last night i found myself reflecting on some of the darker aspects of my personality and things i’ve done that i regret. it’s not something i take pleasure in examining, but we all have these skeletons in our closet that we carry with us, times when we have delved towards the lower limit of our humanity by choice or error. we bury them and keep them hidden from others – knowing intimately the struggle we face in loving the dark places others have accidentally or intentionally revealed. meanwhile, the great bulk of society puts on a face of confidence, all together buying into the corporate lie for our own perceived benefit and safety.

were we to all drop those masks, all-at-once in a you show me yours, i’ll show you mine scenario, would there be any love left in the world of man? or would we be so repulsed by the reflection of our own shame in one another that we would be driven into solitude? if there is to be any hope left it would be in the love of Christ, but the masks of christians are even the more delicate and intricate, covering a myriad of sins with deceit rather than love. meanwhile, in the shadows behind the mask the darkness remains, and grows.

just in case you haven’t seen these yet, i was cleaning out my web-dump repository and figured that you might be interested, dear readers. some lord of the rings animated gifs from the intertrons: boromir’s invisible phone, mortor, and a catapult: part one and part two.

the elbow is healing up nicely, i’ve been riding my grownup bike all week, the rb-t with a brand new homebuilt rear wheel. i am excited to go out with point83 again tonight for the first time in about a month. hopefully i will still remember how to mix alcohol, cycling, and ridiculous laughter to have a great time. i certainly am excited to see everyone, and despite the weather turning craptacular we’re hoping to go out and tour some serious christmas lights displays around seattle.

the as-yet-unnamed mbp has been some solace while i’ve been gimped up, i’ve been playing tons of civ 4 which is both good (fun!) and bad (staying up until 4am). i am looking forward to playing a bunch over the weekend while i am in the place which shall not be named. i also need to work on my battlefield skills, as rulezero lan parties appear to be forthcoming in the new year.

in nerd.job news i am actually taking positive steps to shape my job situation, first and foremost i am taking my also-unnamed computerization project in a new direction for a version 2.0 release. thanks to my buddy miles from .83 i’ve hooked up with the uw solstice project and i’m working on getting a handle on developing applications in that framework. the major advantage is that they already have an online questionnaire system that i can leverage into being a deployable, centrally administered repository for instruments. there are some detail ideas in there i need to get ironed out first, of course, but it looks very promising. i’m also meeting with my old college friend jon bumgardner after the new year on a promising-sounding side project. it’s time to break out of this rutting job funk and get excited about programming again.

of course, working in perl rather than vbscript will help with that as well. regexps ftw.

in media news, those of you who still haven’t picked up the issue of cranked with my article in it, now have yet another chance since it’s been syndicated over to the agenda, a diy publication out in rhode island. now if only if my follow-up article can be of that quality? maybe after christmas i’ll have something with enough substance to ship off to my fantastic editor.

i also strongly, strongly recommend listening to the streaming sufjan stevens christmas albums, especially the one from 2003 is fantastic. this past week some of my friends invited me to see danielson: a family movie (or, make a joyful noise HERE) which was a fantastic documentary and gave alot of background about the danielson family band and the early formation of sufjan’s career. the honesty and frankness that they discuss the intersection of faith, music, and creativity was inspiring.