Terse Systems

A friend of mine died last Tuesday. Her name was Kristie Hirschenberger. I wanted to meet up and was wondering why she wasn’t answering her email, and found out today.

Her livejournal is here. I talked to her father. It’s real. It’s not a melodramatic fake death for attention (and anyone who knew Kristie would know how ridiculous that sounds). A friend of Kristie’s is dealing with the aftermath here.

It was kind of random how we met. She sent me a message on OKCupid, saying I had the first name and initial as the man she was currently divorcing. Despite that, we exchanged email for a couple of months, then finally met up in San Francisco (where we found out we had the same hairdresser).

I didn’t just like Kristie. I knew her. Kristie and I had a ridiculously common mind. Talking to her could be like having an inner conversation, because she typically knew what I knew and had the same opinion on it. Some times that would get in the way of a joke (it’s hard when you know the punchline already) but she made it work.

I can’t believe she’s dead. I can’t believe I miss her so much.

I haven’t written much lately.

Part of it has been having a permanent job again. I’m in a position where I know I can’t do everything at once, and so I’m having to ration the amount of work I try to do on a given basis. Theoretically I’m doing this for the sake of Laziness, but that’s a long way from here, so I’m mostly doing this because it bugs the crap out of me if I don’t do it.

Meanwhile, having a permanent job means I can finally have a permanent life. Between work and real life, the blog takes a back seat. I could make some pointed comments about Spring’s idea of an ApplicationContext, but there’s just no one technical problem that stands out right now. It’s just a matter of laying a good foundation for the work coming next.

Even my technical books aren’t being used. I brought them into work, and now every time I look I think “I can either read the book, or I can fix the problem.” And the book goes back on the shelf. I will have to reread Domain Driven Design again at some point, but most of them are just lining the shelves.

And that’s the way this blog feels at the moment. I may have something useful to say here, but only when I start exploring new territory.