A Thousand And One Parsecs

Why PCs are better than Macs

The unthinkable has happened.  My trusted, beloved laptop, which has served me faithfully for almost three years, has died.  I suspect it’s a problem with the motherboard.  While I was in Jordan, the power cord sometimes had trouble making contact with the contacts in the power socket on the back.  Now, it’s almost impossible to recharge my batteries.  I’d replace the part, but apparently it’s glued onto the motherboard, and besides that, the USB ports have stopped reading my flash drives, which makes me think that the problem is much bigger than just the power contacts.

So I’ve lost my laptop.  This is no small thing.  My computer is practically a part of my soul, like a sword to a samurai.  With it gone, I feel…lost.  The most valuable material possession I have in this world is my data–my journals, my stories, the things I’ve written–and all of those are on my laptop.

But get this.  When I knew for certain that my laptop was dying, I did an awesome little trick.  I turned it off, unscrewed the bottom, pulled out the hard drive (the physical hard drive), put it in a 2.5″ enclosure that I bought last  year, and accessed it from the FLSR computer like a normal USB mass storage device.  My freaking hard drive.  And then I transferred ALL of my data (the important stuff at least) to the FLSR computer, where it is now.

Boo yeah!  Not only is all my data–my stories, journals, and writings from the last three years of my life–safely backed up in a place where I can easily get to it, but it didn’t cost me a dime.  The enclosure cost me about $30, but I’ve had it for a while.  If I were to take my laptop into a store to have the data pulled off of the hard drive, it would cost my upwards of $400.  Youch!  But because my computer is a PC, I can take it apart and put it back together again by myself if I have to.

Now I have to save up for a new laptop.  I could have the motherboard replaced, but I think I’m reaching the point of diminishing returns with this computer.  It’s expensive to replace it, and once I do, something else is going to fail.  Besides, after three years, it’s about time for a new computer.

In the meantime, I can do everything I usually do on public computers, except for photos and podcasts.  If I’m lucky, I can figure out a way to do my photography in one of the computer labs on campus (the photo safari is down!  It’s so sad!), and I have an old desktop that I might set up in my room for downloading stuff.  We’ll see how it goes.

But my data is safe!  Woo hoo!  I am SO relieved.

Thoughts on being busy

I was browsing through some Facebook notes I’d imported from my old blog (now nonexistent), and I came across an old book review I wrote for Momo by Michael Ende. Awesome book–I recommend it 110%. However, the thing that got to me was what I’d written about how the book made me think about how I was living my life back then:

I don’t regret being busy. I’m VERY busy all the time (especially this spring, with Poli Sci 200 giving me a major beating). There are days where I wake up at 6:00 am and I don’t stop running from one place to the next until the evening. Sometimes, it’s true, I let the world around me just sweep me around and control my life. But I don’t think that things would be much better if I just cut out all the things that I’m doing.

I was home this time last year, not working or taking classes–I didn’t really have any responsibilities at all. And I was miserable. I felt like I wasn’t being productive enough, and I looked forward to coming out to BYU for the summer term because then I’d have something to do. Now that I’ve been really busy for a year, I’ve found that I really like it. It’s good to have a lot of challenging projects and responsibilities. I’m doing what I love and even though it can be difficult, I’m having a lot of fun. Work hard and play hard.

My sister Kate sometimes has problems with being overworked or underworked. When she’s busy, she’s so busy that it makes her anxious and she feels overstressed. We tend to fight a lot when that happens. So then, she takes time off to try and recharge, but she gets anxious because she feels that she’s unproductive. So then she fills up her schedule with things to do, until she’s overstressed again.

I think that the problem isn’t a matter of whether or not you’re always busy, so much as what you make time for. The people in the book got to the point where they figured that good things were something they’d only have time for sometime in the future, so they spent all their time doing menial things, and ignored their friends, families, and anything that was fun or enjoyable.

Life should be kind of like a car battery–once you’re up and doing something, it recharges itself. If I were only busy with things that drained me, I’d go crazy. It would just feel wrong, and I would make some major changes in my life. But if I actually enjoyed all of the things I was doing, and am doing, right now, I would know that things are working the way they should.

And ultimately, I think that that’s the message that Ende was trying to get out. Enjoy your life right now, where you are, and make time for the people around you.

This really gets to me for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I don’t think I’ve been following my own advice this last year. Ouch.

Second, I want to refocus and spend more of my free time doing creative things and/or spending time with people. The advice here about prioritizing really resonates with me.

Third, it’s totally true. Life should be just like a car battery, and if it isn’t, you’re doing something wrong. Trying to get stimulation without putting in any effort is just wrong, even if it’s innocent.

I guess that’s one thing I learned from my experience last semester writing that novel. It took a LOT more effort to sit down and write the thing than it did to play computer games or waste time on the internet, but the satisfaction it brought was a lot better.

At the same time, I didn’t spend enough time getting out and making friends. But really, it’s the same thing. Do you fill your life with busywork or do you make yourself busy with the things that really matter? They take a lot more effort, but give much better satisfaction.

I arrived in Provo a couple of days ago, and I’m still somewhat disoriented. I’ll have some new writing goals, though, before school starts. I’ll also have some new ideas for where I want to take this blog, and I’ll write about that tomorrow.

Figuring out my Characters

I am REALLY close to starting work on my next novel.  It’s an exciting time.

Last time, I didn’t do a lot of planning/worldbuilding before I started: I just had a bunch of general ideas and did the worldbuilding as I went along. This time, I’m doing something of an experiment: I’m doing most of the worldbuilding before I sit down and write the first chapter. Hopefully, this will help me figure out what kind of a writer I am.  

Today, as I was thinking about my characters, I decided that I wanted to know them before I wrote about them.  I don’t want them to be flat, I want them to be complex, interesting, and real. So does everybody, of course, but I figured that to do this it would be better to have an idea of who they are before I start writing from their perspectives.  And what’s a better way to figure people out than personality tests?  I love personality tests, especially the Meyers and Briggs test (the four letter one: I am an ENTP). How cool would it be to build your characters through Jungian personality types?  Yeah, pretty cool.  Needless to say, I had a lot of fun.

It’s tough, though, because the different sites I went to all said different things about the same personality types (I used the personality page, typelogic.com, wikipedia, and kiersley.com).  The site that was the most useful was also the site that did the worst describing my own personality.  I don’t know if that’s going to hurt the story, but the descriptions made sense and spurred my imagination the most, so I think it will work out in the end.  After all, these are not hard and fast rules for my characters–they’re starting points for me to build off of.  I’m sure that as the story progresses, the characters will come to life and defy my expectations.

I have three main characters that I need to model: Tristen, Mira, and Kayleigh (I might end up changing Kayleigh’s name, though).  I already have a basic idea who they are, but I need to take things further in order to write really close to them.Tristen is someone who wants to be a hero.  I’ve written about him before.  He’s the kind of guy who would willingly put his life on the line to save a stranger.  He has a strong sense of honor and is willing to make spectacular sacrifices to do what is right.

Trouble is, life is never that simple.  More often than not, it’s more important to be consistent in the little things than to sporadically make the dramatic sacrifices.  That means, of course, that Tristen needs a good-natured woman who is consistent in doing the small, daily tasks without needing recognition.

I might as well warn you, there will be spoilers in the rest of this post.  Consider yourself warned.

The thing is, though, that before Tristen meets Kayleigh, he needs to be confused, burned, and tortured with regards to women and relationships.  I can’t tell you why, I just know that that’s the way it is.  And so, I’ve figured out EXACTLY how I’m going to do it.  It involves a horribly awkward and painful falling out with Mira, which is mostly brought about by circumstances outside of either of their control, but also involves some key elements in her personality.

Basically, she has to be the kind of person who would be a perfect match for him–someone whom he feels he shouldn’t leave.  They have to be good friends, understand each other well, be really close to each other, but then circumstances conspire, present two equally distasteful choices to Tristen, and he chooses the one that takes him away from her–all the while wondering “should I have stayed?”

Enough of the introduction.  That’s basically who I need these characters to be for the purposes of the story.  But who are they beyond that?

I started out by reading the descriptions of the four preferences, then working backwards to figure out Tristen’s Jungian personality type.  Since he really wants to be a hero, I considered making him a J instead of a P.  Trouble is, I’m a P and I don’t really understand Js all that well.  If I’m going to be close to this character, he’s got to be somebody that I can understand.  Call it taking the easy way out, but I decided to make him a little more like me.

I decided to make him an ESTP, “the Doer.” There were a lot of things I really liked about this personality type.  He’s extroverted, thinking, and perceiving, all like me, but the sensing part of his personality means that he “lives in the here and now,” has a “do it and get on with it” kind of attitude, and is more of a “straight-forward risk taker.” Sounds like it has the potential for an interesting story.  Besides that, ESTP’s “can sometimes be hurtful to others without being aware of it, as they generally do not know and may not care about the effect their words have on others.”

Even though they may disagree with the establishment, they have a “strong belief in what’s right and wrong” and “their own integrity mandates that they will not do something that they feel is wrong.” This gives me the impression that I can successfully write an ESTP character that feels real while having a very strong personal ethical code, something that I want Tristen to have.

Relationships-wise, things get really interesting.  ESTPs tend to be weak on commitment and want to approach everything in a “big way.” Plenty of room for conflict here: difficulty settling down, combined with a tendency towards the dramatic and spectacular rather than the simple and consistent.  That sounds just about right.

It was even more fun to figure out Kayleigh’s personality type.  In fact, I learned quite a bit about her as I did this.  The personality page says that ESTP’s natural partners are the ISTJ or the ISFJ.  Again, however, the whole J thing kind of threw me off.  Js tend to be planners and organizers, while Ps (like myself) take things one day at a time and can be impulsive and spontaneous.  That’s the kind of person I can relate to easier, so that’s the kind of person I want to write about.

When I started reading about the ISFP, “the Artist,” I felt like I was reading an outline on this character that I’d written myself.  I don’t even know Kayleigh’s exact role in the plot, but her character just jumped out at me.  It was fun.

ISFPs (according to the personality page) are “warm and sympathetic” and “genuinely care for other people.” They also “have a strong set of values” and will “rebel against anything” that conflicts with their need to “feel as if they’re living their lives in accordance with what they feel is right.” They are quiet, don’t look for recognition, and don’t have any interest in controlling (or being controlled by) others, but at the same time can exhibit “carefree light heartedness.” One thing I thought was particularly interesting was that even though they appear light hearted, underneath it all they are quite serious and don’t share their thoughts except with their closest friends.  I think my friend and former roommate Steve is an ISFP.

The thing that worried me, though, was that the main thing about ISFPs is their artistic flair, the thing that defines them.  This is really what defines them, and it’s something I didn’t really have in mind for Kayleigh.  However, as I thought about it, the more it made sense.  Kayleigh lives on a spaceship with her family, and things can get a little bit monotonous and humdrum in such a confined space.  Having someone who can pay attention to sensory details and add color and life to a place can be really refreshing.  In fact, this might be the thing that really catches Tristen’s attention (besides her physical attractiveness).  That’s a possibility I hadn’t thought of before–one that really leads off to a ton of exciting and interesting possibilities.

I haven’t really given a lot of thought to Mira’s personality yet.  However, ISFJ, “the Nurturer,” really makes sense to me.  First of all, ISFJ is one of the natural partners for ESTP.  Second of all, Mira is from a planet-based culture that avoids the rest of civilization and is steeped in tradition.  From what I read about ISFJs, they seem to be more homely, with “respect for traditions and laws” and a knack for homemaking.  At the same time, they need affirmation and tend to blame themselves while putting others’ needs above their own.  It’s important to the plot that Mira is used as a pawn by another character (her father), so this fits really well.

All in all, it was really fun to play around with personality types and build my characters a little better.  There is still a lot of work to do, of course, and I really do expect that they’ll take a life of their own and do things I wasn’t expecting.  Like I said before, this is more of a starting point–but I think it’s a good one!  We’ll see how it plays out once I start writing. 

Megaman DDR!

This makes me happy.

It’s 2:30 am. My work here is finished.

A million different things to say

Wow.  I feel like I have a million different things to say, and I’m not sure which one to start with.

I just got back a couple of days ago from the Jordan study abroad, and I’m currently at “home” (or something similar but not quite it), here in Massachusetts.  In a couple of days, I’ll be heading out to Utah with my brother in law, and we’ll drive with a trailer full of stuff.

I’m looking forward to the trip, but almost more I’m looking forward to being in Utah again.  It’s funny, because that place can feel so old after a while, but that’s where all my friends (and most of my family) currently are, so I feel like my life is on hold as long as I stay out here.

I put quotation marks around “home” because really, my parent’s house isn’t exactly my home.  Not in the full sense of the word.  It’s not where I grew up, and it’s not where I’ve lived for any significant period of time.  In some ways, it feels more like my grandparent’s house than anything else.

Nothing else for me to do back home except explore old memories, I decided spontaneously to drive up to the old house where I’d grown up. It wasn’t ours anymore. We’d moved out of it nearly two years go. The woman who bought it from us was single and had nearly a dozen kids from three different parents. After we moved out, they trashed the place. That’s the last I’d heard of it.

As I drove past, I saw that all the plants in the front were grown over. The red brick mailbox was partially destroyed, evidently by a careless driver. There was a For Sale sign leaning against it. The driveway was empty, but I was hesitant for fear of someone seeing me through a window.

Then I saw a black box dangling from the doorknob on the front door. “What the heck?” I parked the car and walked boldly across the lawn. Sure enough, there was a notice pasted on the door. It said “to enquire about this property, please call…”

The house was foreclosed. The previous residents were all gone.

Nobody was there.

I couldn’t hold myself back. I stepped around the house, peering in all the windows. I walked around back, as if exploring some ancient ruins in a far off land. This space where I had grown up, where I hadn’t returned in nearly a quarter of my life, was practically sacred to me–which only made the desolation that much more surreal.

Walking across the lawn where I used to play as a child, it seemed like the walls of the house were screaming at me. The place was saturated with memories, and they all came back to me as I reverently walked around the property. This was where we had built the old swingset. This was where we had house trained our dog, late at night, while watching Apollo 13 which had just come out on DVD. This overgrown, jungle-infested hill was where I had worked one summer to build terraces for a garden that we never planted. That window was the one that we kids used to secretly leave unlocked so that we could sneak inside if we had to. It was locked tight.

I felt like the place was a holy temple that some gang of street thugs had tagged with crude, ugly, spray painted words of hate. I felt violated. The plants which we had so carefully tended were collapsing on their own, untended overgrowth. Weeds as tall as myself grew in front of the doors. Inside the windows, the floors were scratched to pieces, the doors were dented at the corners, the carpets were stained and dirty. The awning we’d put over the deck was completely gone. The equipment for the fireplace was in pieces, leaning against the wall.

It was like ages had gone by, and the walls were screaming out to me. I was too shocked by what I saw to cry. Yet, at the same time, I was grimly fascinated. It was like I was watching a movie, entertaining myself with my thoughts while someone else controlled my body and my emotions.

All this time, I couldn’t help but think how ironic it would be if one of my old neighbors called the cops on me. To be arrested for walking around the house that, five years ago, I’d left and entered every day. That to return to the place where I’d made the transition from childhood to adolescence and left my adolescence behind now felt like a crime and made me look suspicious. I didn’t care enough to let it stop me.

Later that night, I heard the rest of the story from my father. The woman who had bought the house from us had fallen behind on her mortgage. She was probably one of the thousands of Americans who used the housing bubble to buy a house far beyond her means. Instead, she took out a twisted insurance policy: she slept with the son of her creditor for ammunition to use as blackmail.

It didn’t work, though. In the end, she got foreclosed and evicted just like everyone else. And now, my old home sits ruined and abandoned.

To me, the place is as fractured and weathered as Jerash, Luxor, or Um Al-Jumaal. It’s just gone.

Well, that’s not something that I was planning on saying, but it just sort of spilled out of me.  That’s one thought of many, and one of them had to come out somehow.  Since this post is getting kind of long, however, I’ll cut it here and save the rest for a new one.