Monthly Archives: September 2004

It's a D/s Life: A Cautionary Note

Sometimes I have to take a step back, and look at things as I did for the first time. I have to keep in mind that one of the most impor­tant aspects of this lifestyle is con­sent. That pow­er flows from the bot­tom up, not the top down.

That I should­n’t over­step my bound­aries. That in time, more trust will devel­op, and the rela­tion­ship will grow, and the bound­aries will extend. That with this comes inti­ma­cy, strength, and pos­si­bly love.

That even with all the respon­si­bil­i­ty, trust, and faith I’ve been giv­en, I must retain my humil­i­ty. That pow­er does not need to be exert­ed to be felt.

That I had none of this, and have been giv­en every­thing.

You Don't Know Me

On a day-to-day basis at work I have to deal with a mul­ti­tude of con­tacts from all sorts of busi­ness­es, such as print­ing com­pa­nies, media com­pa­nies, survey/research com­pa­nies, phone/internet providers, mag­a­zines, tech sup­port depart­ments, mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies, and tons of oth­er ran­dom oper­a­tions either try­ing to get my busi­ness or required by me for a product/service. At the begin­ning of every phone call, every sin­gle per­son I deal with asks me how I’m doing. It’s become a chal­lenge not to shout into the receiv­er, “YOU DON’T KNOW ME. DO YOU REALLY CARE? I’M A LITTLE WORRIED CAUSE IT BURNS WHEN I PEE! DID YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW THAT?!!”, every time I hear the cook­ie-cut­ter ques­tion. The worst is when I have to call some­one sev­er­al times in a day to fol­low up on some­thing, and I’m greet­ed with the same ques­tion every time, as if my com­pa­ny might have been built on a fault line that some­how sep­a­rat­ed between 10:00 and 10:15.

I know that ask­ing is a polite thing to do, and it’s polite of me to ask in return, but it’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for me to say things that I don’t real­ly mean. I gen­er­al­ly only ask my friends how they’re doing, and I cer­tain­ly only tell my friends how I’m actu­al­ly doing.

I sup­pose it’s all just a haz­ard of the job. One day, for one of the less friend­ly, more aggres­sive, rude­ly patron­iz­ing, dread­ful­ly unim­por­tant calls (such as one I got the oth­er day from a com­pa­ny sell­ing solu­tions for high search engine rank­ings), I’ll go on about some make-believe prob­lem I’m hav­ing. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how long they can stay on the line, how much the busi­ness worth to them.

Gillette MACH3 Razor with 2 Cartridges

Features:

  • Gillette MACH3 Razor and 2 Cartridges
  • Triple-blade shav­ing sys­tem with an advanced indi­ca­tor lubri­cat­ing strip
  • Razor fea­tures ergonom­ic han­dle; 3 blades grad­u­al­ly extend clos­er to beard, less reshav­ing is required
  • The indi­ca­tor lubri­cat­ing strip has a blue stripe that fades away when blade is no longer opti­mum*
  • Each blade has a patent­ed DLC com­fort edge to glide effort­less­ly across face

*Note: Does not apply to Chinese males with sis­sy facial hair. Please use eight to twelve months as a gen­er­al guide­line for replac­ing dull blades.

It's a D/s Life: A Beginning

I haven’t writ­ten a con­tem­pla­tion entry in ages. Things have been pushed aside to make way for new explo­ration and com­pre­hen­sion.

For so long, I’ve tried to wait before writ­ing about this. My inex­pe­ri­ence, and pos­si­bly even inse­cu­ri­ties, have caused me to approach this sub­ject slow­ly and care­ful­ly. Every day a new idea, a new under­stand­ing, a new emo­tion, a new strength. I’ve felt as if I’ve known so lit­tle, but am now begin­ning to make progress in my learn­ing, am now begin­ning to under­stand the immen­si­ty of this lifestyle.

Now, there are now too many thoughts to go with­out record, and I must write.

The IT Budget Just Got Bigger

I was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­chase a new machine (with my choice of parts) at work and put it togeth­er from scratch, some­thing I had nev­er done before. I’ve dab­bled in cas­es ever since I played games (the dri­ving force behind much of my com­put­er knowl­edge), but nev­er actu­al­ly assem­bled an entire box from parts.

It’s amaz­ing to see how far along moth­er­boards, and even cas­es, have come now. Overclocking can be done through soft­ware, as opposed to open­ing the case and fid­dling with jumpers. Fan speed is auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­trolled for a bal­ance of silence and cool­ing. Rail mount­ed dri­ve bays make hard­ware con­fig­u­ra­tions much sim­pler. Thumbscrews elim­i­nate the need for screw­drivers for a sim­ple dust­ing. Firewire ports, eth­er­net con­nec­tions, video sup­port, even 5.1 sur­round are all built onboard, for the option of extreme­ly clean, roomy, and cool cas­es, even if they are rather sim­ple.

I man­aged to put the sys­tem togeth­er with­out hav­ing to re-seat a card, clean a con­nec­tion, or wig­gle a pow­er cable. My machine is now a P4 3.2E (I sup­pose all high­er end Pentium chips now auto­mat­i­cal­ly come with hyper-thread­ing), with a gig of DDR RAM, a 200 GB ser­i­al-ATA HDD, and a 128 MB ATI 800XT Pro video card. I also request­ed anoth­er 17″ flat pan­el, and received it the next day, so I can take advan­tage of the dual dis­play good­ness.

Work was good, but now it’s just bet­ter.