Recently had a dream, in which I was in India. I needed to meet somebody important in some remote area. With great difficulty I purchased a train ticket and boarded a train. For some reason I was riding right on the top of the steam locomotive that was moving with great speed. I decided to check my ticket, and as I took it out of my wallet, a gust wind ripped the ticket out of my hand. I started thinking about what to do, but the ticket continued flying right behind me, flapping in the wind. I made sure there was no tunnel ahead, stood up and caught the ticket. It wasn’t the original ticket but a copy, but it was just as good. Just as that happened, I realized that the train got lost. It wasn’t a big deal though – it missed a turn and looped back. I remembered the road and would have been able to tell the machinist where to turn.
Daydreams
I have two recurring daydreams that run through my mind in the morning, as I’m making my way from the subway platform to my cubicle. I’ve had them for years and years.
In the first one I’m standing inside the office tower where I work and look outside. The longboat from the spaceship I’m a captain of is hovering outside. Most of my crew is in it, the mechanic is holding my space suit, cargo master – my two guns. The air is swirling from the heat of the longboat’s thrust rockets pointed down. The pilot edges the boat forward and the window shatters. They motion for me to jump, hundreds of meters above Manhattan. We got to get back into orbit and rendezvous with my ship.
The second daydream is not so science-fictiony. In it I own a small apartment in a tall residential tower: there was always on near every location where I worked. When I worked at 888 Broadway, a tower like that was being built, and the ad at its base promised dedicated ISDN connections for every tenant. Anyway, my apartment is unlike any that I ever lived in: it’s very high up, it has floor to ceiling glass windows, all the furniture is super modern (Design Within Reach kind). And now, I don’t really have to show up at work right away – I can go to my apartment in the sky and take a nap first.
What about you? Any daydreams you can share?
Dreamblog: Dream Caused by Server Support Calling me Over MySQL Crash a Second Before Awakening
I had a couple of fun nights with server support people fixing and troubleshooting database crashes. One positive aspect of being woken up at 4 in the morning is the dreams brought on by sudden awakening. I had two memorable ones: one that directly relates to the server issues, and another probably cause by reading I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
In the first dream I heard by parents bickering with my grandfather. I immediately realized that I was dreaming as my grandfather is very dead. I was glad that I finally achieved lucid dreaming, and also glad to see my grandfather whom I miss terribly. I cried “Gramps!” and ran to him. I was hoping that like that Pooka in Donnie Darko my grandfather had a message for me. I asked him how he was, and he said that he was all right. I woke up then and saw my parents, who apparently heard my scream and shook me awake. Of course I was in another dream layer, as I don’t live with my parents since getting married. My grandfather looked healthy and was cheerful enough as a member of “manipulated dead”. Hopefully we are not in a Tangent Universe, unless that server that keeps crashing is the Artifact…
The second dream is a bit easier to analyze. I was standing at a fishing at a pier right near my job. I was a bit worried that my boss might see me fishing and decide that I was slacking, but my wife told me to go ahead and enjoy myself – it was still 4AM and I did put in a lot of overtime lately. She found a guy who agreed to rent me a fishing rod. It wasn’t as good as mine (the one with the Van Staal Reel), but was usable. Except as soon as I stepped up to the rail, it was swarmed with people who proceeded to cast right in front of me. This was exactly like resource starvation in the database: a few people managed to cast their lines, but so many people casting so close to each other just end up in a lot of tangled line and cursing…
Related: my other dream about my grandfather (it was in ’02, he was still alive then), another similarly recursive dream I had as well as the rest of my dreamblogging (it’s not even boring, I promise). I am glad that I wrote down all of those dreams, rereading them is pretty interesting now.
If you know a good sysadmin with MySQL experience who’s looking for a job, please let me know (my contact information is here).
The Art of Dreaming
For once, I haven’t forgot to wear the little armband that comes with my sleep phase tracking alarm clock (I’ll write a review of it soonish) and everything worked perfectly: I was woken up right after a dream (and thus REM phase) was ending, well-rested and alert.
This also made me remember the dream that I was seeing. Believe it or not, all I did in that dream was look at modern art at the Guggenheim museum (the one in New York).
They are the Same Kind of Rockets, Really
In my estimation, for every wonderful dream that I get about flying into space I get 5 to 10 horrifying dreams about nuclear war. Also I relatively frequently bump into Rupert Murdoch and Geraldo Rivera but never Matt Groening or Darren Aronofsky.
Dreamblog: Having a Ball
Two nights in a row I had dreams about attending balls. The first dream had me hanging out with Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy in 1700s. This is pretty easy to explain — I am reading a book about the Tolstoys.
This morning I had another dream, where I was at a Newscorp ball at the Hilton and talked to Rupert Murdoch. He completely agreed with all the things that I proposed to be done at TV Guide and I woke up very pleased with myself.
TV Dreamblog
I’ve been pretty busy the last couple of days and did not get my fill of TV. The day before yesterday I had a dream in which I was working on some bikes with Paul Teutul Sr. Today’s dream involved me working for detective Monk, I think, while investigating Tony Soprano and his associates. Paulie Walnuts had a blood stained shirt from someone he murdered hanging above his bed, he wanted to hide it, but was too lazy to do so.
I Dream of Xenu
Here’s the dream I had last night.
Scientologists asked me and my dad to help with a gigantic unfinished skyscraper that looked like a cross of the Ryugyong Hotel and the Hearst Tower. We tried to install some floor tiles somewhere close to the top, but could not locate the right equipment. My dad left, and I asked permission to look around and take some pictures (which I surprisingly got).
A helpful scientologist took me to one of the finished floors closer to the bottom and showed me a computer terminal that allowed you to do all your Christmas shopping without leaving the tower. I was very impressed with the user interface and the choice of products. The Church employs a huge amount of people, so it can buy in bulk; also many scientologists are computer programmers – my guide explained.
We wandered the halls for a little while, I played around with e-meters, and then my guide started digging up a floor in some hallway. He unearthed a body of a man dressed in superhero uniform of some kind, and proceeded to break off a toe from it. He explained that many people were buried in the floors of the tower, and that this in fact was the _original_ Xenu. My galactic-overlord-grave-robbing guide was planning to sell the toe to pay for auditing.
The whole thing ended badly – alarms sounded, I left, but did not rat out Xenu’s grave robber. Later, they accused me of stealing Xenu’s toe.
Dreamblog: Cosmo’s Revenge
I rarely have any recollection of my dreams, but when I do, I usually record them in my blog. Last night’s dream can be solidly categorized in slapstick humor / sitcom. It had pretty good camera work, but I am not sure if it had the laugh-track. I did wake up laughing though.
From what I gather, it was a Seinfeld spin-off or an unaired Seinfeld episode. The dream starts in Kramer’s apartment. Kramer is growing increasingly annoyed with his noisy upstairs neighbor. When the camera cuts to the upstairs apartment, it shows a young man simultaneously tap-dancing and dribbling a basketball. The noise finally stops just as Kramer goes upstairs to confront the noisemaker. A really nice spiraling camera work on the staircase follows. Then the camera cuts to Kramer inside the apartment seeing his antagonist sleeping on the floor, hugging the basketball. Zoom in to Cramer’s face and hands: he is grimacing and gesturing as if he is about to make a loud scream and spook the sleeper. But then Kramer’s face changes — he gets a better idea. He proceeds to the bathroom, takes a tremendous dump and leaves without flushing.
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An Old Dream or One Of These Days, To the Mars, Alice!
LJ user avva mentioned in his journal that he is ashamed of the fact that there was never a manned Mars mission. Also our beloved overlord keeps talking about a Mars mission. So on my lunch break I dug around in my email and found an old dream of mine that never made Jesse Reclaw’s Slow Wave:
There I was on Mars with four other astronauts. I fell into a red sand dune (kind of like quicksand). I remember hating the guts of some other astronaut, who helped me out of it, because I could have easily gotten out myself. It just made me look bad on TV.
I was also tremendously pissed off at NASA. You see, their moronic plan of getting us off the planet was this: one astronaut would have a small rocket pack (and that wasn’t me). The others would grab his arms and legs, he would turn on the rocket pack and we would fly into low orbit. There we would find a small refueling craft (something like a barrel of fuel). With that fuel we would be able to reach our spacecraft in higher orbit. Faster, cheaper, better my ass — I thought.