something else will be next. Maybe sports, or the way I do things around the house or how I interact with the kids, or the kinds of friends I have or the way I dress myself or something else. Perhaps that fear is irrational.

I don’t know. That is the point of my first sentence. I feel lost. I am lost; I have no refuge, no shelter. I feel unsafe. I feel bereft of comfort. I reread her point and my point above and I don’t know if I’m crazy or not.

Sometimes when I get sick I get dizzy. When that happens to me I reach out my arm and touch the wall near my bed. Somehow that helps me. Knowing that the wall isn’t moving proves to me somehow that I’m not spinning around either. I need a wall like that now. I’m keeping up with my daily spiritual activities hoping that they help me find that wall and I believe that God loves me and will help me find what I need.

Stick Art Genius

I found a new favorite web comic. It is something to be excited about in my currently dreary life. I’m absolutely in love with “The Order of the Stick”. This is a strip done by Rich Burlew. It’s roughly a D&D comic but the way they consistently break the fourth wall and the insightful humor just kills me. I tried to read the archives in one sitting when I first discovered it but I had to stop. I couldn’t breath I was laughing so hard and I had trouble explaining the tears on my face to my cow-orkers. (I'll give 5 points to the first person to identify that reference!). I finished off the archives the next day after I found the site and I’ve never looked back.

Rich has made plans to publish a book containing the firsts 123 strips plus some bonus stuff. I feel a little embarrassed to admit my level of fan-boyishness. I pre-pre-ordered a copy. I then pre-ordered a copy so that Rich would personally sign my copy of the book. But even worse I was so excited that I did all this early enough that I’m pretty sure I got one of the Elan buttons he is giving to the first 500 orders. Things that make you go w00t. (And another 5 points there.)

Even now I’m resisting the terrible temptation to re-read all the archives before my book comes but I’m resisting so that I can do it all in glossy color with paper in front of me. I love re-reading comics I love and I’m eagerly looking forward to having TOotS as a comic book on my shelf.

I have found myself singing songs like Elan does to improve my skills at something (write, write, write, my existential angst blog!). And laughing at odd moments when a line from a strip bubbles up in my mind like: “If I don’t look it can’t kill my brain.”

Check it out if you haven’t already. It does helps to have some knowledge of D&D but it’s not necessary to be a master of the game. Heck I haven’t played since high school (if you could call what we did role playing) and I love the strip.

DIRECTIONS

Filter: 3
PCI: ?


I need to start tracking my PCI again. I feel a bit out of control, I’m not acting crazy yet but I feel the edge getting closer. The PCI helps me see where I’m getting close to that edge and makes it easy for me to change specific behaviors.

I think the worst think I’m doing right now is living in fantasy. I’m facing a personal crisis in my primary relationship and I just don’t know where to take it. I’m having a hard time staying in the present and instead spend time wondering about what life would be like if I were divorced and what will happen at kids birthdays and what kind of life will I live and how will I feel about it.

I am afraid of that eventuality. I’ve been separated for over a year now and mostly I hate it but there is a secret part of me that loves the independence. I hate being so far from my wonderful kids though, and I worry what affect this will have on them later in their lives.

I don’t feel like I can be me much though. I just finished a really hard exercise with my therapist where I symbolically drew all the shameful and traumatic experiences in my life. It gushed out of me when I went to draw it but I’ve felt stressed since then. Having the symbol of my pain in front of me to look at is both comforting and stressing. In this exercise I discovered that I have a very hard time trusting people, in fact I usually only trust them to betray or hurt me in some way. So I preemptively withdraw to avoid that pain. I also discovered that I have a great tendency to allow myself to be used by others. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by that but there it was in color in front of me.

Since then I’ve noticed a few interactions with people in my life where I felt used. I haven’t felt safe enough to confront either of the people that I felt were doing this to me but I did notice it happening and I could identify the source of my anger. My anger is manifesting as depression and, I suspect, a biting sense of humor.

So what to do? Well, first of all I’m going to start tracking my PCI again so I don’t use my anger as a way to get crazy. Last year my goal was to learn to play stones (a song from the Ultima series of games), and I did manage to learn the right hand part. I feel pretty good about that goal, not a stunning success but nevertheless something I was able to do. This year I think I’d like to loose two inches off my waist. My 34 inch pants don’t fit so well anymore. I’m going to do crunches and leg lifts and eat better portions in addition to the upper back exercises I do.

None of that helps my relationships directly but I guess I’ll feel better about myself and I expect that will have some relevance to my relationships.

I’d like to feel safe with someone though. I wonder what I need to do to be able to trust someone fully. I can’t expect someone to read my mind and do it for me. I am more in touch with my own feelings and I’m getting better at sharing them but there are times when I don’t since I don’t feel safe doing so. That is perhaps a weakness that I should work on, sharing my feelings even when I don’t feel safe. Hmmm, but I have to be careful there since sharing feelings is a chance to build relationships but it also makes me vulnerable to being hurt and that tears down a relationship.

Rambling on Mistakes

I like being able to write about stuff. I feel a little embarrassed though. What if someone reads this stuff? What if no one does? Either option causes me some anxiety. I think a lot of personal interactions in the world today cause people, or at least me, to feel anxious. I worry about my appearance, or how I come across to people sometimes. I also worry about if I’m doing things right even if no one else will ever see it.

The problem that I think I have this way is that I want to be sooooooooo great. I do not want to ever make a mistake, especially one where I look dumb. But that is just silly. Everyone makes mistakes; it is a part of being alive. I believe that only one perfect man ever walked this world and he was deity. The rest of us will make mistakes along the way and our only hope is through that one perfect man. It would be super human of me to not make any mistakes. And I am not super human.

So, we all need to accept that we are not perfect. And that making a mistake is not the end of the world (that is called black and white thinking) and that there are things we can learn from each mistake and that making mistakes gives us a chance to worship God and that making mistakes helps us to realize that we are growing and that making mistakes shows us that we are human, just like the rest of the people around us.

Making mistakes is just a part of this life on earth. Learn a little something from each mistake and go on. After all that is the point.

Terminal Services vs. Symantec

Well, way back when I was right. I managed to get the new version of the Symantec system center installed but I had to remove the terminal services from my system first to do it. Then the installs went smoothly and I have re-installed the terminal services. I need to finish activating the license server for it again. I wonder if I made a mistake there. I deactivated the server in the Terminal Services Licensing console before I removed the service. I thought I could just choose the reactivate when I had reinstalled. But that option was unavailable to me. I was able to choose activate and then managed to go all through the installation to the point where I need a PIN number from the activation server. I’m waiting to see if that arrives, hopefully soon.

INNER VOICES

We all have an inner voice. A book I read suggested that we all have 2500 hours of “recorded voices” in our heads. Unfortunately, most of the “voices” seem to be of the type of negative reinforcements. These voices are, of course, not real voices but the automatic thoughts that we have in response to experiences in our lives. They may even be subconscious to a large extent. These thoughts can cause problems for us though especially when they are unremittingly negative and especially when they are not challenged and especially when they are not noticed.

After reading about these voices I sat and tried to think what are the types of automatic thoughts that I typically have? I discovered that I have a number of them.

1) I often worry about how I look. My automatic thoughts are “you look dumb” “can’t you fix your hair” “your clothes don’t match” “people are laughing at you”. I have sublimated these thoughts out of sight in my life to the point where I would say “I don’t care about my hair or if my clothes match. But secretly I did and the worry and the denial caused internal anxiety.

2) I am afraid of the way other people perceive me. My automatic thoughts are “people wouldn’t really like you unless you please them” “you are not good enough” “no one likes you”. I have suppressed these thoughts too and become a huge people pleaser. I spent tremendous amounts of energy to discover what people expected or wanted from me and then attempted to meet those needs and wants without any regard to what I wanted or what my needs were. As a result I neglected my needs and reinforced the automatic thoughts through behavior.

Then I had a very interesting experience. I was feeling the need for a break after thinking and writing about these things for a while so I thought I’d take a few minutes to watch the Olympic Games. I was watching and ad during a break in the programming and I suddenly realized that this ad was trying to reach one of my inner voices. I had a sudden thrill of realism that this is one of the most powerful ways that advertising works by getting me to act on an inner voice.

I started to listen for the inner voices during advertisements. I heard a number of times the messages “you are doing something wrong” and “you don’t look right”. These must be the advertising hooks that work best with me since they seemed to resonate with my inner voices.

Another way the book I read suggested to identify the inner voices was to notice when you became strongly defensive about something. Chances are, the book suggested, that you feel that way because the external event you are defensive about is resonating with an inner critical voice. It may not be possible to identify that voice in the moment but later reflection should reveal the voice. I’ve thought about some of the times when I was most defensive and I found my inner voices were “you are dumb” “you are doing it wrong” “you aren’t a good dad” “you can’t provide for your family”.


Scary stuff.

FEAR AND MORE FEAR

Ok so I'm a big coward. I have been doing plenty of self discovery in the last year and I just seem to keep learning things about myself. Some of the things that I have learned I haven't really liked very much.

One thing that I've just learned is how afraid I am of things. I have spent most of my life trying to insulate myself from people because of this fear. I've learned how to avoid talking about feelings, I've learned how to get other people to avoid talking about feelings and I got so good at it that I would have denied that I even had any feelings. This fear was so deep and fundamental that I instinctivly ran from any situation that would require feeling.

Oh, I got married, and I had friends and I can function normaly in society but I was running all the same.

I would often play the role of a nice guy or of a caring guy or what ever role I instinctivly thought would assist me to cope with these fears all the while denying I was doing anything wrong. But what I did do was basically create a shell me that did my interacting with other people while the real me felt lonely and sacred somewhere inside.

I'm not exactly sure what I can do about this right now. I am working on being a real genuine person but I notice that some interactions I have I feel fear. The fear I feel seems to be a fear of loss. I think I'm afraid of being pushed away or left alone or even un-considered. I guess observing that it's happening is the first step. I'm not sure what I can do about it, but I know I would like to do something.

FILTERS and EMOTIONS

What is crazy anyway?  How can anyone tell what another person is thinking.  A person can make a pretty fair estimate on what is rational using logic and real world tangible evaluations but how can you tell what is really happening in anothers head.  Sometimes I'm not sure what is happening inside my own head. 
 
If a person says that they desire one thing greatly and then they do things to prevent that one thing from happening it is not rational - from a certain point of view.
 
But is it crazy?  Well, there is no way for me to tell.  I feel caught in a situation similar to the one very briefly described above.  I wish that I could see the whole picture but I am limited in my ability to do so and so must work on a) What I know, and b) What I believe. 
 
This probably looks crazy to you.  Since my counter proves that no one is reading this I guess I could say anything I want to.  However, I feel I must respect the privacy of the people involved and I can't say much more in this forum. 

E-Motions

John Bradshaw wrote in one of his books about the emtions of Anger, Sadness, Fear, Guilt, Shame and Joy. These are fundamental to us all he wrote and went further to name them all as e-motions or rather energy-motions. He said that these e-motions are the driving forces for why we do things.

Anger - we feel when our basic human needs are not being met and it drives us to action.

Sadness - we feel when we have pain and drives the process of healing.

Fear - we feel when our basic needs are threatned and it drives us to action.

Guilt - we feel when our values are not congruent.

Shame - we feel as a reminder that we are only human.

Joy - we feel when our needs are met


My life is fairly complex right now and so I stopped for a moment to think about how I fell into those categories.

Joy - I haven't felt joy for quite some time. I feel that I have many needs that are not being met.

Shame - I have lots of problems with shame especially since when I feel anger I feel feelings of shame mixed with it. I learned as a small child not to be angry but of course I am since I am only human. This is something I'm trying to conciously recognize and accept.

Guilt - I feel mostly congruent with my values in my personal life. I do feel guilty that I don't sepnd as much time with my children as I would wish.

Fear - I have lots of fear especially over my family. I'm afraid of getting divorced (I am currently separated from my wife). Living alone and not seeing my kids every day scares me. Thinking that my youngest is small enough that he may never remember living with dad scares me.

Sadness - I feel sad sometimes, but mostly I put my sadness off telling myself that my fears have not been realized and that they may not be. I feel like sadness is on hold as it were.

Anger - I feel sometimes angry. I am angry sometimes about how I have behaved and the mistakes that I have made. I am angry sometimes about how I feel that others who should be willing or able to meet my needs either can not or will not.

TERMINAL SERVER

Bah! I have a Win 2K server running Symantec Corps 8.0 version of the Security Console and Quarantine Console and Symantec AV Server 8.0. After that I had to install terminal services in order to support some other needs of my work. Now I’ve got an upgrade to the Symantec software to their 9.0 version but attempting to install it gives the message that it won’t install on a terminal server. Bah!

Does anyone know how to get this installed anyway? First, I thought I’d try and stop the Terminal services and see if I could install the software. Next I could remove the terminal services programs, install what I need and then re-add terminal services. At least those are my first two ideas.

WEEKENDS

I’m an IT professional. I spend all day every day working on some type of computing thing. Lately, I’ve discovered that I like getting away from them on the weekends. I aggressively don’t use computers on the weekend unless I absolutely have to.

The point of this post is: no updates on the weekends.

PETITION FOLLOW UP

So I’m going to sign the petition I was talking about a few days ago. Like I said previously, I was inclined to do so anyway. After thinking about it I feel that I should attempt to be some sort of influence on my government to protect the things that I value.

The text of the proposed amendment.

*put on tin foil hat*
I'm not sure that the government will be responsive to what my values are regardless of this proposed amendment or not. I somtimes have the feeling that the members of the government, are so far removed from my daily concerns and beliefs that they are incapable of understanding them. It sometimes seems to me that the Federal government is abrogating to much power unto it self and I have to admit that it concerns me that as a society many of us feel that we need the government to step in and set the rules.
*remove tin foil hat*

BLOGGAGE 2

So does anyone ever read these things? Obviously I'm a new blog but I'm not alone. According to Technoraiti over 15,000 new blogs are created every day and on average there are three blongs updated every second. That is lots to read. Stiff competition. How do people find blogs anyway? I always found mine by links from other pages I was already reading. Any one have a good idea?

SPORK THE SPAM

I hate spam.

Big surprise huh? I’m responsible for the IT functions of my workplace and being a bit of a small shop that means I do most of the work too. For the last year my spam filtering was deleting about 27% of all our incoming mail as spam. For a number of reasons I wasn’t able to just use a public blacklist but I had to create a custom filter list to delete spam.

This was getting out of control, I was spending more than an hour each morning going through my mailbox and adding the offending messages that slipped through my filters to the new filter list. The amount of spam I was receiving was increasing daily and so were the number of complaints from others. I heard that the average worker complains to their IT department about spam at least once a year. I was getting way more than tat.

Finally, it became to much for me to tolerate and I added a heuristic filter to my spam engine. Can I just say wow! What kept me so long? Currently we are deleting more than 50% of all our incoming mail as spam. My personal inbox has dropped from averaging around 200 messages each morning to around 40. A much higher percentage of my time is spent being useful and I spend less time cursing the spammers

But they should be cursed I don’t believe that they have a right to consume my time and computational resources to the degree that they are. I don’t see any really good technical solutions to this problem yet in spite of the options being discussed by the big boys (Yahoo, Microsoft, etc). Jerry Pournell has recommended public floggings for spammers. I assume as tongue in cheek but I think he makes a point that the risk to spammers is negligible.

I think there needs to be some increased risk to spammers. They don’t pay for the delivery or storage costs. Their only real cost is the creation of the copy (which must not cost most of them much judging by the spelling and grammar) and the initial bandwidth to send the messages (which I understand is small since they often use compromised hosts to do the mailings for them).

So maybe we should use public floggings as a disincentive to send spam. Or would traditional methods of legal enforcement work like fines, jail times and impounded equipment? It’s clear that something needs to be changed. What are your ideas?


LATER: A UN Proposal in the news.

SIGN THE PETITION?

Sometimes I get petitions forwarded to me in order to support one thing or another. Sometimes they even ring my doorbell or accost me at the entrance of the supermarket.

Most of the time I refuse to sign these. I admit I’m not often familiar with both sides of the issue in question and something that motivates someone to go around collecting signatures probably means that this person has a vested interest in the outcome. Maybe it’s religious or financial or political. And I have always wondered what don’t I understand about this issue? I suppose that shows my laziness in not being more aware of the political landscape around me. I read the local paper and am generally aware of the broad issues but often don’t take the time to learn the finer details.

Currently, I’ve been sent a link to sign a petition to support The Federal Marriage Amendment. I am a Christian and I believe that at its heart marriage is a religious institution that has been supported by civil and public institutions. I have a faith based belief that unless marriage takes place between a man and a woman it is not a marriage in the eyes of God. Regardless of what man may say to the contrary. So from the basis of my faith I am inclined to add my name to this petition.

Information on this issue is difficult to find. Or rather, calm analysis of this issue is difficult to find. All of the web pages I googled up on this so far have been full of flashy graphics and links and bolded words and rhetoric. I’d much prefer to locate a scholarly analysis of the issue. The opponents state that this is nothing more than legalized discrimination. The supporters state that this is simply an effort to protect the values that maintain healthy families.

The senate is scheduled to vote on this issue in mid-July. News reports show that America is divided on the issue, although, it also appears to have a fairly large grassroots support. I believe I will take a few days to think about the wisdom of a constitutional amendment. Delay is my friend in this since it will give me time to think about it and to learn more.

BLOGGAGE?

I’ve read a number of blogs over the years; I suppose they have their roots in the old .plan and .finger files. I’ve read them too. I have considered writing my own but have often held back. I’ve seen many blogs that go no where. And I have a fear of being misunderstood and also a fear of being inconsequential and finally a fear of being thought dumb and even more finally a fear of confrontations. Writing my own blog would force me to face all of those fears. Maybe no one will read my words, maybe those that do will not understand what I am saying, maybe what I have to say is worthless or silly and finally maybe what I say will cause people to *gasp* argue with me.

I would like an outlet.

The hardest part so far has been trying to think of a name. I always hated that part of playing a new character in a game too. The Tungsten Table has a nice alliteration going for it. I also think the Tungsten Bathtub is a good name, it’s a bit more casual which fits me. I may start with one and change it later if I choose to. Do you have an idea you would like to share? Let me know what it is.