I think most people have a special thinking place, one where every thought can pass through one's mind freely, with nobody around to intrude and nobody around to pass on their snarky analysis about why your special thoughts just aren't special.

For me, this place is the loo. Yes, that place that we all need to visit every day at least once. And the amazing thing about it is that for me the loo represents a place of equality. Of neutrality. Of tranquility. Everybody needs to visit the loo -- the president and the janitor, the rich and the poor, the clean and the dirty. It cuts across every divide that mankind has artificially created so that we can feel a little more secure as individuals. It cuts across races, gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, language, culture, everything. No church, no government structure, and in fact no other artificial creation can come close to providing this level of equality. That is the sanctity of the loo.

Not everybody gets the same kind of loo of course, but that's not relevant. Be it out in a wheat field, on the banks of a river, out of your apartment window, over at your in-laws' house, or sometimes even in your own pants, everybody who needs to go to the loo, just goes to the loo. If I were looking for the one universal human behavior, it would be the act of going to the loo. Perhaps we should consider sending a representation of this act up in the next Viking spacecraft so that it would give aliens the best possible representation of the human race.

Strangely enough, many people aren't put off by the revolting smell of their own excrement, but choke if they come anywhere near somebody else's. I am very decidedly a member of this category. So the smell doesn't really hamper my brains ability to harness the infinite dimensions of knowledge and extract only the most immediately meaningful ideas out of it. Right from the moment I place my bottoms on that cold toilet seat, I enter a whole new dimension. In the loo, and in the loo alone, I can make parallel universes coalesce, I can generate 3D holograms using laser sources, and I can find solutions to world hunger.

My loo is my temple. I find time to think about religion and God when I am in the loo. I find time to think about people, and my relationship to them, and all the things I've done right and all the things I've done wrong. It's the place where I rally up motivation to face the challenges that wait for me outside and to put behind me my failings of the past. It's where I cool down my temper, and where I generate passion to finish whatever I'm working on.

It also serves as an excellent excuse for almost anything. Why isn't the essay finished yet? Because I went to the loo. Honey, can you help me with cleaning out the shed? Sorry dear, I need to go to the loo. Mr President, where were you when the first plane crashed into the WTC? Oh, I umm, was in my office attending to some "private matters", but was immediately informed of the news within minutes of it happening. Everybody, at all levels, uses loos as an excuse. And there really is no better excuse available!

If there is one thing that is unpredictable, besides the exact quantum state of an electron or other elementary physics particle, it is how long someone is going to spend in a loo. One could theoretically create a perfect random number generator linked to the actual time spent by an individual inside a loo. I personally hate to come out of there in less than five minutes. But there is never any guarantee on when I actually do come out. It could be sooner, it could be much much later. I have at times remained glued to the toilet seat to the point where my legs become numb and I can't even walk out of the loo when I am done.

So, how about you? What is your special thinking place? This blog doesn't allow for comments yet, so just email me.

I love the fragmented and distributed nature of the internet. At times however it can be a little annoying. One such instance is when you need to relocate your website and the DNS changes for your domain name take anywhere from 8 hours to 4 days to propogate across the internet. Of course, given the sheer size of the internet, it's actually remarkable how the whole thing just works. It makes me wonder both at the sturdiness as well as the fragility of the internet.

Fragility? The internet is one tremendously resilient beast when it comes to staying alive, so I'm not saying that is fragile. I mean fragile in the sense that everything is tied together with such simple processes, but with thousands of them. Well, it's just pretty awe-inspiring. Thinking about this gives me the same feeling as when I look at the towering Himalayas, or massive buildings, or when I look down on cities from the top of massive skyscrapers.

Last night I successfully transitioned from my previous webhosting company (which I will keep anonymous, but which is not difficult to figure out if you do some research) to a new account with Exa-Bytes Network. As I note on my website, Exa-Bytes is a Malaysian company but it provides hosting from its excellent center in Colorado. This transition was necessary for me to complete the task of upgrading my website to ASP.NET, although the whole upgrade process will still take a long time. In any case, I thoroughly recommend Exa-Bytes. I think Tophosts.com rates them as a top 10 hosting company.

The actual transfer of my webpages was very smooth. I finished the whole process in under 30 minutes, and have encountered no bugs or problems yet. The only inconvenience is that of DNS propagation. Once rasterware.com points correctly to my new website and everything is working, then I will make the changes to rasteroid.com as well.

I really enjoy Joel Spolsky's writings.

Joel on Software - The Law of Leaky Abstractions

Have a laugh:

http://www.yzedf.com/text/whatversion.txt

Now you know why you need to really evaluate new software versions before upgrading to them :)

I just found a very informative post by Frater_219 on Slashdot on the fundamental difference between the OO and the RDBMS paradigms. Here is the link:

http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79683&threshold=2&commentsort=0&tid=126&tid=156&mode=thread&cid=7039736