Freeware (often) means ****(Bad)ware

By definition. I mean, from a survivalistic standpoint, if you put in so much time developing something, why would you just give it away, unless you were a reckless millionaire? Only reason you began working on it is simply because it was important to you, even if no one else gave a rat's ass.

Nevermind. I guess I'm just pissed. I've been trying to download Xilinx's (not some small-timer, we're talking about a billion dollar company here) free and only IDE for FPGAs, and the file is 5 GB long. Not a problem, but do they have a torrent? No, just your average download link, as if we all have fiber optic bandwidths. Even that would not have been  problem thanks to download managers, but thats not it. No, as I discovered after three (not one, not two, but three) sleepless nights, the download they provide has a way of crashing after crossing the 3 GB mark. Are you kidding me? But you still restart like an idiot, because its the only way.

Not this time. This time, I'm not gonna care. I'm gonna open my download manager five days from now and it better be done.

P.S: Sorry, but I couldn't resist rubbing it in everyone's faces, that this is my biggest problem right now. Doesn't make it go away though.

Happiness.

I have, and I believe I always will be, happy. Nothing will change that, because I've seen things that try. I've tried, myself.

Yet the thought occurs that it might perhaps be because I've never let myself not be. As a kid (over a decade ago), once upon a time, I was always sad. I've been nihilistic, alone, tormented, and perhaps suicidal. I have been all these things despite my never having a reason to. I had friends, parents who loved me, girls even, but there was always some part of me that believed that maybe, just maybe, there was something more. I tried everything in progression. Every activity I knew, every sport, every hobby, every science I'd ever heard of. And despite my acquaintance and subsequent friendship with them, I have never found the one that made me truly... Satisfied.

This is me, letting go. For a minute. Literally.

Tomorrow you'd find me as I've always been, happy. And I realised that I wasn't faking it, despite my ability to. I am, happy.

Back to the story.

In the midst of my angst, something changed. The one that I realised I was looking for, I began to find in everything. And that's when I fell in love.

With everything. There's not a girl I've met that I haven't fallen for, not a breath I've despised, not a second of my existence I wouldn't give thanks for,  were I to believe it a gift.

Once again for the cheap seats, I love my life, I love my world, and I wish you would someday find what I have.

Storm. Pass.

Its been a while.

In many ways, I am not the person I was, and in these months I've learned valuable lessons. About duplicity, about courage, about realizing the things that truly matter in the course of your life and tuning out the things that don't even when they shove their nonexistent jaws in your face. (Cheap shot?)

But I've had the pleasure of realizing that the thing I've loved to say to those in troubled times still held true, for me. It really was hard to stay mad at anything, or anyone, when I could simply look around me and be amazed at the beauty in the things around me, and if I could ever go back in time, I would choose to do everything exactly the same way. Does that make me insane? Because if it does, maybe I am.

On a lighter note, run for your lives. I have decided to turn this 'blog' into something of a journal, and I am compelling myself to be more juvenile in my postings. No more philosophical conundrums, no more fables or analogies (if I can help it). Why? Because I do feel juvenile, and I want to experience those things which I haven't experienced yet, live deep and suck all the marrow out of live, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Seriously though, I realize that this blog, despite any readers it may have, holds archaeological importance to me, in that I expect it to help some future version of me discover his growth and where it went wrong (and right) should he want to. And seeing as it's me I'm talking about, I'm sure he would. So, sorry readers, from now, this blog is dead.

Brigades of Light

Bridges, perhaps, are meant to be burnt. Every platoon, under its commander, will be a light brigade one day. I look at the contacts, the active conversations on the very device you're reading this in, and I think of the day I'll use them for one last, big favor. Until then perhaps I'll hold on to them. So until I die for real, I'll keep accumulating these 'lives', these power-ups.

All except a few.

Been a while.

If happy ever after did exist, I would still be holding you like this...

Just kidding. Just because I'm not on rebound doesn't mean I can't enjoy Maroon 5...
Problem?

Lovely.

Rita Hayworth singing 'Put the blame on Mame' is one the most beautiful things I've experienced, ever.

Every time I watch the clock pass midnight, it feels like turning over another page in your notebook. The lines look up at you, waiting to be filled, and you're excited to crown it with that primal flourish.
I watch the hours count up, each following the next in mechanical precision, and I wonder, am I better off left alone? Would I, should I face eternal solitude, be devoid of the need for a Friday? Or could the endless unexplored vistas of creation in my thoughts be enough, peppered by these amazing memories I hold dear?
If I had a bucket list, finding out would top it.

Timepieces

Have you ever looked at someone so beautiful that you wished you could live in that moment forever? If life could stop, if you could stop existing so that perhaps it would be your only lasting thought as a dying man? If only you could slice away that piece of space and time and lock it away, frozen, so that it never goes bad?

   But it does. Everything loses its glow as time goes on. But you learn, you learn to slow things down. To ignore the things that matter not, and to immerse yourself in those fractions of a second that are filled with so much beauty and love, that they make it worth living, moving forward in anticipation of another, should it take a hundred years. Because once you learn to see it, you'll smile, for you'll see how easy it becomes.

    I've been waiting all my life, and today has helped me remember why it becomes worth waiting for, even if it takes every last breath.

Top of the world

So this is what cloud nine feels like. I haven't a worry in the world (excluding long term ones :)) (And that, the bracket-smiley thing still bugs me)
My body obeys every command I give it, work couldn't be better, there's food and drinks in front of me that I'd love to eat, there's a beautiful girl out there who for some reason hasn't yet tired of my company, and I'm home early to watch a movie and get 8 hours of blissful sleep. What more could a guy ask for?

Living in the Past

Sometimes I like to go back, think about things as they were. Not compare, not feel better or worse about where you are now, but simply to live in the past, feel like you used to, good or bad. Live in the past, if only for a minute or so. But that minute isn't just a minute. It draws from a pool of memories spanning weeks, months, years, letting you travel through your mistakes, your fortunes, the things that still bring a smile to your face, the things that still make you wince.
    When I was a kid, or actually when I was more of a kid than I am now, I used to be in a different school, and we had a school bus that took us to school everyday. It was really crowded, and the suspension was literally non-existent, so every jolt meant a collective 'whoop', almost always followed by the sound of someone's failed landing. It was one of the best times of my life, and to this day I did not know why. The thought of it still makes my heart pound, perhaps for more reasons than one, but it was the ride. Someday, when I'm older, I'm going to go back, and take that bus, if its still there.

Semantics.

I'm a very lucky man. In more ways than one, but the one I've really come to recognize as the most potent is my knowledge of the many languages I've had the pleasure of knowing. I'm able to speak up to six or seven, but one at a time, three have been native for me.
Malayalam, you could say, was my first love. We have a history longer than most marital affairs today can claim, and we parted good friends. We should perhaps have not parted at all, but we had to, and much as I wish we could stay friends, I'd be wrong in saying that I still have as much command over it as I've ever had.
Hindi and me, we've had a short affair. We barely knew each other, yet we had a good time.
Both of them lost, due to the increasing influence of English, the one that seems my eternal companion.
Yet I am forever happy to have known them, simply because I could realize how varied the thoughts of men are, coming from different parts of the world. I believe men are at their most transparent when they philosophize, which is perhaps why the ways of truly philosophizing varies so widely between languages. I have listened to ghazals, musings of great poets such as Vayalar, and though there is as much of a gulf between them as there is between the works of Wordworth and Bob Dylan, I count myself lucky to have been apprentices to the words of great men. To read them, and realize that all has not been said, to read them and to marvel... at beauty. For someone I do not know once said, 'Its hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world'.

But this post would be incomplete without my bellyaching and complaining about the way things have become. I do not live in the past, yet it does not take insight or even eyesight to realize what we have turned into. Inconsequential creatures, our gazes are as brief as our appetites for knowledge, and we while away our time 'tweeting' or emoting while words fall back to the apples they came from, at least those of us with them anyway.
Lost, are we?