September 2006 archive

manasclerk, dead of natural causes: me, still kicking

Recently, I was made aware that my site had been found by people in my community. I don't write this for them. I don't write it for anyone in particular, I suppose. I use it to talk about ideas, since ideas are what bother me.

I know: I've closed this down before.

But here, let me show you that it's over: this isn't manasclerk talking. This is the man behind the manasclerk persona. I'm a real person and I may even have a passing resemblance to manasclerk. But I'm not him and he's not me.

My last entry was offensive, and I'm sorry

I have taken this entry down because it was hurtful to those involved. I write this blog anonymously — or at least I thought I did.

I always looked at this as an anonymous weblog. When I write it, I conflate things that happened and "blow up" concerns as a way of working through ideas. People who read and comment on my entries come from New York, Oklahoma and Louisiana--and other such faraway places.

I didn't know that people in my own community read my work. But they do.

And what I said in this post may have permanently destroyed their wanting me around. It was that bad.

I am truly sorry for hurting people. That was never my intention. I was wrong.

Grid Computing

I started working on the world's most impressive grid computing project. It's more fun than it sounds.

The physicists will soon be sharing their gird with bio-tech folks. That should be interesting.

There's a lot of work and my problem will be to not work too hard. Government contract and all. But I don't really care about nuons and charm and beauty any more. (A recent paper was really entitled "Charmless beauty" which makes perfectly good sense to High Energy Physicists.)

One of the scientists is actually a wonderfully charming writer of blog-style user instructions. Unfortunately, no one is interested in using it. I'd just rip it off and give him the nod. He covers the interesing things.

Dragon*Con and Aftermath

I went to Dragon*Con last weekend. It's held annually, apparently for some time. A woman sitting at the table next to us in the hotel bar Friday night said that she had been coming for 22 years, from when it was just an Atlanta Comicon. It's grown since then, embracing all forms of relative Geek style fan-ness: TV-series nuts like the Buffy heads; costumers like the 501st; fiction world nuts like the Perth folks; weirdos like the SF writers; and perfectly normal people like the whole Goth section. All in all, a great time.

There's a lot I learned at Dragon*Con (including "All I Ever Needed To Know About Why Christians Are Creepy I Learned From Watching Goths") that I'll put into words over the next weeks.

But maybe not here. It's been quite a set of weeks.