Sunday of my Life

It is. It past 3 in the morning, here, but this is keeping me awake. Maybe once I get it out, I can sleep.

Those who know me, know that I’m an introverted kind of person. I’m shy, and I’m quiet. I’m not afraid to speak up about things I know about; but mostly, I keep back, and let others go. That’s just me, and I don’t know who else to be. But I don’t meet new people often. I don’t make friends at all easily. I don’t trust people easily, either.

When I was younger, I was a liar. It was my survival tactic, in a world that saw me bullied, hated and spurned for what felt like every moment of every day. I’d tell people stories to try and get myself out of things. I’d tell myself stories ,to pretend that it was all going to be okay. Now, with twenty-three lurking aorund the corner, that comes back to haunt me.

Back in the day, I’d make up people to be. Strong people, capable people, who could deal with the abuse of others. The abuse coming from people to who my only crime was existance, and it was a heinous crime at that. Those people are still in here. I can remember every one of them, and the lives that I crafted for them. And I still hear things from their perspectives. I regret what I had to do to survive my schooling. I was never the popular kid; far from it. I was always the fat kid who never played sports, was never part of the in-crowd, and knew that little bit more than the people currently targetting him. So it goes.

Some days, I wonder about my life. I’m back in schooling, tkaing a Uni degree, and battling my way through it, the same way that I do everything. And I wonder if I’m really going anywhere, or if I’m fighting to stand still. Swimming against the tide of my past trying to pull me back, pull me down. I’ve grown, I’ve changed over the years. And I wonder if that as well isn’t one more big lie. A world I’ve invented for myself, to try and tell myself that it’s all right. Some days, I don’t know who I am anymore.

Am I me? Who is me? Which me is the me doing the asking. I feel like I’m looking down at myself through someone else’s eyes, seeing myself coloured by their perceptions. There’s always someone else in there, soemone who can take care of the situation. Someone who can cope, even when I can’t. Am I really asking this? It sounds crazy, but, then I’ve always been strange. Always been different. That’s nothing new to me. I doubt my head has ever worked the same way as anyone else. Part of being an individual. We’re all different, all strange to someone. Normal is a societal illusion, a mid-point of percieved sanity that society tells itself everyone should fit. If you don’t, if you’re abnormal, if you’re different, then you’re the enemy. And I’m my own worst enemy, always have been. So now I wonder how much of it is in my head, and how much is real?

I don’t know if I’ll ever find out to my satisfaction.

Maybe, one day. Maybe not. Maybe one day I’ll be able to forgive the person that I was, and accept the person that I am. If I find out who I really am, that is. If the dreaming stops, the nightmares, the panic attacks. Some days, the grip on sanity feels very tenuous. I can only keep going forward. There is no turning back. There never is. What’s done is done. The past stays in the past, and the future is what we must face.

One day.

We’ll see.

So, most Linux distributions have some kind of package manager. At work (because, lo! I got a job! I’m working as a junior systems administrator for a small company that I shall not name). These package managers are a good thing, don’t get me wrong. They compile, configure and place program files in the correct place for you. They keep track of versions, and resolve dependencies. But this dependancy resolution can sometimes be a bad, bad thing, if someone hasn’t paid enough attention in creating the packages in the first place. Let’s take today’s example, the bind9 packages.

Bind9 is a DNS (Domain Name System) server. The thing that turns (for example) sunday.yarinareth.net into the IP address of the (virtual) server. They’re one of the handiest things on this Wide Whacky Web of ours. bind9 itself has a number of libraries wich contain the functionality of the program. So, naturally, it’s dependant on them, because it won’t do squat without them. bind9-host, which is a utility that allows DNS lookups and such, is also dependant on these libraries.

Now, these libraries are also dependant on one another. libisc7 is dependant upon libdns1, and so on. Unless you install the packages which are depended upon first, you can’t install the ones trhat depend on them. All makes sense, no? So, here’s the dilemma I hit today:

bind9-host is dependant upon libisccc0
libisccc0 is dependant upon libisc7
libisc7 is dependant upon libdns1
libdns1 is dependant upon bind9-host

Nothing can be installed, because everything is dependant upon everything else! Aaargh!

PS: The solution to this is to tell it to install all the packages at the same time, but I haven’t had time to do that yet, so, see the above anguished scream.