Discovery
This period of discovery is brought to you by Convergent Circumstances. I intentionally broke my routine by signing up for a 2-day course in intermediate PHP/MySQL in Manhattan. While I am generally interested in the subject, taking the course was entirely optional - somehow I think my life could have inched along without the information. But it was a treat. Not just the course but the accompanying benefits - talking to fellow trainees, being in New York, seeing my friends, taking the train, getting away. All of these stride-breaking elements are just what I needed. I returned to Boston a bit refreshed and pumped up about things that had bounced off my head.

My return coincided with a move to a new office and a slump in business. It is an unnerving combination. I've spent the last few days chasing ideas which lead to other ideas worth chasing. My brain works something like this.

I met a very interesting guy in New York whose is a serious Linux buff. He pointed me to a couple of distributions I hadn't heard of. I have since downloaded and installed Ubuntu on an old server which works fine. Once I solve the video resolution problem I need to figure out how to turn services on and off. Of course Linux always leads to the now what problem but there are a couple of technologies I picked up on that might fit well: Putty, SSH2 and RSS. I've already begun chasing RSS feeds and I'm trying to learn about RSS aggregators. Turns out that podcasting is based on RSS so I had to run down that path for a few hours. That leads to an interesting twist on Terry's Workplace Radio idea.

All of this gets mixed in with more stellar pursuits. I have a note to look up more on Meister Eckhard after my discussion with Carol the other night. I am still in the beginning stages of a new existential quest, a yen for zen. My last Amazon order includes 3 books: Hackers & Painters, Lighting the Way (Dalai Lama) and Stop-Time (Frank Conroy).

Let's hope these worlds don't collide. In the back of mind is the worry that this slippery slope is one banana peel away from a conviction that God is speaking to me through Perl scripts.