NaNoWriMo

I have always enjoyed reading fiction, so why not give a shot at writing a little. It is not a completely foreign land to me, but still very distant and strange. Enjoying good food doesn't guarantee an enjoyment of cooking, and I consider myself lucky that I enjoy both. What seems like a million years ago, I would have said the same about fiction. Perhaps it was just youthful hubris. There is still something intriguing about arranging words into patterns, trying to transmit fake realities into the willing minds of others. Stephen King might have been right when he likened fiction to a form of telepathy.

One of the potential side effects of being a SysAdmin is the development of a special kind of tunnel vision. You start to look at all software as something that needs to be configured, updated and optimized. It can be easy to forget that SysAdmins are allowed to be users of software too. One of the potential benefits of trying to crank out 50,000 words of story in a month is the forcing of a focus on using software as a user, not as a SysAdmin. Hopefully I will find Scrivener to be useful in that regard. The verdict will be in at the end of November.

I had intended to try my hand at NaNoWriMo last year, but did not, being in the process of transitioning from one job to another. Changing jobs is not something I enjoy in the first place, and this particular job change also necessitated a move. The only thing I dislike more than changing jobs is the process of moving, though waiting for a house to sell is rapidly rising up in the rankings ... anyone wanting to move to Berea, KY?

Two more days before the race begins. Lets see where it goes.

The Psychopath Test ...

Author: Jon Ronson
Format: AudioBook
Reader: Jon Ronson

5 of 5 stars
What does it really mean to be crazy? Everyone likes to kick around these terms, casually mentioning that so and so's ex-partner is/was a "psycho" or that somebody's inlaws are "complete nutters". Often it is just a convenient label used to brand a particular stereotype or persona onto the perhaps unsuspecting party. Whether or not such branding is warranted is a completely different affair. It helps grease the wheels of conversation, and defuse awkward pauses. After all, we don't really want to believe that the kind taxidermist who runs the motel is an actual psycopath. It much easier to just say that he is a "strange boy", give a little chuckle and move on. No harm no foul .... right?

Ronson explores the strange mental tapestry that we all exist in, but have such a hard time understanding. When technologies such as the MRI came about, there was a lot of talk about how it could help unlock the inner workings of the human brain. Studies were done that showed normal adjusted people, when in the throes of intense anger, had brain scans that mimicked those of people diagnosed as clinically and violently insane. The difference was that in normal people, the chemical brain activity was temporary, whereas in the the deranged people, it tended to be persistent. It opens a scary Pandora's box that we all have the capacity to be insane, and in fact are from time to time. This is a scary, yet enticing enough concept that it continues to show up in our entertainment:

Noah Cross: You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING...

Mix in the fascination that we have with categorization and checklists, and there is the potential that in the pursuit of understanding what it is to be a psychopath, we will start to see the requisite traits in everyone we encounter, and in truth, even ourselves. Ronson confronts this issue head on, displaying both his easy succumbing to its siren song of power as well as the depressing realization of the role that media and journalism plays in the strange feedback loop of mental illness.
This was one of the more thought provoking books I have read in a very long time. Elements of what it tried to address are scattered throughout literature like so many puzzle pieces, except noone knows what the picture they create is even remotely supposed to look like. I have thought for a long time that characters and their caricatures are, fundamentally, attempts to reflect back to our consciousness data about what we are, in an attempt for us to better understand ourselves. It seems the greatest mysteries still lie within the undiscovered countries of our own minds.

In The Plex ...

Author: Steven Levy
Format: AudioBook
Reader: L.J. Ganser

4 of 5 stars

I was a touch skeptical about whether I would like this book. While I'm no stranger to non-fiction, I rarely consider reading biographies of companies. Levy does a great job of detailing the birth, rise and current state of one of the more interesting companies of this age. I was repeatedly reminded of The Three Ages of Man. Google is clearly a full fledged adult, and entering that strange period where it's uncertain whether one should describe things as driven by eccentricity or midlife crisis.

It was also interesting to see how Google is still deep in the throes of a great experiment. Engineering companies have come and gone, each trying to maintain the right mix of elements that allowed them to produce their greatest feats. And it's still very much in the realm of possibility that Google will fail to hold on the things that have thus far made it great, following the setting Sun into the realms of collapse and buyout. It's a difficult balance; the clarity of idealism versus the reality of human shortcomings.