The Serpent's Wisdom

It's been almost a year since I took Belief-o-matic, so I thought I'd see what it said. It's pretty close to my last set of results from April 2004, though Secular Humanism scores significantly higher since I've become a bit more agnostic.

( belief-o-matic results )

Is there a view that lets you see the most recent entries you've posted in a given filter?

(If not, there should be.)

I just lost an entry, when trying to post it, in which I expounded a my solution to the problem of life, the universe, and everything -- the literal culmination of all of my research in philosophy of mind, esoterica, mysticism, physics, and religion. My last post about the Hard Problem (quite profound in itself, if I say so myself) was just a spin-off thereof.

Because I took too long to write the entry, LiveJournal just gave me some stupid error message about the time code -- and then refused to let me click "back" to the text of the entry.

And now I'm too tired to rewrite it.

If I die during the night, humanity will suffer the grave loss until someone else comes along and fits all of the pieces together.

Next time I use Word and/or Semagic. I promise.

Based on the lj interests lists of those who share my more unusual interests, the interests suggestion meme thinks I might be interested in:

( can you stand the suspense? )

My background shows up sometimes, sometimes it's not there.

Does anyone else here ever get this error? I've gotten this intermittently every day for the last two or three weeks when trying to view the site.

Error running style: Died in S2::run_code running ReplyPage::print(): Style code didn't finish running in a timely fashion. Possible causes:

• Infinite loop in style or layer


• Database busy

Also, I just tried to reply to a comment and got an error message.

It's little crap like this, in addition to the big stuff that's been happening to me, which is making me crazy.

Who do I have to blow to get off of this god-forsaken and accursed Chef-8 subcluster?

Unless yet another new technical problem develops (which I'm expecting), this is the last time you'll hear me grumble about LJ. Largely because I won't be around much.

As it states in the second response to my technical support request, the two entries that are missing are gone for good.
http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=307277

I'm glad that neither of them were extremely important, lengthy posts like this or this or this. I haven't always kept a backup copy, even of important posts, because I was paying LiveJournal to store this information for me, and to provide simultaneously a forum where I could get intelligent feedback on my thoughts and research and ideas as it progressed.

Even still, one of them was a very important sentiment that is now gone.

In the meantime, I will be trying the archive tools or going through the memories and saving my entries to hard drive, and will be developing a system to organize my ongoing thoughts on my hard drive and on some sort of backup -- either floppy disk or CD-R (which would require purchasing a new CD burner to replace the one in my PC that has crapped out).

For interaction I will probably return to Beliefnet. I might look into DeadJournal or UJournal or BlogSpot; whatever I do I will post here. Or I might start giving a lot more attention to Yahoogroups again. I may decide to CC important posts here, but I am terribly afraid of losing any good discussion that takes place. Losing a post like the ones linked to above and the discussion that followed would be heartbreaking.

Still, I doubt I will abandon LJ just yet, as I really do love this site. I just can't stand the ongoing technical issues -- the "unknown journal" message I still get routinely when posting comments, and so on.

PS. If you have commented on a post of mine recently, and the comment is now missing, as many of them are, it was not me who deleted it.

Edit 7/12/2004 10:05AM. This morning, I'm feeling very "locked in" here. It's difficult to overstate how important LJ has become in my life, which sounds kind of weird and obsessive, but it has truly made a big difference. I don't know what else is out there that can really take its place. At the same time, I'm resentful that I'm in this position. For example, I could pay for web space and use that as my blog, but that would not be the same in terms of interaction.

lady_babalon accused me of overreacting when I said my big fear is that LJ will go the way of so many previous dot-coms, and one day we'll log on and LJ just won't be here any more. "Never happen," she said, and she's probably right. Perhaps it's just a part of my larger fear of abandonment, or something like that. But it is not unreasonable to be afraid that LJ's technical problems will continue to snowball, and that gaps in reliability will continue to grow. I have already lost entries; how long will it be before I come here and half of my memories are gone?

Mostly for my own reference. Now that I'm working and have money to buy things with, I want to maintain a list of books I want to buy.

The floor is also open to recommendations.

( Book wish list )

I want anyone and everyone who reads this to post in here something they would like to do with me someday.

Then post this in your journal to find out what I want to do with you.

And no, this doesn't mean sexual stuff. Unless, of course, you reeeallly want to. ;)

A meme from burkean

My journal is called _____ because _____.
My subtitle is _____ because _____.
My friends page is called _____ because _____.
And, just for the hell of it: My username is ____ because _____.

My journal is called "The view from here" because I want to emphasize that it is my perspective. This is both a philosophical position (reflective of my basically postmodern perspective) and a disclaimer (what you read here are my views, subject to imperfection, and subject to change).

The subtitle is "We apes are a strange bunch," because, well, we are.

My friends page is called "Sophia's many minions of doom," because, well, you are.

My username is sophiaserpentia because that is the name under which I have taken esoteric initiation. It is suggestive of "Serpent Wisdom."

I'm feeling a very strong urge to sift through my thoughts and beliefs and philosophies and start coalescing them into some sort of coherent picture. I wrote the essays on the Renewal Gnosticism page about two years ago, and that was the last time I sat down and sorted through my thoughts in anything resembling a systematic fashion.

Since then many of my ideas have matured and progressed, but I've approached matters in a very ad hoc fashion. There is no good reason why I should do otherwise, my approach is primarily reflective, by which I mean I do not operate from some sort of laundry-list agenda of topics, but simply reflect on topics as they arise. It sometimes amazes me that there is any consistency to my thoughts at all, but -- what is that word that means my ethics and philosophy are driven by a concise set of principles? -- starts with a "p" I think? -- whatever that adjective is, that's the way my mind works, philosophically.

This journal has been an amazing tool in helping me to collect and organize my thoughts for later reference, and see patterns in my responses to things. More and more now, I can see when a topic comes up that chances are I've already expressed some sort of opinion and can restate or revise as necessary. Now that I'm covering the same ground over and over in similar ways, I'm sensing that I've reached the end of a parenthetical sort of period in my philosophical life, and it's time to organize thoughts, maybe for yet another start on the book I've been writing for years now. (That poor thing!)