[caption id="attachment_381" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Bunnahabhain smiling golden"][/caption]

When I entered the plane, they had "Almost Lover" on the onboard radio. I was heading south, again. My thoughts went someplace else. During the last two months I have spent what felt like days in the air, on airports, and in buses, taxis, subways and trains taking me to or from an airport in four different countries.

 

I remember another airport day. At three o'clock I drove my girlfriend and my kids to the airport. The illuminated city outside was void of visible human life. Streets empty, even the city highway. I had my window down. The air came rushing in warm and thick. The radio was on. Kids in the back were half asleep. We drove in silence. At the airport, I found a cart and put the suitcases on it. With the kids on top I pushed it to the check-in. We were late. We were the last to check in. We kissed good-bye outside security. I watched them pass through the metal detectors. A last wave, then they were gone.

I walked back to my car. The air was sticky, clinging to my skin like a humid halo. Driving back home, I felt tiredness on my tongue. There was Springsteen on the radio, "I'm on fire". I turned it loud and sang along. My thoughts meandered between them and her.

At home I found Esmes sms on my phone. She hadn't taken my yesterday's pass as an insult. I felt deeply relieved. When I had written the sms about caressing her tattoo with my lips, it had felt so right. Later, there had come the regrets. Not for feeling like this. Not for wanting to do this. But for being so blunt about it, for maybe having taken it too far.

But she liked it. She yielded to my verbal touch. Offered me her body to do whatever I felt appropriate to do with it. I felt a bolt of fire rushing through my intestines. How I wanted to grant her that wish. How I wished myself to do this. How I wished to spend hours writing my secret wishes all over her body, spelling out my love for her in every language, in every font, with every means that is. Imagining that, I texted her back and tried to fall asleep.

Two hours later, I got up. I had some coffee and cereals, took a shower, dressed and left for an airport again, city north airport, this time, flying south. Another day in the headquarters. On my way back, I bought a bottle of Bunnahabhain in the duty free shop. It was still hot when I sat down in front of my mac back home at night. Bunna in a glas next to the keyboard, I read her mail. She had sent it very early in the morning. Had attached a photo of her. There she was: sitting on a chair in front of her desk with a laptop on it, leaning back, looking at the photographer standing behind her. Long, dark hair flowing across her shoulders. Dark hazel eyes. Mouth slightly open, teeth showing. Beautiful.

I didn't have much for dinner, basically two glasses of bunna, so I felt a little dizzy and lightheaded when I wrote a mail to Esme, telling her how much I had wanted to spend the evening with her when she had asked about my plans. It was too late now.

Telling her about my feeling when drinking the whisky, I was telling her my feelings about her.

Her tattoo. It's on her neck. Small. Decent. If she had worn her hair down, I would never have noticed. But her hair was up, her neck exposed. Vulnerable. Sexy. And right there, in the center, she has a tattoo.

She didn't tell me what it's about. "It's a secret", she said. She said that she even did't tell her boyfriend. I didn't ask her a second time. If she had wanted me to know, she would have told me.

I don't wear tattoos. A friend of mine does, at least one. A thunderbird sitting on her lower back. To see it, you have to enjoy some benefits. Or fashion, with low-cut pants.

Esme's tattoo reminded me of Kokopelli. A trickster in Native American Mythology. Kokopelli's clever, sometimes nosy, adorable, obnoxious - pretty much like me.

I don't play the flute, though.

08-27, 10:38 Esme

08-27, 12:30 Mick

08-27, 20:21 Mick

error code -36=bad

love.

Of course I know her email address. But I want her to have another, to have an address she would go to not to find some mail, but to find mail from me. A secret mailbox, with only one purpose. So I create one for her.

Didn't take me long to come up with a name, didn't take me long to come up with a password. I know she would remember the very situation when I said this to her for the first time, and I want her to remember this very moment.

Because for me, telling her she looked "drop-dead competent" was a way of telling her bluntly, "I love you". And I thought she'd know by now.

And I know too.

Reliving these events from about one week ago, I remember how we met. We had 56 hours from the first handshake up to the final good-bye. 56 hours that shook my world. I didn't think about the consequences then, because nothing had happened. I try not to think about the consequences now, because nothing has happened.

Apart from me being madly in love with a woman I met one week ago for three days, most of them spent in a classroom talking English about web design. Now I'm hers. And she seems to feel the same.

Went to the hairdresser today. Had my hair cut short. Esme had never touched it. I want to feel her hands tousle my hair. I want her to...

Well, it started off boring and slow, with Not Sure trying to bullshit everyone with a bunch of smart talk: ‘”Blah blah blah. You gotta believe me!”‘ That part of the trial sucked! But then the Chief J. just went off. He said, ‘”Man, whatever! The guy’s guilty as shit! We all know that.”‘ And he sentenced his ass to one night of rehabilitation.

–Formica Davis for Fox News, commenting on the verdict for the trial of ‘Not Sure’

Sia chiaro, faccio un sano backup su DVD dei documenti più importanti ogni 6 mesi, nonostante utilizzi la Time Machine, perché... non si sa mai...

Ogni tanto mi capita però di utilizzare la macchina del tempo per verificare alcune cose.

Oggi ho scoperto una cosa per me eccezionale. È possibile aprire i vostri files con Quick Look nella Time Machine. Non solo: questo è il comportamento standard della Time Machine.

Quindi supponiamo che ci troviamo con il seguente problema: avevo un file contenente dei numeri di telefono che ho cancellato (o modificato) e vorrei reperire velocemente quel determinato file per trovare un certo contatto. Il tutto diventa estremamente facile aprendo la time machine e semplicemente facendo doppio click sul file (o premendo la barra).

In questo modo recuperare il contenuto di un vecchio documento risulta semplice ed intuitivo, e non richiede neanche la necessità di dover ripristinare vecchi files.

È come avere l'archivio di tutti gli stati del nostro Sistema dalla sua nascita al momento attuale!

Comodo, no?

For a while I figured I had made a terrible choice in drives. After replacing the original drive with the new one, I was unable to use my backup from Time Machine on the new drive. After rebooting I told me the drive was invalid. When reformatting, it gave me a "resource busy" error message. Plugging the drive in my PC got me nowhere, as my BIOS and Device Manager on Vista told me I had a HDD, Vista wasn't able to assign a drive letter for my HDD. At this point I figured I had wasted $105 on a drive that my computer couldn't use.

Lucky for me I had a chance to swap the drive with a Samsung drive, same size and everything. I was able to install Leopard without any issues. Currently I am restoring my Time Machine image onto the new drive. Aside from the HDD issues, Time Machine has saved my data on more than one occasion. It does make life simple, allowing you to completely restore everything encase your drive explodes, or you get a new Mac. I urge people to pick up a drive for automatic back ups for your Mac. If you're stuck with Vista, I'm sure there's some way to back things up, I know there's a program in my computer to do it, but it doesn't seem worth it to me.

The scientist, Herbie George Wells of Madison, said he traveled to the year 2028 one week from today. He said he decided to return one week earlier than he left so he could take a vacation and recover.

"I can't say much about what happened while I was in the year 2028," Wells said. "It's kind of embarrassing."

Wells said the trip was an accident. To create his time machine, he modified a snowmobile by taking out its engine and replacing it with an Einsteinium space-time resonating superconducting limited edition magneto-coil he purchased at Wal-Mart. Then things took a bad turn.

"I was in the garage supergluing a patch onto the snowmobile's vinyl seat, which had a hole in it," he recounted. "The phone rang in the house, so I sat the tube of superglue on the snowmobile seat and went inside. When I came back out, I tripped over some clutter and I fell across the snowmobile seat. The weight of my body squeezed the tube of superglue and my pants and shirt became stuck to the seat. So I wriggled out of all my clothing to free myself, but in the process my butt got stuck to the seat. As I struggled, I accidentally hit the start button and the time machine took me 20 years into the future. Then things really got embarrassing."

Wells declined to comment further, saying that he still has twenty years of a dignified life left and he would like to enjoy them in peace.

Thinking straight is something which comes natural to me. I am a thinker. I think, then I do. I am a logician, that's why Spock is one of my literary heroes. I am a Capricorn, I am distant to emotion. I basically know how to spell them, but I won't be carried away by them. I am superior to emotion.

That's what I thought. That's what I told everyone who cared to ask. That's what I didn't have to tell people who tried to get me emotionally involved with them.

In the days following my encounter with Esme, I had to find out that I am not only vulnerable. I had to find out that I am even mortal, that my suit of armor could be penetrated even from a distance, infecting me with some lethal germs that keep on rummaging in my guts like pigs in a pen.

I had felt the first indications when I had left Esme on the square and headed for the airport. Thinking about it, this became pretty clear to me. I texted her, told her what I had felt without really knowing it on that very occasion. Still, I kept the backdoor open for her, using a "as if"-construction, using the word "friends". Still, the message was there. I was burning, and she had sparked the fire.

Her answer drove another stake into my belly. "If only I had my chance, which I believe I deserve, to be close to you I would become your ever reason, ever logic, ever inspiration", she wrote. Reading these lines, a heatwave rushed through my body. But she didn't let go with that. She finished me off with her last sentences. She wrote:

"Since you've been gone every single day is sunny. I want rain. I want you."

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize 81920

после подобной команды Time Machine перестала создавать бэкап.

у меня Leopard 10.5.2


проблема решилась только после того, как plist-редактором был откорректирован тип данных с String на Number в \Library\Preferences\com.apple.timemachine.plist (не уверен в точности написания, т.к. не под рукой)



так что проверяйте.


если кто знает как указать в командной строке тип данных, то напишите пожалуйста.

UPD:
в следующих сообщениях упоминается про Boolean

there is some surprise rain in the morning. running, I feel the soft drops cool on my face.

I remember you kneeling on the hotel bed, dark wet hair flowing over the white towel wrapped tightly around your body. a dark fairy with black, serious eyes. I see one teardrop forming. it grows for a while, then lets go and travels downward. when I bend over to gently kiss it away, I feel it hot on my lips. your eyes are closed. you shiver.

this was the second time you killed me.

The trouble with scientific writing by an amateur is you gotta write something that makes some remote sense. Especially because the person reading this was going to be an eminent professor, I could not just randomly bullshit a few scientific jargon hoping to convince him. In other words, like in tamil films, one cannot have the actor working in MS Word and make him a software systems architect. You gotta do a better job. So the beauty behind this story is not so much the time-loop (run of mill concept), but the time machine itself. There will be flaws naturally, but it was good enough to interest a prof whose pastime is kalaichifiying. Im done with the buildup. Stattt Moosik. Chee, forgot. I wrote this post a year back. Don't remember half  the concepts. So, aaruva kolar people, please don't do technical baitings.

Strange Signals

It was an early Monday morning. But in the stillness of the artificially lit corridors of the Turnton Fundamental Research Center, one would never know. This stillness was broken by the clatter of footsteps. A man walked hurriedly down the corridor. He then stopped as he arrived at a door, his destination. The sign on the door said ‘Relativistic Research Lab 12’. He opened the door. Inside was a small, wizened, bespectacled old man in a lab coat. He turned and his wrinkled face lit up when he saw his visitor.

This was Prof. Clip Hahn. Prof Hahn was born to Adalbert Hahn, an electrical engineer, and his wife, Dorothea, in Hamburg in Germany in the summer of 1988. His family migrated to Texas soon after his birth. He enrolled at the Spillfour County Secondary School in Austin. As he grew up, it became apparent to his parents that he was unlike other kids his age. He was very reclusive and did not enjoy playing with other kids. He instead preferred to immerse himself in books and study. Even at a young age he distinguished himself as a brilliant student. At 15, he won gold at the National Physics Olympiad gold and qualified for the international event in which he finished within the top ten. While in his tenth grade, he gained admission at the University of California at Berkeley as a recipient of the prestigious Miller Fellowship. He chose to do his major in Quantum Physics. He pursued a masters’ degree in the same field in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As one of the brightest minds in the country, he was invited to continue his research in theoretical physics at the Turnton Fundamental Research Center. He was only too glad to accept. He remained there for the rest of his life pursuing his own research, only occasionally traveling to the most prestigious universities to deliver lectures to the next generation of scientists.

It was through one of these lectures that the professor met Halim Nizh, his visitor. He was the professor’s research assistant. After a lecture, Halim came up to the professor and presented a paper which countered one of the claims the professor had made during the lecture. Prof Hahn was duly impressed. They then met on various other conferences and struck a good rapport with each other. Scientific minds can be somewhat unpredictable. The professor soon invited Halim to be his assistant at the Turnton facility. It was an offer Halim could not refuse.

Prof Hahn appeared rather excited, about as excited as a man of his age and bearing could get. “The machine! It seems to be producing some strange signals.” It was Halim’s turn to get excited. “What? So the machine is working? Well I’ll be..” “Yes! I tried to analyze the data and detected discontinuous pulses of high frequency gamma ray radiation! Also, the pulses are repetitive! It could well be that it is a message! I think we are on to something big here..”.

The Machine

‘The machine’ was the result of five years of intense effort put in by the professor and Halim. It was what a lay man would term a time-machine. However, it was not the kind of machine often depicted in science fiction where one just had to step into a wormhole and end up in another place at another time. There was still some time for that. The Hahn Engine only allowed for transfer of information in the form of electromagnetic waves between two different points in the four-dimensional universe.

The development of the engine was preceded the most important discovery of the decade, which made Prof Hahn an international scientific icon. The professor performed an experiment where atoms of Uranium were heated to very high temperatures and collided at high speeds in a vaccumised chamber. The chamber was made of thermolister-pf22, a silicon polymer that was similar to diamond in structure and was a very good conductor of heat and capable of withstanding very high temperatures. The collision resulted in the creation of particles much heavier than the Uranium atom and some other strange particles that simply disappeared on contact with matter, along with some of the matter itself, whenever attempts were made to isolate it. It was also found that there was no release of any form of energy in the collision. The heavier particles were found to have masses that were almost even integral multiples of the mass of the Uranium atom. They actually seemed to have the structure of nuclei thus making them the heaviest ions ever isolated. These ‘ions’ had a very short half-life of around 300 micro seconds on average. This, although small, was still significantly longer than most of the other synthetic elements isolated.

For almost 2 years, scientists were simply baffled by this strange phenomenon. It was Professor Hahn himself who came up with an explanation. He made a startling claim that the strange particles where particles of negative energy. That was why, at cooler temperature, on collision with matter, or positive energy, the two got cancelled out without any release of energy. He suggested the Uranium ions, after colliding, coalesced into a single particle of almost around twice the mass. The stability of the new particle was accounted for by the formation of the negative energy particles. The corresponding positive energy was converted into excess gluons which helped to sustain the existence of the ions formed. This explanation stunned the scientific community and made the professor the most well recognized scientist alive.

But the professor himself did not rest with the accolades he received. He realized the plasma of particles of negative energy and the heavy ions, which were subsequently named hahnions, provided a suitable condition for the creation of wormholes! He theorized, if the mass of the hahnions, and the pressure on each individual particle in the hahnions, became sufficiently large, they could be made to collapse in around the exotic particles to form temporary wormholes. The exotic particles that are forming would serve to prevent the throat of the wormhole from collapsing in on itself, allowing for temporary space-time travel! Another use of the exotic energy particles was that it prevented the formation of a blackhole. The wormhole would be formed before the particle collapses completely and the exotic particles would make this state stable by holding the throat of the wormhole open. On cooling, this state will collapse resulting in a very small nuclear explosion which would not even cause any damage to the equipment. A method to actually send information was still far off. But that was really not the professor’s aim. He only wanted to listen to universes by trying to detect radiation that may come through the wormhole. This, by itself, would prove that his machine works..

The professor embarked upon the development of this machine along with Halim. The project was a secret between the professor and Halim. They set about modifying the chamber in their previous discovery to include sensors to observe any incoming radiation. Also, the amount of Uranium gas to be placed in the chamber was precisely calculated to increase the probability of sufficient number of collisions occurring to allow for wormhole formation. All of this took the professor around two years to develop and the result was the Hahn Engine, ‘the machine’.

Significance of the Signals

Halim sat contemplating the significance of the ‘signals’. The professor and himself had succeeded in achieving what had long been a dream of mankind: space-time travel.

Only the previous week, the Hahn Engine had been giving erroneous results, when they first tested the machine. Although there was a yield of heavier hahnions, which in itself was significant, no wormholes were created leading to a great deal of disappointment among the two. Halim and the professor had spent the rest of the week trying to figure out what went wrong. Halim took the weekend off. But the professor spent the entire weekend at the labs trying to solve the problem. He knew he was on to something big. Sleep was an avoidable disturbance. And he did solve it. The calculation to determine the density of the gas was based only on the probability of effecting collisions among the heavy hahnions and had not taken into account the most effective way the energy passed to the machine would be distributed among the individual hahnions. The density of the Uranium gas was thus recalculated and the professor decided to do another test on Sunday. The result was the formation of a near vacuum situation and disappearance of observable matter from the chamber. The result could mean only one thing. A wormhole. Furthermore, on the sensors indicated a burst of gamma ray pulses. Pulses from another point in space-time. The experiment was a complete success. The professor, typically confident, simply sent a message to Halim asking him to report immediately.

‘Less Jagged’

All Halim could say was “oh!”. The professor continued, “I have a plot of the signals. I am sure it is not some random noise. The signal seems to be of a constant frequency and the pulses repeat every once in a while. The amplitudes of the pulses, however vary wildly. I am certain it is some kind of amplitude modulated code. I have quantified the pulses into digits. Here. Have a look”. Halim took the document and studied it meditatively for a few minutes. “Well this code will require all your genious to crack professor. The only thing I can conclude is the graph of the wave is a lot less jagged in the second part than in the first. “Hmmm.. Yes. You are right.” But I have run the data in the TFRC supercomputer to try to break the code. I suppose we will have to wait to see what the computer can tell us.

That night, the professor could hardly sleep. He knew he was on to something big. His position in the annals of science had already been assured. If only he could go a little bit further. The professor tried to recall his conversation with Halim. What was it that Halim had said which had drawn his mind?… ‘Less jagged’… Yes… That was it… Suddenly he could see a pattern. His mind took him back to his university days. His first year project. He had developed a theory for secure storage of data. It was literally impenetrable. Encrypted using three codes. One to code the data. One to code the previous code itself. The last one to randomly store the digits. It would take even a quantum computer, something still theory, many years to crack. Except, of course, the person who coded the data himself. He recalled the look on his professor’s face when he presented him with the paper, with a lingering sense of pride. He clambered out of bed and dashed to his study. He took out his logbook and started working feverishly. By morning, He knew the answer to the code. The codes were in fact the very ones he had used in his paper example. He also had a slightly dazed look on his face. He now knew something else…

A Blueprint?

The next day, Halim entered the lab to find the professor busy at work already. He looked at the professor. “Any luck with the codes?” The professor took his time. “Ahem.. Why yes as a matter of fact.. I managed to break the code myself.. It might sound surprising, but this particular code was something I had discovered as a student.” By now, Halim was too disoriented to be even surprised. “The pace of the recent developments had really shaken him. “The code actually is a blueprint of a machine. A machine which the message claims could be used to send messages across different points in space time. The part which you said was ‘less jagged’ actually represented a matrix which when assigned colours proved to be the blueprint. I really must thank you for your observation Halim.” “Aren’t you going to publish your findings professor? You know we have done something monumental here..” The professor looked up at Halim’s face. “You know Halim. I have come to think upon science more as a pursuit of truth. A tool to dig up the secrets of the creator. Acknowledgements from other people is almost irrelevant to me now. And I most certainly would not like to have others interfering in my quest. I shall build the machine and then inform the world in good time.” Halim enquired “haven’t you found out what the first part represents professor?” “Hmm.. Yes.. I have actually..” That was the professor’s cryptic reply. Halim did not press the issue further.

The Time Machine

The time machine in the blueprint was of intricate design. In an elementary description in the blueprint, there was a electromagnetic, specifically gamma wave modulating and broadcasting device integrated with a Hahn Engine. With this arrangement, the moment the wormhole formed, a chamber containing the broadcaster would begin to flash the signals and this would permeate through the entire reaction chamber and some of the signals would be teleported. Even the professor found it very difficult to work out the inner workings of the time machine. This task itself took him 3 months. Once this was done, he and Haliim started working on building the machine. The time machine, surprisingly, was not very costly to build. The professor could fund the project directly from the grants that Turnton gave him, removing the need for having to publish his work for the purpose of seeking funds for the project. The development of the time machine lasted an entire year. At the end of it, the professor was rather confident about the success of the machine. He seemed almost entirely oblivious to the enormity of the situation. He could not care less. He informed Halim of his decision to go and publish his work. He then decided to give a demonstration in front of a select group of scientists and the media. After all, his work would be of primary importance to entire humanity. It would be cruel to leave them out of the fun.

The Demonstration

The atmosphere at the demonstration facility in the Turnton Center was almost electric. Around a fifty of the who’s-who in the theoretical physics community had gathered to witness what could become the scientific breakthrough of the century. They had all read his paper and come only half-believing. Everyone looked visibly nervous. Everyone except the professor himself. Proceedings began with clockwork precision. The professor called the meeting to order. He declared the purpose of the demonstration was to teleport information through space-time. That put the breath out of everyone. The silence was pin-drop. The professor proceeded to demonstrate the machine explaining in a lumbering voice each step. He soon initiated the process. He then went on to display the readings of the sensors. The readings clearly showed a reduction in the intensity of the gamma ray radiation. The result was almost conclusive. The first teleportation had been achieved.

Questions Answered

The professor asked the scientists assembled if they had any questions about the experiment. Apparently no one did. Halim broke the silence. “Professor. I am quite curious to know what was the message that you teleported. I am sure you would not mind sharing it with us?” The professor took a deep breath. “No. I suppose I don’t. The message that I sent back was the blueprint of the machine.” “Eh? Now why is that? I mean…” Halim’s voice trailed off as his jaw dropped wide open. “You mean.. But how are you so certain professor? I mean the message could have been from anyone or anything..” “Erm.. You see, there was a difference between the first part and the second part of the original message we received. The first part were actually just random numbers. Generated and generatable only once. Also, and more importantly, the second part also carried a paragraph. He brought a small slip and handed it to Halim. It read “This is a message from your future self, Clip Hahn, three years later. This message is a coded blueprint of a time machine. You will build it in three years time and demonstrate to the world space-time travel. The above set of numbers is actually randomly generated at the Turnton center to show yourself that it is indeed your future self that created this message.” There was a brief period of silence when all assembled gathered their thoughts. This time Aleksandr Nemkovsky, a renowned physicist countered “But professor, this message raises more questions than answers. For one, if you did not invent the time machine yourself, then from where did the information come? And how is it that the time machine is able to transport the signals to that precise point in your past?”

“Yes indeed professor Nemkovsky. I have spent a lot of time the last three years trying to answer the very same questions. For the second one, I am working on a theory which says that teleportation can occur only between the two nearest holes in the fabric of space-time. Picture it this way. When water leaks from the tap, a hole, on to a flat rubber sheet with holes in various places, the water will most probably fall from the sheet through the hole nearest the tap. I can only imagine that this scenario is similar. Maybe the nearest blackhole in space is more than three light years away.

Now coming to your second question, it is something by which I confess I am baffled. However it is important to recognize that this situation is possible in any instance of time travel. If anyone does manage to travel back in time, then he can always pass information to people in the past about the know how to develop the technology and this would lead to a very similar situation. This can only mean he himself had gotten the technology from his own future. It forms a cycle you see. Incidentally, this experiment proves that the ‘many worlds’ postulates, which a lot of scientists consider seriously, is quite absurd. Otherwise there is no reason I should get the same random number everytime.

As to the origin of the information, I can only turn to philosophy. I think that we humans make a mistake in assuming that we are separate from the system and that it is out duty to explain everything that happens. We forget the biggest truth of all. WE TOO ARE A PART OF THE UNIVERSE! We need to look at ourselves and ask, do we know everything about who we are? Do we know what it is to live? Do we need to know at all? Maybe the answer to your questions lies in the answers to one of these questions.”

The people assembled did not quite know how to react. Only silence reigned. The professor, seeing that no other questions were forthcoming, declared the meeting closed, gathered his belongings and left. No one else stirred. Halim was left wondering if it would be wise to give up physics and turn to religion instead..

]]> http://nikvdnx.wordpress.com/?p=31 Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:44:55 +0000 nikvdnx http://nikvdnx.wordpress.com/?p=31 как всегда два способа одного и того же:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize 81920

Where the size is in Kbytes.

ну или либо править plist

http://earthlingsoft.net/ssp/blog/2008/03/x5_time_machine

рассматриваются внутренности приложения:
1. хардлинки
2. расширенные атрибуты
3. исключения для бэкапа (пути), которые не видны в настройках самого приложения
4. терминальные команды

I kept reading her sms over and over again. There were two sentences that irritated me. "Still hope you havent left my village for good...", the one. And: "They obviously dont care for you the way i do" the other. So she did care for me. Esme did care for me! I had had no idea.

But in what way did she care for me? Apparently in a way that made her want to see me again, if that's what she meant with she hopes I haven't left her village for good. Or is this something you say to be polite?

I didn't know what to make of this. Couldn't sleep. Felt the fire burning inside me. Lying awake, I heard my girlfriend breathing next to me, heard my youngest kid move. "Care for you the way I do" - I had to know what she meant by that. I had to find out.

I didn't find out this day. I flew down south, had financial talks the whole day, had to talk numbers I did not know anything about, then rushed back to the airport with the city train. Whenever unoccupied, my mind wandered to Esme. I couldn't bring together our good-bye and her text message. Had I missed something? Was she playing with me? I was stuck. During my flight back home, I kept rushing those questions through my mind. It was futile.

When I checked my mail in the evening, I found her message. My email address was on the business card I had given her on our last day when we were to meet for a coffee downtown. There was no text at all in the mail, just an mp3 file. I didn't know the band (Beirut), didn't know the song ("Nantes") either.

I downloaded it, played it - and felt a rush of emotion taking over.It's a cool, melancholic song, with and a voice that fits. Here's what it says:

well it's been a long time, long time now
since I've seen you smile
And I'll gamble away my fright
and I'll gamble away my time
And in a year, a year or so
this will slip into the sea
Well it's been a long time, long time now
since I've seen you smile

Nobody raise your voices
just another night in Nantes
Nobody raise your voices
just another night in Nantes

It was an unusual song in many ways. That's why it was so Esme. She also was unusual in many ways. Was it that which attracted me to her? Her being so different from all the other women I knew, all the other women I had known?

Did I feel so close to her because she was so different from the others because I deep inside felt that I am different, too?

The next day found me in the office again. Business as usual. I had to prepare for a trip scheduled for the next day. Flying south, I would have to talk my way through some business meetings about finance matters in my company's headquarters. It was warm and sunny, no trace of rain and drizzle, nothing to remind me of the last four days.

And yet nothing was the same.

I could not point out the differences immediately. It was more something like a blurring, a rising indistinctiveness, a slight change of point of view. Still, I could not pinpoint it to any special event, not to mention to any special person. It just was there, I could sense it.

I didn't have much time to think about my trip, and what had happened - or, to be honest, what had not happened. But that didn't stop me from reading on my cellular phone Esme's text message from yesterday. To be honest, I was a little disappointed as she did not ask any questions about my sms. Had it been that clear? I would've had questions on quite some of the points I had outlined, but well, maybe she was not interested.

I kept on reading her message over and over again, trying to find proof for my various theories. Finally, in the evening, I decided to send her another message.

21:08 Mick's SMS
Lady, Mylady. Felt good to get your sms. Knew it was you because of unfinished sentence. Add this to list. Some puzzle frenzy, maybe. Happens. Well, hope you're fine. No fast-talking today. No Echo Babel. Missed you though. Could've used a translator: numbers-me, me-numbers. Not my cup o'tea. Why wouldn't I text you yesterday? You wasted a whole afternoon on me. A rainy one, too. Your favorite. Just got yourself some coffee for that. Tough. But then, that's your middle name, ain't it? Amongst others. I'll be on the plane again tomorrow, one day in the secret capital. Business, no fun. No one interpreting. Take good care, Esme. Yours, M.

I was strangely excited when I sent it off. There was nothing special about this message, I thought. Used the word "missed" though, but clad it into a neutral outfit. Casual greeting at the end, not too personal. But still, I felt a little uneasy.

1 hour 40 minutes later I received her answer.

22:48 Esme's SMS
A tall guy in black shirt i have noticed with my blind eye downtown made me shiver inside. Still hope you havent left my village for good..So no funny business in your secret capital?Too bad.They obviously dont care for you the way i do.You helped me to earn some money,quite enough for a pair of posh shoes..I will call it 'wendy' to recall peter pan every time i put it on.May thee kids be dreaming of fairies tonight.Well,two kids and a MAN

This day was my last day in this city. In the evening I would board the plane and leave. Four more hours with the group, lunch, some spare time, then I would be on my way back home.

It had been really clever of me to book the early flight out, not the alternative one the following day. What should I do in this city, I had reasoned some weeks ago. Let's go in and go out before anyone notices that you are there. Of all the bad ideas I've had in my life, this comes very close to being the Number One Bad Idea of a Lifetime. But when I woke up in the morning, I had something else on my mind.

Open or closed? As stupid as this sounds, this was my only concern when I had breakfast in the small breakfast room at the end of the hotel. It was my only concern when I carried my bag to the car which would take me to the university. It was my only concern when I set up my laptop in yesterday's classroom.

It was my only concern when I noticed Esme entering the room.

I was always good in squinting. I could say hi to her, look her in the eyes, feel her smile, and at the same time check out her feet. Open shoes. Toes wiggling. You made my day, honey. This is a good day to die.

Somehow I survived. Later, when the lecture was over, we were having pre-packed lunch together with some participants in another room of the university.

"So what about some coffee downtown", I asked her.

"Sure", she said. And we had our date.

Two hours later I was sitting on the steps of the City Hall when my phone jingled.

14:45 Esme's SMS
Hey bossman! I will probably be some 10 minutes late. Do not talk to strangers, act dumb!

Actually, I was in no position to talk to anyone, dead rat in throat, heart pumping hard, wet hands.

14:47 Mick's SMS
No prob with dumb, Mylady. Will just be myself. M.

I texted back, glad to have some more time to catch my breath. I finally saw her walking across the square up towards me. When she had reached the foot of the stairs, I descended as gracefully as possible. First thing she did was to snatch my sunglasses from my nose, saying "It's about to rain, Mick. These ain't no rainglasses, right?" What can I say - she was so right.

We finally found a courtyard café with sofas outside, parasols, a big outdoor stage and a plastic cow climbing up the opposite wall. We had coffee, Esme some cigs, and we kept talking the time away. About the past, about the future, about traveling light or heavy, about finding a clean, well-lighted place of one's own, about love and marriage and children. Basically we were talking about life: Life as it is, life how it should be.

Then it was time to go. A drizzle had set in, so we hurried back towards my hotel where I had left my travel bag. We were walking fast and talking along, so when we finally stopped just south of City Hall where the road uphill towards the city gate and my hotel left the main square, we were both out of breath.

"Guess you'll find your way home from here", she said.

"Guess so", I said.

And there we were standing in the drizzle. Looking at each other, saying nothing for the first time since we had met at almost the same place some hours ago, and waiting for... I don't know what for.

So finally I said something like "Was great meeting you", and she said something like, "Yeah, was great meeting you too", and "Have a safe trip home" or something like this, and she stretched out her arm to shake hands.

I didn't shake hands with her. "What the heck", I thought. "I am not trying to dream about this woman for two nights and then shake hands with her." That's why I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, right cheek, left cheek.

I felt how she grew a little stiff when I did that, but of course it was too late to stop it then. Maybe that's not how you say good-bye in this part of the world to a stranger whom you did meet only three days before, I thought. Then again, we probably won't ever see each other again, so what.

We said good-bye again, I turned around and quickly walked uphill. I did not look back. I just walked towards the city gate, wondering whether I had committed a fauxpas, and congratulating myself to the fact that Esme did not have a brother who could come after me and break my knees out of some mysterious vendetta-like tradition.

On the plane back to my home country, I wrote the text message I had promised her earlier in the courtyard café. I wanted to tell her some things that came into my mind when thinking about her. It was play, you know. I planned to tease her a little because she had been snappy betimes, of course also in a teasing manner - and I really enjoy this, especially with women where this trait is very rare and therefore the more desirable.

So I wrote the sms, I've talked about that. Composed it on a white tissue. Scribbled, crossed out, rephrased. Fortunately, the flight took a while. Finally, it was done. I typed it into my phone, then sent it off.

23:02 Mick's SMS
Hey, Mylady. Me back in xxx. Here the list: (apart from the obvious) Pro. Crisp. Cinderella. OED. Kitten-toed. Provocative. Pecan-pie. Decorative. Burning sage. Crystal carbon. Oban (no ice. never). Screwball. Deep. So 80s. Maelstrom. Open. Cutting edge. Porcupine. Signed. Daring. Poker. Double-caff-frappuccino-to-go. Puzzleing. Cajun. Scythe. The Crying of Lot 49. Real. - Sorry, stated the obvious after all. Say hi 2 Les, Mr. Jack Potguy ;-) Mick

Then I got ready to go to bed. I was just brushing my teeth, when my phone went off.

23:17 Esme's SMS
I knew you would text me tonight. Thank you kindly for that.And for the list :) the kids are lucky having a chance to learn from the best

It did not take her long for this answer. That's what surprised me. How would she know I would? How could she know, after this awkward good-bye this afternoon? But answer she did.

This is not were it started, but this is where it began. I had no idea what "it" would be. And where it would lead me.

]]> http://thesprucecottage.wordpress.com/?p=722 Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:07:51 +0000 Virpi http://thesprucecottage.wordpress.com/?p=722

"Life isn't about going back, it's about going forward. Yes, there are times in our life that we wish we could relive, but, if we already lived them perfectly, why live them again? The adventure of life is that there's always something new. New challenges, new experiences. A fun game is a game that gets harder as it goes. So it is with life. Do you understand?"

This, I think, is wonderful advice and important for everyone to keep in mind, even if we're not attempting to make time machines to bring us back to the third grade.

Life is about things getting more challenging and overcoming those challenges and experiencing new things. If life never got harder than multiplication tables and cursive writing then America wouldn't have won the space race - and what's more important than the space race if we're ever going to colonize other planets when the resources of this one no longer sustain us. But let's not make this geopolitical - let's keep it personal. Let's realize the value of adventure and challenge and new experiences and watch episode 412 of South Park.

Did you like this episode? What was your most recent challenge and how did you overcome it?

To read this week's Fun with the Bible post, click HERE.