Reality Out of Sync

if I do this? Oh, that’s right, it kills the mysql process and fails to restart due to selinux having an incorrect configuration. That’s what happens. It doesn’t tell you that the process failed. No, it doesn’t do that, that would make sense. I have to keep seeing these weird messages about the webserver erroring off on user’s attempts to molest my blog. For those of you that came, saw, and didn’t send me a frickin’ e-mail…well that’s not your fault, the mail server bit it too for a while. I noticed it way sooner though, because I am constantly checking my mail.

Anyhow, there was an electrical fault which happened at the most inopportune moment (of course!) causing my server to reboot a total of 15 times. Yay, for stress testing and fault tolerance? I gotta tell you, when I repaired the machine I was rather surprised it wasn’t more difficult to get going in the first place. I still wasn’t feeling real great when it died, although the worst of the illness was over, I just didn’t patiently go through each service as thoroughly as I should have. I blame television (and Resident Evil 5).

Accept this as my apology (there is music in this, that probably should have had a peak meter looked at. Turn down your volume.):

No, I don’t know her, and yes I stole it from someone. I am not profiting from it and it was in a public place without need for authentication.

The New Year for me started out awesome. Olive, a street which a huge Chinese business population, was littered with fireworks and all kinds of people strolling about. It was just great. I went to a temple and found a corner to meditate in while listening to the chants and prayers of other Buddhists. It was a pleasant time to be had by all.

I meant to post right after that incident, but I became ill (karma probably) and have spent the last four days not quite right. Yesterday I had the joy (and that is just dripping with sarcasm, like a bloody rag after severing someone’s femoral artery) of puking all day long. Go me!

Now that I’m somewhat better. We will return to my boring drivel. What I have lined up should be at least semi-interesting and argumentative as I tend to be. ^_^

Happy New Year
If you celebrate.
Mine is on the 26th.
Can’t wait for moon cake,
Burma Shave

I’ve never been big on listening in on poeple’s conversations, especially since I have an iPod and pretty much ignore the rest of society on my trek from the parking lot 3 and a half blocks away to my building. I get to hear the Lamentation of ZhaoJun (one of the four beauties of China, mind you) on my way. Today must have been a weird one, because I paused my iPod because my cell phone vibrated in my jacket pocket. I wasn’t expecting a call, but it could have been important; however, I wasn’t counting on that either. Turns out that the person who called must have dialed the wrong number because they hung up. In passing, this exchange catches my ear between a wheelchair bound man and the female pushing him.

“Hey sister.” the greeting was ignored by the passer-by.

“That’s just rude.” the man in the wheelchair says to his female companion.

“Maybe she’s busy and on her way somewhere?” came the retort.

“That’s no reason to ignore a brother greeting a sister.” I missed the rest of the conversation as I was hitting play on my iPod and continuing down the hall.

This exchange was between two black people. The woman that this man had said ‘hey’ to was also black. It just brought back to mind the situations I faced both in my neighborhood and in high school. People self segregate. When I was in high school, the blacks (all six of us) sat at the same table. Whites didn’t sit at our table. The four or five vietnamese girls that were at the school preparing for cloistering were also at their own table. Whites didn’t sit with them either. The whites took up the entire cafeteria, but they never sat at either of those tables.

In my neighborhood it was the same. White kids stayed with white kids and black kids stayed with black kids and they were really only forced upon one another if their parents were friends or solving some altercation between the children. This was pretty rare in and of itself, because in my neighborhood problems were solved on the streets. This usually involved gang violence of some sort.

I don’t think even in places where we are in general forced to integrate on at least a superficial level that anyone is too terribly comfortable unless they can expand their view of what they have in common with others. I mean, outside of being human, I’m of the opinion  you don’t need much else; however, humanists apparently are in the  minority.