ESOTERIC KNOWLEDGE
IS SPEAKING
LISTEN AND LEARN

I've had this thought since I got back to school that maybe some of the people I'm friends with aren't actually my friends. I've talked with many of my friends and things are how they have always been, but some of my friends just seem to ignore me now. Some wave or smile, but nothing more than that. I wouldn't think that's so strange, but then I remember that I have spent the equivalent of weeks in class with these people and have talked with them for probably hours about non-trivial things. Maybe they have anxiety like me and they also struggle with conversing even when I am the one initiating conversation. I want to believe that--that's why.

I think I am more drawn to people who are like me. People who are unlikely to initiate contact or conversation. I'm afraid I come off as disinterested some times--I'm not. I'm just scared. I hope that my friends are like me and that they really are my friends. Thinking back, it was really hard to get my friends to start talking to me. It's like they either didn't want to talk to me or they just didn't talk a lot. It's likely the latter, as I was always the one to initiate conversation and they would always reply and converse eagerly. I could just move on, but I really like my friends and I am afraid to let them go.

Still no messages in the guestbook by the way (not that I care).

It's the second week of the school year and things are okay. Some of my classmates are still here: Sathya, Dylan, Oliver, Barrett, Brooke, Jill, Simeon (yes, this is a comprehensive list and yes, I can do that because this is my diary-type webspace). It's nice to recognize poeple. I've also been placed in a capstone group and have been assigned a project. There are five of us in my group now: Jill, Brooke, Sadie, and Steven. Steven was only placed in our group yesterday, so before that I was in the "girl group" which I was cool with. Our project is an autonomous ping-pong rally partner. I'm pretty sure it's meant to be a launcher, but we haven't met with our sponsor yet, so I'm not sure.

I can say with some certainty now that absolutely no one is reading this. I'm not sure why I'm not showing up on the SDF homepage index, and I don't really care. After all, this is basically my diary, although anyone is welcome to read what I put here and even comment on my guestbook. No one has commented yet so my audience must consist of either lurkers or no one... I've considered putting a poster on campus or joining a webring, but I don't really care about this page becoming popular--if that happened, by my diary might not remain so personal.

Anyway, school has been good so far. I enjoy socializing with my classmates and friends. Goodbye xo.

I'm curious if anyone sees anything I write here, so as an experiment I have implemented a guestbook here. I would appreciate it if you would sign it with a short message.

Not much has happend today. I'm waiting for my class which is at 2:00 and it's 11:40 right now. I think it's FEA, which sounds fun.

I'm writing from school between classes. So far I haven't seen any of my old teammates--nice. If anyone attending the UofU and would like to meet me, all you have to do is scream as loud as you can for as long as you can and maybe I will hear you.

Greetings all, tomorrow is the first day of school. I'm not sure what exactly I'm feeling--excitement, anxiety, I don't know--but I think it will be good for me to go back, I really do enjoy learning. It's too bad that I have to work with teammates, but maybe they will be cool and we can all work independently--that would be nice. Anyway, I just thought I should make a quick post before going to bed as it has been a while. I don't have too many expectations for this semester besides hopefully learning something new, but it would be nice if I could make some friends--real ones--not just acquaintances.

I remember hearing a long time ago that it is much harder to make friends when you grow up (I think I heard it on PBS) and so far that has turned out to be true. It isn't hard to talk to people--they are everywhere after all--but it is very hard to connect, at least on a non-superficial level. Maybe this is a problem that all students face and that's why we do so much group work.

The bees are so annoying so I am turning them off.

There's getting to be a lot of posts on this one page. I've thought about it and I think there are two solutions. 1: I can split up posts by each month and use the top page as an index or 2: I can add infinite scrolling. I do like CGI and dynamic content, but I also don't like infinite scrolling and the social media feel it gives off. It's not so much of a problem right now, but it will get worse. Also, keeping everything in one document is kind of weird klunky.

Update: I just made a quick CGI script to get an index of a post directory. I think it would work okay, but I now realize I could just generate the whole page using CGI. That would fix the big document problem for me, but it would still be a large file for clients to download potentially. I'm leaning toward using the index script to list the folders for each month's posts and maybe only having the most recent posts on the top page.

Can't sleep. Also, if you can avoid it, never use SiteLock or Imperva. I spent all day trying to fix what they broke then getting gaslit by them that the problem is actually our host--I know what I'm doing! I know how to use curl, openssl, etc.! I'm really frustrated that things can never just be okay on their own. Even when I've removed myself and any other problem causer from the environment things still go bad. Maybe that's life and perhaps I should get used to it. It seems to happen so often that sometimes I think that some things just aren't meant to be or stay as they are. I guess what I'm trying to say here is: "if your SSL certificate isn't clearing for your hostname, don't blame yourself: blame your CDN!"

I'm adding bees because I feel like it. I made the a while ago and they still need some optimization, but they are good enough to put here. They use PID controls by the way.

The funeral was on Friday. It was a good service and it seemed very cathardic for my mother and her family. She meant a lot to so many people; I feel kind cheated that I only got to know her in the last years of her life.