Holy &^%#@! It's still there!

Every day that I wake up and the world is still here is a joy to me, and a wonder.

I mean everything. With the poisons we dump into the environment, I'm shocked and overjoyed every time I see a wild animal. I'm amazed and delighted when the rain doesn't burn my skin because of the acidity. I'm filled with awe that I can see the stars through the light and air pollution.

Every morning that the Internet still works, in spite of the viruses and bugs in sendmail and bind, I'm delighted and amazed. It just shouldn't be possible that this thing, which is so delicate and prone to failure, should persist in spite of all the stupidity applied to causing it to fail.

I spend this past weekend in California for meetBSD. It was well worth the trip. Met some old friends that I was glad to have some time to talk to again, and made some new friends. Learned a lot and felt like I was staying in the loop with what's going on. I'd forgotten how much fun the community is.

But California left a bad taste in my mouth. That area known as Silicon valley felt like someone had made a rubber stamp of hopelessness and desperation and started stamping it across the valley. All the houses are the same, they're all crammed ridiculously close together, and they all cost way too much.

I just couldn't get over the feeling that everyone there is desperately searching for something they'll never find. That they're stuck with their neighbors right up against their walls and have no idea how to escape.

Maybe I'm a negative person. Maybe I'm just overly cynical. Maybe it's part of my continual amazement that the world continues to work. The fact that people can live that crammed together and not kill each other.

I'm probably a hypocrite as well. It's not like Pittsburgh is much better. Just because my house is eighty years old and doesn't look like every other house on the block doesn't really change a lot. Just because my plot of land is slightly bigger doesn't mean I have any real privacy from my neighbors.

I'd like to think that I'm better than. That I'm not hopeless and desperate. But I think the real issue is that, somehow, here in western Pennsylvania, we've managed to fool ourselves. We've managed to create parks that make us feel like nature is still important. We have steep hills all through the area that are impractical to build developments on, thus we feel like we're separated a bit.

Maybe we're not fooled. Maybe the parks are the medals to those who refuse to give in completely. Maybe the houses perched precariously on the hillsides are our admission that we don't really want to have control over everything, that -- in the end -- we want to be partners with this world, not overlords.

But it's much more likely that I'm sleep deprived, or simply thinking too hard.

I sure hope it's all still there when I wake up tomorrow ...