Haven’t read or thought about the Declaration of Independence in a while. But with the Occupy movement still fresh and successive hotspots around the world (most recently Turkey) illuminating the peoples’ fury at staggering inequality and the ability to effect change within the system… I just re-read it for the first time in a long time.

How about these apples?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Tea Party on the right, Occupy on the left, a bunch of young Wall Street hotshots driving Ferraris on the backs of the general population in the middle.

I wonder what is going to happen over the course of the second half of my lifetime.

Ahhh, Twitter. Love and hate. Mostly hate.

I think there’s a definite generation gap there. I’ve never “not been hip” to the latest in tech—Twitter marks a boundary for me that I have yet to overcome.

As someone that was digital from a very young age thanks to my parents, the world of consumer and high tech has always seemed like second nature to me…until Twitter.

It’s not that I can’t figure out to use it, or even that I’m blah about it. I actively don’t like it even though I have to use it on a regular basis. Something about it just sticks in my crawl.

And no, it’s not the “textiness,” since I was a longtime user of IRC and of Unix similars long before that, stretching back to the mid ’80s. They were not only texty but arcane, unreliable, and completely user-unfriendly.

I think it’s the 140 character limit and the culture that has emerged on Twitter. But it’s hard to say.

— § —

My life is a hodgepodge of social media profiles. Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Digg, FourSquare, and on and on, not to mention a bunch of blogs.

Some of this is personal. A lot of it is professional. And the opportunities on the horizon, both academic and not, largely concern these.

Don’t know how I feel about this.

There is certainly a part of me that still longs to be a fiction writer, and another part of me that longs to be a freelance stock photographer or even a stringer (if there are any left).

There’s also a part of me that would love to sand and refinish boats for a living. That part of me will likely never be satisfied.

— § —

Tough day, for no particular reason, just a giant universe of very tiny reasons that all add up to a kind of phenomenological static that’s overpowering in its volume.

— § —

Just helped my wife to get started with a LiveScribe smartpen. You know that tech has become mundane and accessible when my wife starts using a smartpen.

— § —

For anyone struggling with an AT&T Galaxy Note (SGH-i717) and trying to get it to actually behave, here’s what you want:

– Padawan_JB ROM
– Titanium Backup to remove a whole bunch of AT&T cruft
– Nova launcher to lighten the launcher load (TouchWiz is heavy)
– Phase kernel and SetCPU app to overclock
– RAM Booster Pro app to ensure that you keep some memory around
– All other “optimize” apps (Lux, BatteryDefender, etc.) removed

This marks the first time since I got this damned phone that it has actually been:

– Stable
– Fast
– Usable
– Not butt-ugly or well behind current Android versions

It is an odyssey I will not repeat. I’ll keep this phone since I finally managed to get it working (it’s taken since February) but my next major phone purchase will likely be iOS if it occurs within the next couple of years. I’ve had it with Android.

— § —

Sometimes I think about the fact that I used to be a professional author of nonfiction trade paperbacks—and that that didn’t really become my career.

And that I was a longtime editor—and that that didn’t really become my career.

And that I worked for a long time in software development and deployment and in networking/IT—and that that didn’t really become my career.

And that there was a good year or two-year stretch during which I was making an honest effort to build a photography income, and in fact started to do so—yet that didn’t really become my career.

I often wonder about what might have been. Not that where I am is bad; it isn’t. But I also didn’t consciously choose it.

— § —

I’ll be making some hard decisions in the coming months.

I’ll be glad when this period of my life is over.

I could use a decade without hard, life-altering decisions, in which I just work and play and save and maintain.

Sure, yes, okay, right, I know, that never happens in life.

But it’s also true that life for most people isn’t always about moving cross-country, changing careers, having babies, going back to school, and so on, month after month after month for years.

I’d like to be facing some new set of problems and complications. The ones I’ve been having for the last decade are now old and overused.

I can’t wait.