Below are the 14 most recent journal entries recorded in nduff's LiveJournal:

Thursday, September 14th, 2006
10:52 pm	I literally arrived at work this morning with tears in my eyes after listening to a story on NPR about two brothers from Brazil gaining notice for their classical violin. Their story is moving, and the music as well. NPR has the audio available online: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6073457 (Comment on this)
Friday, February 24th, 2006
11:07 am	Lojban Over the last few days, I've started working on teaching myself Lojban. It's not the first time I've had the idea in my head, but I'm considerably more serious about it now. It's an interesting language, and has a number of features that make it useful -- improved precision over English; better ease-of-learning than any other fully functional human language I'm aware of; attitudinals; an unambiguous syntax; and a community very interested in assisting newcomers. It also avoids picking up certain undesirable features which existent human languages tend to carry -- see my last paragraph for more on this. What makes it more than just an interesting toy, though, is this: When Angela and I adopt (which is still on the "about-five-years" timeline, aka "after we're reasonably financially secure and I've resolved certain other concerns"), I want to raise our child in a fully bilingual household. Lojban is excellent for a number of reasons. It allows rich and precise communication -- and I do believe that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that one's ability to think is largely guided by one's language) is largely correct, and thus that a child raised with Lojban as one of two first languages will be better equipped for thinking than a person raised on English alone. There's a community of speakers, but not so large of one as to prevent it from effectively functioning as a private language in situations where such may be useful. I haven't gotten complete buy-in from Angela on this -- and she's off visiting her father for a week -- but I'm going to get started myself, and hopefully she'll be interested in learning it herself; she's already offered to help me with drilling and such. So, I'm working on coming up with a list of common phrases frequently used in communication within my household, and then I'm going to translate them and (hopefully) start using them in practice. It's a place to start. [Now, what I was saying about certain other undesirable characteristics of most traditional human languages: While growing up, I thought folks complaining about English being inherently sexist were... well, unreasonable wackos. I think it was while attending college -- though it might have been my senior year of high school -- that I read an essay which quite harshly jolted me out of that belief. If you haven't read A Person Paper by Douglas Hofstader, I recommend that you do so]. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 6th, 2005
9:05 pm	Cyberpunk Having read quite a bit of William Gibson and such, I found this amusing. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 14th, 2005
4:14 am	Somewhere I belong I was over at Major and GiN's today, and GiN mentioned one time when Icey's class was asked to draw their families: She asked why nobody else had a Duffy in their family. This complements a similar memory, when she woke up and was telling us about a dream she had had: There was a Mommy robot and a Daddy robot and a baby robot and a Duffy robot and a Lethal robot. I really am happy, most of the time, with the family unit I have now -- it fits together snuggly; we are a family. But I sometimes miss -- really, sincerely miss -- being a first-order fixture in that little girl's life, even if I was just friend and roommate to everyone else. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 3rd, 2005
4:58 am	I try not to interfere in other people's feuds, so when I do speak up it's for a cause: When I'm making a mistake contemplation might correct, I would want a trusted friend to speak and give me pause. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 2nd, 2005
6:39 am	Cures for insomnia, various Truffle's cure for insomnia (historically effective): Warm glass of milk Warm bath Masturbation Duff's cure for insomnia (speculative): Not working all night. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005
5:10 am	Car broken into Speakers (no big harm, not hooked up to anything) and friend's toolkit (need to find out replacement cost) gone, inside trashed but nothing else apparently missing. And I'm having trouble getting back to sleep -- even though I know the place is every bit as secure as it was yesterday. Damned irrational self. (Comment on this)
Friday, May 13th, 2005
3:58 am	One word Engaged. (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 10th, 2005
1:35 am	Beer For a looong time, I wasn't a beer drinker. Not remotely. Couldn't see how folks could stand the taste, didn't see the point of drinking something that much weaker than vodka. Had some on occasion to be polite, but that was about the size of it. Since then, I've come to appreciate Ben Franklin's stance. Certainly, the tall Devil's Brew I'm drinking right now is doing its part to compensate for just how stressful work is going to be over the next month. I'm going to need a lot more of it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 5th, 2005
3:51 pm	I'm worried about one of my old friends. She used to be quick and prolific in answering email, and we'd occasionally have an exchange to catch up w/ each other every year or so -- but after sending her a note 3 weeks ago, I still haven't heard back. And she has a history of bad relationships (she's the one who, back at Chico, started avoiding me on orders from her long-distance bf). I'm still in contact with very few of the folks I knew from there, still fewer whom I'd call good friends (as opposed to "friendly acquaintences" or such). Having another one of them fall off the planet would be... well, unfortunate. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 27th, 2004
7:48 pm	That woman, she's a crafty one ...and not in the devious way (well, at least, that's not the way I'm referring to right now). Angela's been putting together Christmas decorations for the house made of things found in the yard (branches, pine needle tufts, etc) and old decorations in the garage. They're quite successfully festive. I'll be taking photos at some point or another. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 26th, 2004
12:14 am	Happy Angela cooked a big meal for Thanksgiving (and cooked it exceedingly well), and we had a lot of guests over. Sitting at the head of the table over a Thanksgiving meal in my own house, best friends on my right, the woman I love on my left, and guests aplenty -- I realized just how good I have it. Color me thankful, and very, very pleased. Current Mood: content (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 18th, 2004
9:25 pm	Fuck FUCK FUCK! I'm right now privileged to be in the position of watching my two best friends breaking up with each other, and utterly unable to do anything to help either of them. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 1st, 2004
5:27 pm	No there's bored, and then there's really bored, and then there's how bored I need to do this. Yup, I set up a LiveJournal account. Never mind that I think that blogging is one of the least productive uses of time in existance (not sure if it's a step up or a step down from looking at porn), but then, it's something to do when I want to spend a few minutes not thinking about work. I'm sick today -- just a cold, and a mild one at that, but it's enough for me to need to cancel my plans with Angela, that one chick whom I happen to be really quite fond of. Sure, I followed through last time she had a cold -- but that was different; it's fair for me to decide to play games with my own health (particularly when I can telecommute to work, and typically don't get all that sick anyhow), but it's entirely unfair for me to ask her to try playing games with hers. So instead I'm staying home and trying to get some work done (having come up with yet another design simplification on the project I'm working on), and occasionally goofing off such as setting up this blog. It's not all that bad, but I'd strongly prefer goofing off with Angela. (2 Comments |Comment on this)