July 5, 2025
About the blog, the prequel
(A final update, from the point at which we shut this track down when saner heads finally resurfaced and prevailed. Everything below and in the entire journal should be viewed as the narrative of a very strange but transformative trip, set down in enough detail so that we can remember what this experience was really like when we look back at it. Everything below is left as it was at the time.)
I think we know enough now to see what the final shape of this virtual tree of life planted on a colorful Mandela blanketed with beech leaves is going to look like, and it won't be its previously described beta version, or the more complicated predecessor that I never showed you all, a similar idea but more like a catalpa or locust with long pods dangling down meant for holding the narrative history of the Lives of Others. That predecessor (the gamma version?) came to me biking along the slough during the onset of my temporary cortisone-induced psychotic episode. That one was drawn straight from my professional career as a project planner and data modeler, partnered with my never materialized career as an environmental engineer off to save the world by joining the Peace Corps and bailing Santiago, Chile out of its urban pollution problems that I could surely help them with because I was educated and knew so much. Really, if I'd been born 50 years later I could have been one of Musks Minions, helping to stop the government in its tracks, save a trillion bucks on the spot, and usher in the untimely and painful demise of millions of poor souls whose lives I knew nothing about.
So anyway, the gamma version I dreamed up as I biked along the slough was a real beaut, influenced by my water pollution experience where I first heard of the concepts (facts, call em what they are) of laminar and turbulent flow, aka chaos; as well as a hodgepodge merge of data models, data flow models, and decision trees.
That night I got home from my ride and went out on the deck to start writing out just how this was all gonna work. And quickly grew despondent, because how the hell was this gonna work? No way could I ask the webmaster to build me one of those. Rocky doesn't even like us imposing on him for easy stuff like another spammer who found his way in through some leak in the back door or a poorly mended wall.
That led me to the Beta version, which bowed to the reality that we're working on a linear model as the only option. And the beta version fit that linear model, though in an admittedly confusing way. I wonder how many folks had any idea where I was headed with this idea, other than toward a straight jacket where I'd do no harm to myself or others until the storm had passed.

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It wasn't until we put up our newest blog, Two Old Wrecks (er: Tyenne Travelin') that I saw the light of how it has to be. In essence, we need to stitch the mandella to the sky so the tree's inverted and the trunk's on top. It's an unfortunate fact that all those beech leaves are going to suddenly drop earthwards, but that's science biz. Even Hot Lips, Big Balls, the Pillow Guy, the Billionaires and the mad king can't fight gravity. Facts is facts, no matter how loudly and insistently and persistently you shout and no matter how many blind fools, cowards and lemmings you lie to and con into following you. Even your best sharpie won't help you now guy, the hurricane is gonna go where it goes, and you're gonna reap the wind.
But that's all well and good. When are we going to see where we actually are going here? Where's the Alpha version?
Patience, jackass, patience, as someone in my family was prone to say to me in my younger days k though I can't recalll now. Most likely Gramma W again, the source of so many ascerbic, pithy, and insightful phrases. Who knows after all this passage of time and after all the principals have either passed on or are doing so as we speak? Well, one person perhaps, the only other soul around save my fast fading stepfather. I'll go ask Elizabeth, I think she'll know.
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