More Highway in Hawaii

I had my recurring highway in Hawaii dream again. This is the second time I've written about it here, but I have it all the time.

This time was another bypass around the downtown Waikiki/Honolulu area. It was a huge road, and people (including me) were driving along it like a race track. It was wide and broad, and I saw the entire route, even as they were building it, like an overhead view... almost like the track map in a racing video game. Other people I knew were racing along it too, and Fran was with me.

The odd thing was, that it seemed perfectly normal to be driving along at high speed, even though the road was still under construction. Although I knew I needed to go certain ways, the road would end, and construction workers would detour us, so I'd have to find another way.

I passed some people I knew (a brother and sister), who were traveling the other way. They were former teammates and swimmers, but unlike most of my swimming dreams, they were current-day adults. (I had been scanning old swim team photos and adding them to my Facebook albums, so it's obvious why they made their cameo.) They were lost, so in the brief moment as we passed, I waved for them to follow me. Never mind that we were going opposite directions on opposite sides of a highway...

As I tried to get them to follow me, my vantage point changed and I was flying, looking down. Now they were also in a plane, but on the ground. They couldn't find a place with a long enough runway to take off. From up high I could see that everywhere they turned (the area looked like an enormous tennis court complex... if the sidewalks were runways, but surrounded all around by giant chain link fences) there wasn't enough space. When I woke up, I was still buzzing around trying to find them a place to take off. The tennis courts reminded me of the ones near the pool where our swim team practiced.

Thankfully, this dream didn't end with me broken down in an area I didn't know, but the end still had a little anxiety and lack of direction mixed in, if even for someone else.

Angel of Baldwin

Oh! So, here's something to cross off my list while I'm hyper from lack of sleep... Remember when I asked you to remind me about the Angel of Baldwin? (And you didn't... shame on you!) Well, here's the story:

Keep in mind that this comes days after my Next Seven Years dream, and centers around the coworker who had his marriage disrupted in my Argument dream. I'm not sure if there's a connection, but let me tell you, that week was one for the record books when it came to strange coincidences and odd signs and portents. (And of course, I still can't make heads or tails of any of it, but things have settled down quite a bit, so hopefully whatever I was supposed to have done, is now done.)

My coworker is the sales manager at my company, and the day after my Next Seven Years dream, my boss, the sales manager and I had a really encouraging meeting where we threw a bunch of great ideas on the table and sorted through them. We all felt like we got a lot accomplished, and I was left wondering if something would come of it, given the various signs of change I was given. One of the ideas was to contact a long list of libraries, get to know key people who were in charge of print buying for newsletters and such (one- and two-color newsletters, finishing and mailing are some of Printstars' clear strengths), and begin sending them examples of our work and staying in front of them.

So, over the next couple days, the sales manager compiled his list and sought out information on these key people. The one institution he wasn't able to find anything out about (for whatever reason) was Baldwin Library. He tried for much of the morning to find a contact there, but to his great frustration could not. Upon giving up, he reached for the phone to call someone else, and before making contact the phone rang. He picked it up, and on the line was the director of Baldwin Library. After overcoming his amazement, he learned that she was calling because she had been recommended to us by two libraries for whom we currently do monthly newsletters. Furthermore, she was interested in starting a newsletter program in the Fall.

Naturally, on hanging up, the sales manager told the story to everyone in the office, and it struck me how much of a small miracle the whole event had been. It was precisely the sort of thing one should keep an eye out for. God doesn't work in heavy handed ways as often as he does in the small, odd occurrence that can be easily overlooked if one isn't observant.

What do you think? Write a comment and let me know how this story strikes you. Have you ever had similar experiences?

Coming on the heels of my dreams and the other weird signs of that week leads me to believe that something much larger his happening here. Either to me, or to my coworker; I can't be sure. I can only watch and pray.

Vu Ja De?

Ever have one of those nights where you poured yourself into something so intensely that your mind kept working on it after you went to sleep? Sure, we all have. Last night I had a dream that took it upon itself to answer unasked questions for me.

I spent probably 5 hours working on a crucial file last night. It was one of those times that I was not only on a roll, but I felt lots of pressure to get the work finished because I had already put it off for a week and a half, and the clock was ticking. I call it 'term paper' syndrome. (Okay, I just made that up, but you know the feeling.) It's all the more fitting because all the recipients were employees of Stony Brook University.

When I had finally sent in the forms and emailed carbon copies to their respective recipients, I shuffled off to bed, and tucked myself in somewhere around three o'clock A.M. I must have been nervous about electronic delivery, because somewhere around 5 A.M. (Just minutes before the alarm went off) I dreamt that one of the recipients, my friend Henry, called me later that morning to let me know that the proper parties received the files at Stony Brook. (Nothing about how well received, mind you, just the facts.)

Odd dream, yes, and did it happen? No, Henry never called. But prophetic? Maybe. I mean, there wasn't much chance that the files wouldn't get there, but worse things have happened. When I opened my email this morning and received an auto-response from the receiving party, I have to admit I was a little relieved.

It was a cute little experience, and given the amount of time I actually spent sleeping last night, I'm not surprised that the dream was proportionately short, sweet and to the point, peppered with just enough weirdness to make it interesting to repeat :)

Congressional Second Life Hearings

This is just too funny, and yet scary at the same time. I suspect the attitude that Second Life is only a game will hamper any kind of terrorist hunt in cyberspace. It just makes the virtual world seem all the more perfect for recruiting.



For those of you who don't know, this video relates to the discovery and discussion of the fact that terrorist groups have been contacting, advertising to, and recruiting from the large pool of online players of this virtual world for some time. The government is formulating plans to monitor and curtail this activity. To me, it seems like a logical occurrence. Virtual worlds like second life provide people with the ability to assume an entirely new identity in an abstract environment that allows great communication features and protects anonymity. Seems like in some circles it would be much more advantageous than identity theft, and we all know how rampant that is. Furthermore, anyone who has spent any time in online gaming can tell you just how angry and malcontent many gamers are. The stigma on 'living in your mother's basement and playing video games', while mostly deserved, does tend to create a community of disproportionately troglodytic adherents.

It is much like arguments against old school Dungeons and Dragons that I heard so often. It goes something like this: "Don't play D&D because there is a disproportionately large number of players who have mental problems or are immoral." (And then they point to a few urban legends about otherwise good kids killing themselves after playing the game) Now, don't you think that if church groups and "good" parents prohibit their kids from playing the game on moral grounds, then the remaining players of the game will be a high percentage of "immoral" or neglected children? How would it be anything else?

I find it very similar to the old arguments against playing poker, shooting pool, and dancing. "Only bad kids do those things, so those places become a hangout for mischief." Well, if you keep your good kids from doing them, then you are right, only bad kids will do them. It's self-fulfilling. I grew up in Hawaii, where most of that stigma never existed. There are pool halls there with forty tables to a floor, and everyone playing is a clean, upright youth. In fact, it's seen as the safer alternative for those kids who don't go out drinking. Of course, since I grew up in the 80's, we also played quite a few video games at video game parlors, which were essentially the same thing.

Anyway, all that is a tangent that has only this relevance: If you treat virtual worlds like the hang out for sub-human, no-future, cro-magnon twenty- and thirty-something males, then it probably will continue to be just that.

Of course, there is no disputing the fact that these worlds can eat up a person's life, take them away from socializing with others, and take a huge amount of devotion and time to truly become a person's "second life", so maybe it's better if we just let all the troglodytes convene in one place, and then sick the government on them. I can't say for certain what is best, but it looks like that is how it is going to be.