I haven't posted in a while. I'm not dead; I'm just in the process of moving into my new apartment. Although at times, I can't tell the difference.

Combining two households really sucks. When you move out from your parents for the first time, you have the evilness of having the expense of duplicating all the items you used to have back home. When you move in with someone, you have the its evil twin: duplicates of everything you own and deciding how to get rid of them.

What silverware do we keep? The heavier more expensive ones they don't make anymore, or the ones that go with the dishes? Whose furniture is sacrificed for extra space in the living room, and whose hobby is the recipient of that space? Which blender makes better margaritas, and should we keep the other one as well because it has more fancy settings, even if keeping both of them takes up more room?

I can only take solace in the fact that I can still store my car in the garage--I refuse to let it get taken over entirely by secondary storage.

(Warning, non-english computer rant below. I need to express my overwhelming anger somewhere).

Still no Apple-provided Obj(google-guard)ective-C way of doing regular expressions. After 5 major OS versions and 7 years! Motherfuckers!

Every other language framework has them, except for Cocoa. Every single damn one. Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, Java, JavaScript, .Net/C#, Gtk, Qt. Hell, even WxWindows has a regular expression class. WxWindows for crying out loud! But still, nothing from Apple.

Having needed regexps many times when doing mac development over the years (as so many people just aren't nice enough to make their content into web services), the lack of this important functionality in the core library has been an enormous source of wall-punching ire for me. As is the protestation from hardcore NeXTies that 3rd party laissez-faire solutions are good enough, or that the API is just too damned 'selective' to have regexps, or that scripting languages should really be used instead. The last one is really confusing; as they've added automatic garbage collection, it seems like they're trying to make Ob(google-guard)jective-C competitive with scripting languages that provide regular expressions.

The emperor looks even more naked from the standpoint of an Ob(google-guard)jective-C developer when one looks at all the other stuff that's either missing an API altogether or has a C-based non-OO API (did I mention that Apple keeps telling us that "Cocoa is the future"). There's no Apple-provided OO Cocoa interface for web services, none for getting the basic system configuration, nothing for WebDAV, nothing for secure FTP, nothing for any sort of MD5/SHA-1 checksum, nothing for relational databases. It's stuff that so simple to add, or at least should be from the standpoint of a billion-dollar company, yet it doesn't get added. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I know that the world faces more pressing problems, and there could be happier thoughts running through my head than constantly thinking about giving Apple the finger by creating a framework called "CoreFunctionality" that intentionally clashes with Apple's namespace by including such classes as NSRegularExpression and NSHash.

Hell, I just think I need to rant so I can form my battle plan with a clear head and ponder on where to get stuff for my slutty costume I'm wearing tomorrow.

I wonder if she does govt. passport issuing offices?

I'm moving. Anyone got any suggestions for where I can nab lots of cardbox boxes for little or no $$$ in Buffalo?

Saw (e:jim)'s picture. A stance that wide can't go unphotoshopped (even if my Photoshop skills are pretty lame).

Moving, back achy
So much stuff, so little time
Kitties happy, though.

I will not get angry when others say my ideas aren't good; instead, I will take it as them daring me to show the world there's a better way.

I need to keep telling myself that.

I guess I feel a little better about leaving Elmwood and moving to N. Buffalo now that other people are doing it.

Had a decent Yom Kippur, at least as decent as you can have for a day where you're supposed to be remorseful for all of the bad things you've done. For me my remorse was largely remorse for all of the tremendous anger I felt about my past relationship with the ex (and her mother) back in NC. Need to move on, as folks in the current relationship are counting on me and I shouldn't dwell in the past.

Wish I could have attended the blogtoberfest...it just had to be scheduled on Yom Kippur...aargh! Was it actually devoted just to bloggers, or was it a general octoberfest? For some reason I'd never imagine that there were that many enthusiastic Buffalo bloggers outside of (e:strip). I'd like to see Central Terminal sometime before there's some huge bat guano problem and they have to knock it down to prevent an epidemic. I wonder if they give tours...

Today at an estate sale (e:inscrutable) and I got a chest of drawers for $40 for our move to the new apartment. It's kinda moldy and the drawers don't open because the humidity of the basement made them swell shut. I'm really more worried about the mold, as the thought of the mold spreading throughout the house and making my existing respiratory situation (already exacerbated by (e:inscrutable)'s cat zeke and (e:ktmuffin)) gives me the willies. I need to find a can of "mold nuke" (if it exists) and apply liberally to said dresser. The dresser does have substantially dovetail joints and looks circa 40's-50's, so I'm hoping it turns out to be a good deal. It's going to be a pain in the butt to move it from the storage warehouse we're storing it in to the apartment, but hopefully we'll round up some of (e:inscrutable)'s friends to help us.

Oh, yeah, I'm moving from Elmwood Village to north buffalo on Sanders St. I'll probably writing more about this event in a future journal entry.

With the coming of Yom Kippur, there's the inevitable thoughts of death. There is the thought of death in the future (will I make sufficient amends for g-d to inscribe me in the book of life for another year) as well as thoughts of those around you who have died in the past.

Buffalo, I've noticed, is also a city of death. I see so much around me that was once beautiful and grand being subject to endless decay and destruction. I thought I had seen it all until I saw Beth Jacob cemetery, an abandoned Jewish cemetery in eastern Buffalo that is pretty much as destroyed and desecrated as a place in Buffalo can be. Until I had seen Beth Jacob, I've had been able to somehow stomach much of the blight in the city, but seeing blight on this level was the ultimate outrage.

In spite of my feelings that this situation with the Beth Jacob cememtery has got to change, the one thing that sets this place apart from all of the other decaying places in this city is that it's the only place where I have found decay and growth, death and life, in equillibrium. The area has so devolved that nature has taken over, and the decaying headstones are covered over with vines and surrounded by tall green grass. It's awful, yet quite eerily beautful at the same time; when I went about two weeks ago (with (e:inscrutable)) we saw deer in resting out in the open, as if to stake nature's own claim on the area.

"The Gates of Repentance are always Open"



The Deer we saw



The rest