September 22nd, 2003:

I have trouble asking for things. Even simple things. Even things that I know would be given happily if I’d just ask for them. For instance, right now, in my pocket I have 55 cents. That’s 10 cents shy of a Pepsi from the vending machine. I’m sure there are 14 people around me who have a dime that they would be more than happy to part with. But I won’t ask for it.

It’s no secret, to me anyway, that this has a lot to do with my failure. Unfortunately, knowing that doesn’t exactly fix the problem. And, like I said before, trying to find the root of that problem simply leads to the discovery of more problems, all without solutions.

I don’t have trouble asking my parents for things. I imagine that, since I’ve lived 25 years of needing, and they’ve spent 25 years providing, it’s almost second nature to ask them for something when I need it. I try not to, and rarely do, really. Not because they’ll hold it over my head or anything like that, but because I enjoy being independent. I enjoy making it on my own. I enjoy knowing that I can provide for me and my family without help.

I was tempted to ask for help right after we bought the new truck. Our bank accounts were dangerously low, and I wasn’t sure we’d make it until my next paycheck without floating some bills or missing some payments. But I didn’t. I held out. We’re still dead broke. But we’re 3 days away from being paid and in very little danger of running out of money now. It feels good. To tighten down, and ride out the storm, instead of screaming for a life raft to get us to shore. Because, had we asked for a life raft, we’d only have to paddle it back out to sea to get where we were before.

In reality, it’s not going to hurt to ask for a dime. It’s not going to steer me way off course, or affect me in any great financial matter. Even if I was obligated to repay the dime at 100% interest per day, I could easily repay the person with two dimes tomorrow. But, it’s also not going to hurt me to go without.

That’s where the problem lies. I have a hard time choosing to ask for something, when I can most likely make it without.

(accept this notation as my expression of additional frustration in regard to not having a separate place for these things, where I could write more freely without concern)

I’m getting the itch to code Inklog again. bBlog’s been doing pretty well for me. But I’ve got some more functionality that I’d really like.

I dislike that my URLs (as clean as they are) only have ID numbers in them. Not very useful for trying to figure out what something is without looking at it. Dates, or title words, or both would be more useful. Adding another field into bBlog to allow for this would be fairly easy, I think.

Additionally, I’m getting the hankerin’ to have multiple blogs again. I know, every attempt I’ve made in the past to split my life into nice little chunks has failed miserably. But, none the less, I’d like three main sections: Tech, Life and Art. Really, they should all be on one blog. So, I may end up doing some super-complicated category assignment to handle what shows up where and why. But that’s confusing. I’m thinking that I’ll have SUPER categories for the various sections of the site (which are already mostly employed). This would be things like “Tech”, “Life” and “Art”. Then, I’ll add another category called “Front Page” which is for items worthy enough to make the Front Page of the site. Then, the actual Front Page will be broken up into three pieces, each showing the most recent entries from each of the three sections but ONLY including those items found in the “Front Page” category. People using RSS readers can then subscribe to the entire site, just one (or more) categories, or just the Front Page category, getting just the good stuff (as I deem them “good”).

One of the reasons for wanting different sections of the site is to allow each of them to have a different look and feel. This can also probably be implemented in bBlog fairly easily.

I really like to improve bBlog as opposed to rolling my own, because that way I’m working towards the greater good of open source software and fostering interaction and improvement. The bBlog project has been very generous to me, allowing me direct CVS access and the ability to modify whatever I please. However, sometimes, retaining backward compatibility and upgradability is difficult. And having to keep that in mind makes coding a little bit more difficult. There are many changes that exist in MY code, that I have not commited to bBlog CVS, simply because too many things would break for other people if I did. The problem with that is, when bBlog gets updated in anyway, my code has severe problems. And, because fixing things that aren’t broken isn’t exactly what I call fun, it’s easier to just not update my copy of the code than it is to fix all the problems that doing so would bring. However, now that I’m planning on altering the code again, and not just updating, I’ll have to sync up before I can begin.