Category: Uncategorized

I woke this morning with a quite complicated dream still running through my head.

It was an ongoing struggle between two groups.  One group was comprised of immortals, the other was made up of resurrectionists.  The story was thus:

The two groups had amassed roughly equal power and control, and lived for generations in a kind of cold war.  At some point the balance shifted in favor of the immortals, and the returners scattered and went underground as some kind of resistance movement.

Flash forward and the immortals had figured out how to use the returners as a fuel source, to power … something?  The dream’s perspective was from one of the resistance camps, as a group of immortals assaulted it and proceeded to capture or kill all of the fighters.

Sounds intense? It was.  A whole history and current state of affairs packed into one little dream.  I woke before the capture was completed, but the desperation and despair came through loud and clear.

Facebook makes it EXCEEDINGLY difficult to remove data.  I’m not entirely convinced the data is actually ‘gone’, but even disassociating it is an exercise in patience (and irritation).

I’ve managed to clean my profile, which feels good.   Weird though.  I’m used to liking and commenting on stuff, and it really adds up. The sheer amount of data is pretty scary.

I have commenting turned off, which was an easy way to combat any potential spam.  This *is* a journal after all, not a conversation.

I learned an important lesson today.

When working with Kubernetes and kubeadm, doing a reset on the cluster does NOT affect the cni provider, and failing to remove /opt/cni/bin/weave-* means everything will break in horrible and unreliable ways.

• Doing both housework and homework and curious why they have such different meanings. My housework is work that needs to be done FOR my home, but my homework is just work I’ve acquired elsewhere to do AT home.
• Been thinking about good, right, just, unfair, wrong, and bad. They have to be relative, i’m sure my definitions don’t match my neighbors.
• Callers – you care enough to call, why not go the distance and leave a message?! I’ve joined the ranks of the often spamed, and no longer answer unknown numbers.

 

To be upfront and clear however, I’m not thinking about committing suicide.

I’m not even sparing much thought for my failed attempts as a ‘troubled youth’ – whatever that means, other than to wonder at how it’s been more than half a lifetime since then, which is easily double what I’d expected.

No, I’ve been thinking about Ben’s decision earlier this year.  Can’t help it.  It’s like a sore tooth, or a pebble in my shoe. It nags at me.  I was reading a post from a friend who lives in Nelson, and it reminded me of how he’d worked and lived there, and some of the events that occurred – not all good.

I was standing in the shower this morning, thinking (as that is really a fine place to ponder deep thoughts).  I had a momentary flash of insight, that no decision to end your life really includes significant thought for what follows.

I don’t mean for you, you’re dead obviously.  I mean for the people who remain.  How they remember you.  How they forget you.  How your story is over, and you become a part of history.   Your parents lose a child, your children lose a parent, your spouses lose a spouse in turn.  Your friends lose a part of their life, and then build a life that doesn’t include you – like soldiers marching the gap is filled eventually with another.

In almost all cases, it’s a poor choice.  Humans like other animals fear death, because just like animals they instinctively know the end is the end.  No amount of fantastic wishing will make that not so, no matter how loudly people proclaim their delusions in public.   In private, in the dark, there is fear.  The end of all things is not something to be taken lightly.  It’s certainly not a decision that should be made by or with emotion.  Despair or rage can override fear, or at least mask it until the deed is done, but they are a poor substitute for properly weighing the options.  As a human.  As a transient existence.

All of this said, I do hope by the time I’m respectably old some of the stigmas around assisted suicide have faded further.  I certainly won’t be living forever, and at a certain point I’ll want to be the one making the decisions around how long I continue limping along.  Waiting for everything to just break seems .. a bit inhumane.  We don’t subject our pets to that (or at least, not intentionally).  Surely a human deserves treatment at least as good as the family dog?  Even better in fact, since we can express our wishes clearly.

This has run on longer than I’d intended, so I’m going to cut this short.