Nearly a Prosthetic Memory

The subtitle of this journal has been "Nearly a Prosthetic Memory" for a good long time, and since I'm updating my userinfo page, I thought this was as good a time as any to ramble about that, for easy reference from the updated userinfo, and for new readers.

I put pretty much everything in this journal. easalle recently said that while she visits the internet, I live here. That's a pretty fair assessment of the situation. I keep the things I need on here, I spend time with my friends on here, I get my news here, and I do recreational reading here. About the only thing that's missing from that picture is work, food, and exercise -- and while I don't plan to get a gaming console that will let me play DDR cross-country with friends (walking about the neighborhood to and from work and on errands is much more entertaining) I must admit that I do swap recipes with my friends, and if an internet-based job should happen to crop up, I'd have to seriously consider it.

LiveJournal has become my homebase, over the years. Most of my friends, even most of the people I know face-to-face, have LJs now. I've met a goodly percentage of the people I consider close friends over the internet, and I do a lot of interaction in LJ and via IM.

I always get boggled when people make the distinction between "online friends" and "real-life friends," because, for me, that is not where the distinction lies. Would most people call the best friend who lives across the country who they spend an hour or two a week chatting on the phone long-distance with a "phone friend", and the friend they see in person regularly a "real-life friend"? I draw the line between people whose company I would seek out and people whose company I would not seek out, and I consider LiveJournal and other means of internet communication merely a delightful assortment of media to augment face-to-face time, paper letters, and the telephone.

( My journaling history )

Userinfo Log (draft)

( New version of userinfo 2005.02.23 )

My day today:

Stuff whacked me over the head in the morning. I opted to stay home and get on with the packing/organizing.
After starting that, I went out and got the battery. Yay, battery.
After that, I organized some more, then wound up going off to get necessities like a decent working plunger (the old one's not particularly functional, and not worth moving).
After that, manic packing, and some plans for tomorrow.

Not a very exciting day.

Last night, I talked with shywickedpixie for a good chunk of time, with updates on the current state of the Lunatic (Arizona) and other fun things like that.

The loud-music-people are blaring their radio or whatever it is that they've got on, very loudly. I can hear "Every breath you take" clearly through my closed window. I'll be glad to get a new assortment of night noises.

Interesting thing on school bullying.

http://www.bullyonline.org/schoolbully/myths.htm

Quite a bit of that is sounding very familiar. Not all of my memories from elementary school are happy shiny ones.

Paging ...

I've got to watch it with this thing. The other night I inadvertently paged someone right out of a nice sound sleep; tonight, just as I was wondering if amberfox were online and if I should call, the phone rang!

It wasn't Amber. It was Figment.

Figment had used his magical Phone Book Powers to look up all the Fayoumis listings in the phone book, and as there was only one Joan Fayoumis, he hazarded a call.

...Like I said. Long-lost brother. Except I think he's my little brother, never mind that he's older than ralmathon by a good 5+ years.

He's dropping by to help pack.