I have been meaning to write something like this for a while. Actually, I have been writing things like this in my journal, but somehow it takes on more reality when i type it into a machine, for some reason. Perhaps becauz then its only a step away from being "world-readable", -rw-r--r--, if you parlez-vous unix.

All sorts of things have been happening or not happening. All sorts of things that I keep saying "I can't believe it". But this has been happening all my life. When I moved to South Carolina I kept saying i couldn't believe i was doing it. When I first came to California a year ago I kept saying I couldn't believe I was in California. And I always say "I can't believe it's already month/date/year." But, anyway, here goes:

I can't believe its already September 20th. Summer in most places is already over. Though here it is in full swing. Its been the hottest I've ever seen it here in SF this past week. My parents back in the midwest are getting ready for cold autumn and then snow.... i can't believe I've been living in San Francisco for 4 months. Almost exactly 4 months. It seems like just a few days ago I was wandering the financial district/civic center wondering where i could log on and get my email. Looking at the suits on one block and the bums and crackheads on the next block and knowing i didn't want to be any of those, thinking, "there but for the grace of god go i".

Perhaps you need some background. If this goes 744, or even 740, I will provide it. But right now i am write now. Know what I mean?

I can't believe I'm making a living from the internet. From a company that makes its living from the internet. From a company that is leasing a 10,000 square foot building so that it can be in a better position to make a living from the internet. Wacked... who would have thought it?

I haven't been eating a lot this week. Part of this may be that i'm housesitting a place that has no gas going to the stove- so I can't cook. But mostly its just cuz I've been too busy. I've been living and breathing this project, this huge monster called Geek Cereal. Its a meta-geek-thing, becuz of course geeks the world over are geeking away in their computer worlds, doing their things and not eating and not getting any excercise and not seeing sun for days at a time. But I and my coworkers are busily making a geek thing about The Geek Thing. All about 7 people who do the geek thing and have been doing it for years. Who live suspended halfway between the digital and the physical, who are constantly just a few keystrokes from being in contact, almost 24 hours a day, through the magic of technology. They're geeking away and sharing what they think and feel about this life, and then getting together periodically to see each other face-to-face and cement that growing relationship. Its an amazing thing.

And I am there, have been there behind the scenes with my copy of "Programming Perl" and my 4 telnet windows and netscape, making this "production system," as we call it, so that this mass of typed communication can become a message for the masses. World-Readable. I am not going to inflate my own importance, or brag or pretend to be some incredible programming guru, like the fake prentious doofus "Pascal," supposedly the computer mastermind that set up "GrapeJam." Its interesting to see how the Hollywood mentality represents the geek/computer guru archetype. So fake, so offensively over-the-top and megalomaniacal. I identified with his role, but not his personality, his completely egotistic worldview, bragging about how rich he was and how important his programming has been to the world's operating systems. What a load of bullshit. Of course, unfortunately there are people who eat up that crap. Its dramatic, its exciting, and they don't know any better. But how about the people that do? That's what I think GeekCereal is about. Its for people that know a little, at least, about the industry, can't stand the hollywood image machine, but want something a bit more structured and meaningful than hanging out on the #hottub channel on irc....

So anyway, I'm not going to inflate myself or tell you tall tales of my hacker exploits. You can go look at my homepage if you want and see that I'm pretty average in this little techie world. I would say my Perl skills rate about 8 out of 10. I can code in C and I know enough UNIX to get by usually. I use vi enough that when type stuff like this on a Mac I still by habit keep pressing ":w" when I want to save. I have an EE degree from a big university that has enough of a reputation that it makes a difference when someone sees it on my resume. But at the time, I hated it, hated what I was studying, hated computers. I just wanted to be a guitarist in a punk band, and then a little later, a composer, an artist, a manipulator of media.

That's still my love, but I also have some twisted love/hate relationship with technology, and especially computers, that I rediscovered over the last 3 or 4 years. For a while I thought the only thing they were good for was to make music. Then the web came along and something inspired me. The world wide web, that tool invented by european particle physicists turned Uber-Mass-Entertainment. Somehow it satisfies both my art nerd and computer geek sides.

So I came to California, L.A. to be exact, to study music and "new media". And I hated L.A., just as I expected. But loved SF when I visited there. I hated L.A. enough and disliked the academic art and music world enough and liked SF enough and liked multimedia gulch enough that I switched gears. My friend that works at HotWired let me sleep on his couch for 3 weeks while I looked for work and a place to live and tried to stay sane in this weird city. Its not the coolest place I've ever lived, but in a way, it is. Actually, in a way, I have yet to live in the coolest place I've lived. I know that doesn't make sense, but maybe it does if you think about it enough. Maybe you feel the same way. But anyway, for now, San Francisco is the place. In a few days I'm going to be living in a house with a T1 connection with 4 other geeks, working in a building with fur-covered office partitions, and next weekend I'm going down to L.A. to get my music gear out of storage and bring it back up here so I can have some kind of musical life again. And in another month my girlfriend, my best friend in the world for the last 5 years, is moving here to be with me. And that just about covers everything I need to be happy at this point.