Tale-telling is the oldest tradition, and one I respect greatly. This was written as it came to me, and as such has not been edited

There was once a child of the race of Man, who found a in ruin a great power, and in great power found ruin. He was born under no special star to parents of no special virtue. They were kindly in their way, being simple farming folk with no great wealth save knowledge of trees and animals and growing things, and no great art save for the crafting of the simple tools and things that they owned. They were good christian folk, and strove for a humble virtue in all of their doings. They gave thanks for the rains, and endured the parched times without complaint, and when their first child was born---a strong, ruddy-cheeked boy---they rejoiced and counted themselves as blessed as any who have ever lived.

But when it came time for the child to be baptized, a curious event occurred. The child, already with a fine shock of golden hair, could not be made to endure the touch of the holy water, and it raised welts upon his skin. His parents and the holy man in attendance were greatly afeared at this, and concealed it, fearing for their safety and that of their son. But ever after he was under the priest's uneasy eye.

It was found afterwards that the child could not bear the touch of clean water of any kind, and had to be confined indoors whenever it rained, and there he learned the craft of various wooden objects from his father, and a storehouse of lore from his mother, chiefly concerning dwarves and trolls and dragons, and especially of the Fair Folk that lived in the woods and under the hills

"Now, Llyr, my son." --for that was what he was called-- "be sure as ye hope to live that you never wi' the Fair Folk go walking, for they will deceive you and steal you far away from these lands, an ye shall never see your sweet home again."

and they told him of the fairy lords, and their wild hunts, and of their powers of illusion, and their power to bind men's wills, and he sat and listened with half an ear, as children are wont to do, waiting for the rain to stop.

One fine morning, when he was of the age of nine, and just beginning to get some of the strength and stature of manhood, he was sent by his parents to study with the preacher, and so learn his letters. But he was willful, and disobedient, choosing instead to go to the nearby forest, for it had been raining lately, and he was in no mood to sit indoors any longer.

He played for a while in the glades and amid the heavy boles of the forest, pretending to be a knight-errant, slaying dragons with a sword made of wood, crowning himself king with a garland of bright flowers. Suddenly out of the deep woods came an unfamiliar sound, and he hid to see what it was.

After a moment he recognized the light footfalls of a horse, and a strange tinkling as of music, and beheld a dark elegant form coming towards him through the trees. It was a tall (or so it seemed) palfrey of splendid gait, and its harness was hung all over with small silver bells, to produce the music he had heard. Astride it sat a young boy, no older than he was, fair of face, with flowing hair that trailed in his passage. He was richly ornamented, and Llyr thought to himself, "Surely this is the son of some great lord."

Stopping suddenly, the young lord espied Llyr, and gave a peal of laughter, a sound as sweet as sunlight after a storm. "Boy! Come out, and be not afraid! For I mean you no harm." His eyes were a rich green, and glinted as he spoke. "That's better. How are you called?"

Llyr answered truthfully, and the young lord laughed again. "Well met, Llyr! I am Damien, son of Oberon. Where are your friends?" Llyr looked aside sullenly. "They are in school, where I ought as well to be."

"School, is it? What a trifle and a bore! We shall have none of that for you. Come, alight with me here, and we shall go to the house of my father and make merry."

and Llyr was strangely afeared of this young man on the tall palfrey, noble though he seemed. "I cannot, sir. I have been too long away, and my parents expect me."

"My father's house is but a little distant, you shall be returned to your home in good time. Come, I have some mead here, are you not thirsty?" He offered Llyr a wine-skin of rich and cunning workmanship, and fearing to offend, Llyr drank of it, not knowing his danger.

At once he felt a flush on his features, and a longing stirred in his heart, a desire for wild strange lands, and the bright caves under the hills, where the jewels glitter overhead like stars in the firmament. And so he was enchanted, and he looked upon the young lord with wonder and love, and his heart was stolen, never thereafter his own.


To be continued. Any oddities of punctuation or style can be blamed on this being told over instant messaging. Comments are appreciated.

At some point, all of us have to explain something technical to our parents. Some of us may be spared the fix-it questions, but eventually you'll get tagged as someone who 'knows about computers' and find yourself explaining what iTunes is, or how to use Skype. If you are subsequently tagged as a "computer guy," you have my sympathies.

These are the monsters of the tech support world. They are our Grendels, our Minotaurs. When our bards tell tales around the dim light of a pile of iPhones, it's always the stupid-user stories that make us wail, gnash our teeth, and tremble with fear. But even those of us who aren't inclined to view Dilbert as a documentary can find ourselves stymied by a person's simple failure to understand a basic technical concept. How to operate a remote control, say, or how to send email---trivial tasks, right?

It's not that these people are stupid (necessarily; it can definitely be a contributing factor). Some of them are doctors and lawyers, and most of them use a computer on a regular basis, if not daily. As far as I can tell, there are two big things that contribute to this general lack of understanding of technological concepts. The first is what seems to be a simple mental block: people think (correctly) that computers are complicated, and (incorrectly) therefore they are simply beyond their understanding. The second problem is that all of our analogies suck. To illustrate that, I'd like to say a few things on the subject of intuitive interfaces.

The biggest problem with intuitive interfaces is the myth that they exist. Whether all behavior is learned is a matter of some academic debate, but it is certain (so far) that no one has emerged from the womb with any inherent knowledge about computers. How then can anything be considered 'intuitive'? How can we have prior knowledge of something without having seen it?

The answer is by analogy and inference, and as previously stated, our analogies really suck. The computer 'desktop' is one such bad analogy. We also have 'windows', 'pages', and 'folders', but by far the worst analogy is the most common: the file.

A computer file is supposed to be the analogy of a paper document. At the highest level it is a container for information; that's pretty much the only similarity it has to a paper document. Physical documents are fixed media; any writer knows well the dread of the indelible pen on the page. A file on a computer is merely a complex number, information reduced to its simplest form. There's no real difference between a picture and an mp3, and it's possible (though probably not advisable) to edit one with a tool designed for editing the other. In point of fact, there is almost no software component of a computer that is not a file, and most of these software components have nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of paper document.

So what do we do? How do we make analogies with real-world things so that people will understand them?

I propose not doing so at all. Analogies all break down at some point, and in computer circles they do it sooner rather than later. A file contains information: call it the most basic concept in computing, and teach that first.

Having written all that, I can no longer tell if there's any logic in it. If you find any, let me know. My only other thought for the evening: Any sufficiently advanced sarcasm is indistinguishable from a genuine error. Good night.

Tene's Triumphant Return to the World of Livejournal!

I've always been a bit shy of posting here, I kind of felt like I had nothing to say that wouldn't be terribly self-important. I think that perhaps what I'll be doing is posting about things that I find interesting, trying to limit myself to commentary rather than emotional ramblings.

So today's entry is going to be about cooking. The other night I had a bit of a dinner party, and I thought it was pretty successful. I served scallop 'ceviche' and salmon along with garlic bread and mojitos, and it was fabulous. I did have a few notes on the recipe, though, which I will commit to a permanent record for both your and my benefit.

the good!

• The scallops were pretty good quality, and relatively fresh. That's probably important.
• Using navel oranges for the ceviche is probably a good idea as you can cut them without the juice going all over the place.
• Nobody will notice if the scallops aren't cooked to perfection
• They especially won't notice if they've had a mojito or two before dinner :P
• Most of the texture in the ceviche comes from the cucumbers. Just keep that in mind when you're slicing them.
• Shallots! They're far better than onions would be. Do not substitute.

the bad!

• The garlic bread would have been better if I'd made it myself.
• One of the things that grilling the scallops might have done
• Searing scallops made a hell of a mess out of the pan. If you do this, take the pan straight from stove to sink as soon as you're done cooking, and have brillo handy.
• Searing scallops is not for the paranoid or inexperienced. Put them on the pan and don't touch them! Flip them over once after a few minutes. It's difficult to judge how cooked they are without having done it before.
• Make sure to rinse and dry the scallops before cooking them.
• The scallops will slowly drain after they're cooked. Just pour that stuff down the drain, it doesn't help the dish any, unless you were wanting to turn it into a soup.

changes

• I seared the scallops instead of grilling them, giving them a nice brown crust
• I baked the salmon instead of grilling it. This is the only sensible way to cook salmon.
• I used serrano peppers instead of jalapeños. The flavor was probably not much affected either way, but serranos, being much smaller, don't add much to the texture of the dish.
• If I had to redo this recipe, I would add a lot more orange, especially if I were not also serving mojitos.

As to the menu as a whole, everything seemed to work pretty well together. Aside from the generic compliments, people commented that this seemed like a summer dish, which makes sense. I thought that the mojitos were really critical to the enjoyment of the meal; having something cold and sweet to drink really helped to balance out the tang and spice of the salmon and the ceviche. I'm convinced wine would have been terrible. I would not want to serve the ceviche as a main course, and probably if I were to redo this dinner, I'd want to serve something quite delicately flavored as an appetizer, and have another side dish with the salmon. The idea of using bell peppers is appealing, but cucumber sandwiches would probably work just dandy.

Ahhh, the salmon. That lime butter sauce is far and away the best thing that can be done with a side of red salmon, although my mother insists on ruining my mixing it with chopped hazelnuts. However, it is a really simple dish, and it definitely doesn't have quite the same presentation value as the ceviche. Next time I will use a thicker fillet, I think, and maybe add some slices of lime to the top. If so, I'd avoid having the lime peel come anywhere near the salmon; I think it would probably add an extremely bitter flavor to the fish.

That's all I can think of for now. Time for another mojito! Hey, that rum isn't gonna drink itself :P

3:30

It's cloudy today, which means it's all black and white here. All the color is gone from the natural world. Everything human has color, and is therefore unnatural. Even the animals know enough to dispense with colored coats.

People paint their houses bright colors, as if in cheerful mockery.

4:30

Night is blue at first, before it's crushed into darkness. The orangepink of the streetlamps bounce off the clouds and the mountainside.

Do I not understand other people, or do I not understand myself? I feel apart, like my brain is made of clockwork where other people have steam pipes. Parallel function, but different design. The opposite is more likely, haha!

I feel like I get pretty out of touch up here, alone in the cold dark. People become abstractions. That's what they are. Forms, without substance.

5:00

This is the flip side of being high on life. Having this random crazy spew out your brain. Blackness comes outside. The sun set in Barrow, you know.

And then it all opens up! Wow. What a place. Typing makes me shink back down again. And then suddenly my movements are jerky, I can't type right. It's five thirty, and I. Ah cant'type.

6:30

Back to normal. Whatever that is. Food soon.

I don't really use this, I guess. Probably I don't have enough issues I'm willing to share with nobody in particular. I tend to keep everything inside, especially the things that matter to me most, and put on a smiling face for the public. I worry about using other people to make myself feel better about a situation, especially if they aren't involved with the situation directly; there's always two sides to any argument, after all, and it's probably not good to force people to choose one or the other. I would say that in domestic disputes, there are two guilty parties, everyone is a judge, and each side thinks it knows best what an appropriate sentence would be for the other. But these things aren't worth getting into. I guess this is just going to be me getting some thoughts and emotions written down, and who knows? Maybe I can come to some sort of conclusion on the matter.

I am currently in Columbus, Ohio. I am the next thing to broke, and I am unemployed desperately seeking a job. I've been kind of scraping by here for about six months now, and have generally been scraping by in various places for about a year and a half now. If you know me, you probably know this already. It's pretty much the middle of winter here, I guess, but it's the first time I've lived anywhere where that doesn't mean freezing temperatures and a lot of snow. I kind of like it here, I guess. I know a few people around town, almost all of whom I know through Nate. I like them pretty well, but kind of wish I had a bit more in the way of social opportunities---my apartment is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, and it's hard to get around to meet people. But there are social opportunities here, even if I can't get to them, and the job market beats the hell out of anywhere in Alaska....
...and here I get lost. I don't really know where the hell this is going or where it should go, and I can't seem to keep the Public Front up. There's some part of me that wonders whether or not I want to stay here and for how long; there's a plague of self-doubts related to my ability to survive away from home. Nothing seems to be working out very well for me right now, but bouncing around from place to place hasn't done me a whole lot of good so far, either. I've begun carving out a little social niche here as well, and then there's Nate...decisions, decisions. I guess that's what it's all about. Decisions and choices. Making choices every day, to take action or not, to accept consequences, or not. And maybe now and then you rethink your goals a little. That doesn't really leave much room for the vast majority of things over which we have no control, does it? I don't know...words seem so inadequate these days. Ramble ramble ramble, bitch bitch bitch, still the same situation at the end of the day, why am I even bothering to write any of this? Because I'm distressed and---what? My normal methods of dealing with shit aren't enough at the moment? Sounds good. Cut, Print, Wrap, and probably Nap.

I'm not really sure what prompted it, but I am returning to the realm of the livejournal. I had an account about 34 million years ago, but I think I posted twice and forgot about it entirely. Here's to me making at least three posts in this one ^_^