chriswelch.com

I was day dreaming tonight. I was living in New York. It was cool and dark outside and I think it must have been fall. I had people over at my apartment having a subdued party.

My apartment was nice but simple. There was art on the walls, but the walls and ceilings were white and industrial. There was dark, ambiant lighting the way I like it, and the rooms in the apartment were bright, yet warm. There were large windows, and a walk out balcony four or five stories above the street where people were talking. The balcony's sliding glass door was open, and the curtains around the door were blowing gently in the breeze.

The furnishings were rich and inviting. A large comfortable dirty red couch, and foreign coffee tables. Modern light fixtures and privacy screens were found throughout.

I don't know who was cooking, but the food was great. International, modern, and thoroughly New York. I was dressed much like I do normally, but with finer threads and sharply pressed. A button down shirt, and slacks; nice shoes and a belt.

I enjoyed being with people in the apartment. I didn't know any of them, but they seemed pleasent as they stood around talking and eating. I was so busy enjoying the surroundings I didn't get to speak with them, but they looked as though they were having a good time.

Then I could also see myself walking in the streets, but for some reason, only at night. I guess I imagine myself during the day when I'm living in California, and at night when I'm living in New York. The city has always been a night city to me. I was happy, as I walked down the street, although I do not know where I was going or where I had been, except to say that I was content.

To say nothing of the present, I was happy at that moment I dreamed of. Who's to say where life will lead, but I can only hope and work for satisfying moments like that in the future.

Two of the useful applications for open-source software came to me recently after working on a rather unrelated economics paper. I haven't really heard these applications phrased as such before so I thought I'd share them (however, I know I'm not so original in this matter, since the companies below seem to understand such things):

1. As software matures it becomes harder and harder for companies to compete with incumbant firms. The costs of creating a product from scratch that could stand up to Windows or the old MacOS would be staggaring, with little assurance of success. Open source software allows new firms a ready built platform of pretested, widely used code to jump off from. This actually improves competition and lowers prices in the market. This is demonstrated by Apple who created a fully modern, user-friendly operating system in a fraction of the time that they spent developing the now defunct Copland project (the rewrite of what was Classic MacOS) by building on the BSD platform.
2. In order to indirectly compete with incumbant firms, and to sell their own products, corporations such as Sun and IBM, at relatively little cost to themselves, can provide much needed equipment and money for capital expenditures to volunteer programmers who, for practice, fun, ego, or whatever, work on projects that can eventually become (with a little polish) high quality, mature applications competing with firms such as Microsoft. I will cite both OpenOffice.org, an office application suite, and Eclipse, a multi-platform, multi-language IDE, who were funded by Sun Microsystems and IBM, respectively, and now provide commercial quality, yet free, applications that many "real companies" are turning to full-time. (* please note the recent news story of the largest insurance company in India moving its 10,000+ employees to StarOffice, which is based on OpenOffice.)

These thoughts give me hope that one day Microsoft will, in fact, fall the way of the dinosaur, or at very least, move out of the way for more creative/non-Microsoft companies. I know, I know. Better an evil I know than an evil I don't.

More seriously though, this is a new manifesto for open source in my opinion. "Get experience and have fun. Create the building blocks that will help firms stay competitive and keep our software prices down (and kill Microsoft in the meantime)." For a guy that just switched from a Mac to a PC, you'd think I'd show more love. Nah, I'll rather save that love for my cat.

One nice thing in life is our freedom to choose, and while I'll grant the merits of the argument that choices are not really free, but just chosen from a menu, I'd argue that free society at least gives us the option, no matter how difficult, to run the other way in the face of conformity.

I'd like to say that all choices are easy, but they're not and freedom never is. I pity the people I see who give up the freedom to choose for the freedom from difficulty. For all the people who don't have the ability to choose, it is made so much more clear how worth life freedom really is.

Freedom is choice, and even under the thumb of an oppresive government we granted ourselves the freedom to choose revolution and change the course of our history. I wonder how so many in our country can choose not to vote, because when they do they choose to not have a choice and choose to give up their freedom by even an inch, and I would say much more.

I've been thinking about choice recently, as my ever hastening day of freedom from this academic institution draws nearer. Over the last few weeks, I've had to make a lot of tough choices, and one of the consequences of choice is risk. The more choice we are willing to accept responsibility for, the more risk we bear.

My dream has always been to be the ultimate chooser of my life. God gave us free will and I intend to not live my life in some cubicle somewhere letting someone call the shots for me. So for me, freedom requires self-employment. I come from a line of entrepreneurs, and although the uncertainty of an unknown future is disconcerting at times, with great risk we can obtain great rewards.

Even if payment is not made in a paycheck, knowing that you can wake up and decide what you're going to make in this world has some merits. I'd have to say that it's the greatest adventure in my life.

No doubt that choices are hard, and sometimes we just have to buckle down and make them, but the joy of knowing that we have that right — that freedom — is knowledge that we have choice to accomplish great things for ourselves and for others.

I hate it when people beat me to the punch with a great idea. I really need to come up with something cool that's not being done successfully or at all.

When I was a kid, growing up with a very religious mother, I was able to grasp the importance of not talking about religion at the table very early on. Politics though, never struck me as something to get that worked up over. While I'm a religious person, I'll be first to admit that people can get really whacky, emotional and generally unreasonable when talking about their god(s).

Politics though, seemed like a very straightforward kind of thing. I thought politicians were just being manipulative when they slandered each other so vehemently, but I never really saw it at home. My opinion was that participating in our democracy was a matter of keeping an eye on what's going on, and when election time roles around, base your vote on the person who you think will affect the changes that are important to you.

Now that I'm in college, I find that people are really getting into the Bush/anti-Bush debate. Don't get me wrong, I have my issues with Bush, but my real problem is with people who find it appropriate to be insulting or condescending with those who have different opinions. When I've had a different point-of-view, I've been called uninformed, unintelligent and an immoral person. Some of you reading this may have had similar experiences.

While I disagree with their assessments, they of course have a right to make them. I guess my problem is in their narrowminded, self-righteous attitude. I know I'm getting worked up here, but it's really troubling to me to see friends and colleuges turn on each other when in fact there really is very little difference between the sides of the aisle.

It's no wonder, in my humble opinion, that so many people decide not to vote. When they do express their opinions they get lambasted by their friends and co-workers with some of the most venomous insults since middle school. I frankly don't blame the majority of Americans who decide that they'll stay out of the election. With so much negativity and divisivness, it's crossed my mind too!

Unfortunately, the problem stems from the same reason there is so much of this in religion. The fact is that much of "consumer" political thought is based on belief and opinion. None of us consumers really have the benefit of perfect information, nor do any of have the unique talent of knowing it all. Without perfect light, there is only opinion.

The so-called informed, who get their facts from their "independent" news sources are usually just quoting their campaign headquarters or some other online/offline slanted news publication who's only presenting a fraction of the story. Conjecture, opinion and "numbers" from the media, are cheap as far as I'm concerned. Democrats claim Bush invaded Iraq to fund his big interest buddies? Show me the money. Bush says we invaded Iraq for WMD? Where are they?

I'll tell you what. Show me a person who can argue both sides of the aisle, and I'll show them my complete and total respect. You don't have a basis for your own argument until you know the basis for your opponent's.

I heard this tonight as I was driving home. "Grab a shovel. Tonight on Classical 91.5, Christopher Seaman is going to be talking about the white stuff."

Call me crazy, but I thought it was amusing.

I have some time this afternoon, and I initially wanted to post my Ireland pictures (which are posted), but you may also notice a bunch of other miscellaneous updates that I've also been meaning to take care of.

Off to study!

I started working this morning at 5:30 to make some finishing changes to a client's site. 6 hours later I was done.

My apartment also has NO heat control. I'm either suffocatingly hot, or freezing cold. That may explain why this morning none of my sheets were on my bed, and my pillow case was missing — yet I was freezing when I woke up.

I just spent some time reading my friend Lan's blog. Her's is mixed up with short and long entries. I liked it. I think I'm going to start doing the same format just so I can post more often. Sometimes I don't have the time.

Oh yea, I just bought skis today! Bristol Mountain here I come :)