UpdateLog

This page is something of a personal blog and also contains the most recent news regarding the site changes I am making. Newest news is at the top. I've moved the to-do list to ToDo

Here is my new personal blog.

10/19/2021

We recently have been tagging/categorizing more pages on the site (see the tag cloud), fixing wiki trails (on the United Front Boot Camp and the Podcast most specifically), making material improvements to search results from the search box on the pages & advanced search pages. At some point (for accountability etc.) we added recent changes to the bottom of the homepage of the site, so folks can easily see what has changed lately on the site.

The addition of Self-Help Indexes New is totally new. Just before we started making online courses (see https://pluralityresource.org), someone in here decided it was too difficult (even with tagging/categories on the site) to make a sensible pathway through selves-help materials here, so they started a project of compiling "common pathways" or recommended pathways through the site to help resolve specific issues.

We've been trying to keep the homepage of the site up-to-date with the latest changes. And right now someone is procrastinating working on the Emotional Regulation New page. So we'll get back to that. :)

7/5/2011

I published the book The Crissing Link: Poetic License as an example of empowerment in multiplicity (and as a poetic autobiography). At the end of the book I promise 2 follow-up books in The Crissing Link series: Multiple Choice and United Front.

Neither of those books is ready for publication, but in preparation I've started working on United Front as an online Boot Camp over at The Crissing Link. You can follow step-by-step ideas and instructions on how to encourage internal communication, collaboration and community. Please take a look, and leave comments there!

3/21/2010

It's been a while, right? :)

I've added a few new pages to the website: Testimonials, Switching, and some updates to Dissociation. I figured I should add a few more feeds to this page so you have an idea of what I've been up to lately. While I'm still maintaining website clients, I've decided not to take on new web clients. I am now a full-time life coach -- I help people play a better "game of life". For more information on that please see http://LiberatedLifeCoaching.com. I wrote my first book about being multiple: http://thecrissinglink.com. And in part because of my book, I've been asked to be on the board of directors at my local disability advocacy and services organization Independent Living, Inc. which is such an amazing opportunity given that I already was an advocate for people with many types of disabilities -- it's an incredible opportunity to learn more about what makes people different and what makes people similar, and such an incredible opportunity to continue to advocate for healthy multiplicity.

You can see my Twitter, Facebook, Blogger & YouTube links there in the sidebar. I'm also on LinkedIn, etc. as Criss Ittermann.

Here's my latest feeds:

9/5/06

The ability to embed feeds across the site has been added. You may pull in headlines &/or descriptions from external feeds by using special markup when editing pages on the site:

Provides (my work/business blog latest entry list):

(:pmfeed feed='http://www.eclectictech.net/etblog/feed/' showitemdescr='false' :)

4/12/06

First -- I had some wrong dates in the log. You'd think I know the year ;)

Second -- I'm getting increasingly worried about the state of the union. Not the one in my head, this time. The one in America.

People outside of America know that we're a fucking mess. It's a lot like a dysfunctional multiple. You have such a mishmash of cultures, languages, regional ethics & mores, traditions.... the list goes on. The right party can't listen to or agree with the left party. There's the moral majority, the religious right, the pagans, the priests ...

I'm far more functional.

The best thing is that in spite of this country's "house rules" the decisionmakers at any point keep changing them and can't agree on the spirit of the law. The ruling/fronting parties keep changing. The American "body" behavior shifts all over the place in spasms much resembling an epileptic seizure.

A little more "as inside, so outside" but on a metalevel. America is BIG. Big enough to have regional cultural differences. And we keep opening the borders and allowing immigrants. Then the immigrants can become citizens. Then they can vote. So we have liberals, conservatives, foreigners, etc. all making the decisions. It's no wonder that America can't "make up its mind".

Shows how one's house rules and decision making processes may break down. Who is the ruling party in one's head?

Next -- we have basic rights. The founders of the rules of this country, the writers of the constitution, had in mind unalienable rights for all men. We, as a country, decided that "men" includes women, blacks, etc. Certainly that's fair enough, but it pissed some people off enough that it caused the Civil War. Whether for economic or philosophical reasons, black people were thought to be second class citizens by those south of the Dixon. And all across the country, women were also. We were owned, as much slaves of sex and power and money as the black slaves were tied to the land they worked, and sometimes (but ONLY sometimes) treated worse. Heck -- it took a hundred years to take the chains off the Black people (the state of which is arguable, especially in some regions), and women still haven't gotten the ERA passed although we have nominal equality on paper and the right to vote. It will probably take at least 100 years before we're truly released from the power of dickheads in office.

So the recent mental economy has regions -- called states -- of the US (oops, I've been politically incorrect calling us America -- sorry Amerigo Vespucci, and Central and North and South America....I should be calling us Erica, after Eric the Red -- or maybe something else) *cough* I was *saying!* that there are States that are starting to ban abortion.

This is like a mental entity that is not particularly coaware sending out poison thoughts. Soon, other peripheral mental entities sprout echos of the poison thoughts -- it spreads through the weaker segments of one's multiple mind until the number of beings echoing the poison thought infests the weaker co-aware parties -- eventually you end up with a horrible voting issue, especially if the parties in power are the types who give less of a crap about house rules and more of a crap about staying in power and pleasing enough people to gain a favorable voting share.

That's what's happening in this country. We have a ruler who in my opinion is not much better than a puppet, but whom gives lip service to being anti-choice and poisons the minds of those less able to think. The people with their hand up the ass of the puppet only care about power, and see the anti-choice stance as one of many avenues to gain voting share.

The point is that it's not about Women -- it's not even about God. If they gave a shit about life, they should care about it whether it's in the womb or outside of it, and their actions speak much louder than their words. It's about giving cantankerous dissenters who live in the cultural middle ages something to be happy about so that you can secure their vote. Place enough justices on the Supreme Court, and you have your citizens between a rock and a hard place. Put enough of those cantankerous middle age abbots in the congress and your citizens might as well bend over and kiss their ass goodbye.

This country is obliviously slithering off into the gaping mouth of the devil. Because the devil wants to pull the wool over your eyes, wants you to be lulled into a false sense of (national?) security. Wants your secrets exposed, wants dissent from within. Wants the people in power to remain corrupt and blind to the plight of their fellow humans. Wants you to treat people as slaves and chattel, to increase dissent, to ignore and corrupt the voting processes, to blindly go where no man has gone before.

There is no love your fellow man coming down from Capitol Hill. There's no trust of even our own citizens. People -- especially those in power -- can be bought, and frequently are. People are selfish and have no desire to truly give of themselves to others. There's an unhappy buzz but no one is stopping it. And no one is talking, communicating, compromising. There are win-wins, but everyone's out for the win-lose, and in the end that means that everyone loses.

I've seen multiples that live this way, and they are DREADFULLY unhappy persons. I don't see how a whole country can live like that and be anything but terribly diseased and unhealthy. THIS is disorder.

Please vote. Stop this madness. Walk, march, donate, make your opinion heard. Write editorials. Finance campaigns.

I don't even care which side you're on -- this country needs to get moving and we need to make sure the left and right hand (party) is able to talk to one another, and stop sweeping everything -- our environment, equal rights, immigration problems, everything -- under the rug. We're at one of those political breaking points. We need people in power who are going to meet as much of everyone's needs as possible.

The people in power no longer care about the citizens. They are just waiting to be able to vote for the next pay increase. We need to control our country just like multiples need to control their heads.

3/31/06

The other day I was cleaning out my file cabinet and going through old bills to pull them out for longer term storage.

It had definitely been too long.

I came across a copayment bill for my short return to therapy in 2001. I went back to the same therapist I had when I was hospitalized in 1986, because he already knew my story.

So, no shit, here's the bill. And there it is on the bill, plain as day:

 Diagnosis:  DSM-III   300.14
               ICD-9   300.14

So what the heck is that? Why would my doctor be using the DSM-III in 2001? That's almost the equivalent of a contemporary medical doctor using a 1700's diagnosis manual.

Enter, the Internet.

A quick search reveals that the DSM-III code is for MPD and the ICD-9 is for DID.

-- and I would have sworn ANYTHING I had never been diagnosed with MPD/DID.

The story as to why my doctor had diagnosed me a schizotypal personality disorder (hospital discharge papers, 1987) MAY be related to some legal trouble I was in back then. I have no idea, and I don't want or need his verification -- it was nice of him if he decided I didn't need to be locked up for years for the safety of the general public (he was right :P ). I did my time for my crime just like nearly any diminutive wan 16 year old girl (words used in my hospital discharge papers, 1987) should have. I continued in outpatient therapy for several years, was eventually discharged from outpatient therapy. All throughout he asked if we wanted to integrate, and we always heartily refused. Now I know he took us seriously in spite of our refusal to integrate. Shifts my paradigm somewhat.

1/14/06

Ok -- I have good news and I have bad news.

First the bad news.

I lost my job. It's the second time in my life I've been canned -- all the myriad jobs I've had, and this happened to be one of them. Ah, well.

The good news:

I don't give a crap.

I had already made several decisions about my job -- I spent a tad over a year there as a paid consultant, and after I was hired as full-time staff I continued to treat them as if I was one -- I brought in my own books and tools, my own laptop, spare monitor, etc. (all courtesy of my LLC, Eclectic Tech), and continued doing so until I was given what might be considered a warning shot. I was told that I wasn't doing things quickly enough by a company that demands excellence in all of their work. Meanwhile, I was given more work the moment I was on the books than I had for the whole year I had already worked there as a consultant. I opened well over 100 support tickets in 3 months -- including project tickets like building email servers, migrating email, migrating LIVE web servers from one hosting company to another -- etc. When I was canned, I was blamed for not raising a red flag (or white flag -- heh). In any case -- when I got the warning shot, I immediately packed up everything my company was still letting them (essentially) use on what was not my company's time. I didn't bring my laptop in anymore. Etc. I'm accused of not being productive enough, busting my butt and giving them everything I had, then I wasn't going to increase my productivity at the expense of my company. If I broke my laptop, my corp would be screwed. You think they would reimburse me for any problems? No good. Not happening.

When your boss starts acting like a schizophrenic (no offense to schizophrenics I've known and loved -- but it was rather difficult living with you, too!) who hasn't been taking their antipsychotic meds, its rather easy to walk away and think about how great it is that you have over 40 hours a week back in your life.

I have more important things to do with my time. Yeah -- it's going to be harder putting food on the table. But the stress was starting to increase at work, and thus at home. My partner (Chris) had started looking for work earlier in the week. The air smelled of that faint chill that said it was time to move on.

From the perspective of a multiple, however, it became a time for mourning. I was given the news, went through several stages of mourning in a few blinks, and mentally started packing up the person who had been working there for almost 1.5 years. The Criss they knew was yet another blend -- a persona, a mask. That mask had to get packed up with our belongings. That's why I was packing up and trying very hard not to cry. I hate having to make quick adjustments to my head like that...it's rather disturbing, and wrecks our ability to maintain composure.

So it's been 8 days since then. I'm working on my company -- go ahead and check out the website if you want to know something about what's going on with it. I'm working on getting clients, I'm working on my portfolio, I'm working on a marketing plan. I have a client meeting this coming week. Etc. I'm very very busy. But in a good way.

What else is going on? Well, I decided to go back to school. It's been tough, because other things demand my attention. Last weekend I worked the whole weekend -- it was right on the heels of the job loss -- so that I could start working on Monday. I worked towards finishing up some client's websites I had pending, I got cracking on another site I had in the works, I rearranged my business website, etc.

Oh! Check out the Open Source Reiki site! I've moved from the version at Otherkin.net to one on my own server, updated the look a LITTLE, but not too much, and I plan to fix the site up more, because 1) it's a portfolio piece and 2) it's actually related to my business marketing angle now.

So I'll be coming up with more portfolio work, fixing up all the sites I manage and own, and I'll be filling in yet-more-info than I've been doing lately.

Loveya!

10/11/05

I've been working hard on several other sites, but this site has seen some work in the past couple months as well. In the background, I'm working on a new Kinhost.org logo, and a new website design. In addition to all the work on enabling RSS and podcasting on this site, working on site security (so that people don't spam the site), and incidentally contributing to the open source project that maintains the engine this site is running under, I have been building a website and technology-oriented business that is very unique, and taking care of my clients.

The improvements that I have made to this site include more and more optimization for search engines, and the installation of a BloggerAPI on the back end. Right now I'm posting from a blogging client called Ecto that has the ability to list all the pages in a wiki group and allow me to edit them without needing my web browser. So I have a list of all 147 entries currently in the Crisses group, and a list of all the groups on the website, so that I can look at the content and edit them (in wiki markup format) on my computer. I think this will be an indispensable tool going forward.

I am investigating using Docbook format for the wiki to publish the contents of the multiple manual. More news about that as I install various options and features. PDF may come before Docbook formatting. I'm not sure yet.

In terms of site optimization, I've enabled a backtracking script, so you'll see backtracks slowly appearing on pages as I edit the markup. Looks like this client has integrated scripting ability (both Bash scripts and Applescripts -- I'm in heaven!) and that will make it much easier for me to edit the contents of the pages. Here's the nitty-gritty on the site-optimization code being added to the wiki pages:

(:keywords multiple personality etiquette courtesy respect:)
(:description People with multiple personalities want and deserve
respect and courtesy.  Information on equality and 
etiquette for multiples.:)
!Courtesy and Multiples
(:title Courtesy and Multiples:)

Text of page here

----
Backlinks: (:backlinks:)

<<|Main.ManualTOC|>>

given this, each page can have custom keywords & description metatags, a Title that does not match the wiki pagename (and hence should incorporate more keywords for the webpage that is rendered.)

The ! tag is the "header 1" tag, and is displayed in large bold text on the page. Each page should have only one, and the wiki default that I've overridden is to have it match the page $Title. It's a good idea for it to match the title, but it does not have to.

The ---- is a horizontal rule -- it tells the reader that the content of the page has ended and the footer has begun. After that there's the code that pulls the backlinks into the page, and the code that displays the wiki trail. In this case the trail on the Main.ManualTOC page is used.

6/7/05

I spent a weekend working further on PmWiki's support for RSS feeds & podcasts. I then uploaded the information to the PmWiki project, along with the ever-important changes I made to the Blocklist -- which is site security that stops vandals from posting to the site.

This officially makes me an open-source programmer/contributor. I am exceptionally happy with myselves.

Other geeky news, I am working on widgets for OS X, and working on applescripting. Its been a very geeky month or two.

Personal front:

• have been podcasting about once a week but I am still behind on processing & posting.
• need to move - the house I am living in is sold and the lease will not be renewed.
• taking a vacation at the end of June -- but I am bringing my computer.
• I will have more time for the summer to house-hunt because I am taking my kids to my mom's farm
• I am poor, but I have more toys that I've wanted for a LOOOOOOOOOOOONG while -- nearly all of which are vital to increasing business for my new company (sole-proprietorship)
• I am considering using my wiki as a test-area for making blogging a modular addition to PmWiki
• have several other programs I want to create and little enough time to do them

*hugs to everyone!*

4/25/05

I have recorded many hours of audio that I need to produce into podcasts, but I am having problems with the post-processing of them. There are problems with gain, or clarity. Or Garageband can't handle wav files, Audacity can translate them to mp3 but then Garageband still can't handle them properly and they come through with horrible pops at the peaks (where they play fine in Quicktime, iTunes, or Audacity as wav or mp3s).

So suffice to say we are experiencing technical difficulties.

There are also times that our headset has turned off and we talked to ourselves for a while and nothing was being recorded. Bah!

So we have our work cut out for us and need to fuss with equipment so that we can get more podcasts out.

On the other hand -- the podcasts are now live! Properly formatted to meet minimum RSS 2.0 specs for podcasting. Yay!

4/10/05

This entry serves many purposes. This past week, I have made audio files nearly every day. Finally got around to doing the majority of the needed edits on the one that may become the 2nd installment of ManyMinds. I will announce it if/when I finish it and post it.

I also worked on improving the PmWiki blocklist feature. One of the wikis under my wing has been very hard-hit by malicious content. I rebuilt the blocklist scripts, tested them to my satisfaction both on local and remote machines, then shoved the code upstream. Hopefully it will be adopted into the PmWiki cookbook. For now, though, I have installed it so that it works on the Kinhost.org site -- along with editing and hopefully streamlining the list of blocked phrases itself. My posting to this page -- which is of moderate length -- will let me know how well it works on longer content. If it still is sluggish, the code may still need more streamlining.

So, I am letting people know that another mp3 is on it's way, that the blocklist feature has been improved (both for usability, agressive blocking, and for me to be enabled to report the muddafuckahs to their ISPs), and testing the blocklist. :)

4/2/05

The RSS feed is fine, the podcasting feed isn't on yet (but RSS from the podcasting page is fine). I am working on a site template that offers the bulk of the page text up first rather than the sidebar navigation -- a real trick -- so I am using Dreamweaver for the first time rather than hand-coding the template (when Dreamweaver does what IT thinks is right, I can then worry about what I think is right). The reason for this is that when I get the plaintext newsfeed on my iPod (would happen for a Palm device too) -- I get all the links and navigation and don't get to read the article at all. So I am making the site yet-more text-only friendly.

For the RSS, I found that Firefox and Feedview (see the Firefox news plugins page) work very nicely -- view http://www.kinhost.org/wiki/Main/RecentChanges?action=rss to see what I mean.

On the home front, we were trying to adopt some 6 month old kittens, but they are rescues from outside and the woman who gave them to us claimed they were friendly and good with children, but that was false advertising -- they're feral, and I have children. It just won't work.

(Later the same day)

I have worked on a new template for the site, am going to make it the default. Anyone desperately wishing to try out other available templates: http://www.kinhost.org/wiki/Crisses/UpdateLog?setskin=pmwiki (PmWiki default) http://www.kinhost.org/wiki/Crisses/UpdateLog?setskin=old (kinhost old template) http://www.kinhost.org/wiki/Crisses/UpdateLog?setskin=new (the new template)

I also changed the sidebar background -- finally -- so that text should not spill out of in regardless of the browser settings. I am arguing over whether to put the link to RSS "this page" or should I have an RSS page with the "most wanted" RSS linked pages? Probably the latter. Grrs. Someone just suggested that we can make an RSS page and put it in the sidebar. Good point.

3/29/05

The project this week was to produce a preliminary podcast. I enabled RSS 2.0 links on the site, and the feeds are working, but I don't have it set up properly for podcasting -- yet. Working on that.

The first podcast, however, is done and a link to download it (sorry, no podcasting yet) -- at ManyMinds.HomePage. You get to be one of the first people to hear it, since you are loyal enough to be even glimpsing at my Update Log.

I will add links to RSS feeds and podcasts to the website as a whole when I am ready. If you can't wait to get your hands on an RSS feed from Kinhost.org, try http://www.kinhost.org/wiki/Main/RecentChanges?action=rss for the most recently changed pages in the Main site or http://www.kinhost.org/wiki/Main/RecentChanges?action=rss for the most recent changes in my sub-site. I tried to set up the RSS settings to give a good chunk of info, but if need be I will have to tweak the settings somewhat.

3/20/05

I created my own server to drop at my hosting location. It's LinuxPPC/Debian on a Beige G3 -- slow and old but so far seems stable. May need to upgrade at some point anyway, but for now it's no less powerful than the machine I migrated off of which seems to handle everything fine. Now I am trying to migrate the wiki and it seems to be doing ok.

This server will also serve the site of my business.

1/29/05

Someone in my head had the brilliant idea that we ought to add/update one `something` per-day on the site. Someone else lost track of the fact they said that and that we all somewhat tentatively agree, and let some time (work, kids, household chores) fly by. But the general principle is very valid. In a flurry, we added a few pages and you can see our work here and there. Notably, I expanded Gatekeepers, started (barely) Main/FeelingMechanicalOrRobotic and Main/InconsistentMemories, modified Main/ExperiencesCommonToMultiples, and put in a whopping huge amount of info on the Insomnia pages.

We still have a long list of things to get to but this weekend's project is sorta a cleanup and backup effort before rebuilding our two working computers at home. Doorstop -- our G4 dual 1.25Gig that had the bad cpus -- needs to be cleaned and reinstalled big-time. It is possible that the crashing -- or our frantic efforts to NOT have a $1400 doorstop (hence her name) -- resulted in either corruptions in the basic filesystem or pref files, or damage to the partitions, or that we loaded some crappy programs on her that ought not be there anymore and we need to remove them. As time goes by, I am not very happy with fink although it is certainly a valiant effort to modify the system without making permanent revisions -- but I think I want to remove it again. I put some plug-ins into the system to monitor things also. It all needs to be torn apart and rebuilt.

To back the machines up I am creating what is essentially a versioning fileserver repository -- Subversion on Debian. Debian on x86 architecture. My first install. I was disappointed -- part of the reason I was building the box was to practice for the LPI exam but I made the mistake of using the sarge installer -- and it was so easy I didn't learn the old method of fighting for your life while drowning in obscure references to even more obscure config options. Damn. I had gotten up that morning, took a shower, started the install and was running debian (a very basic install -- I opted to install everything else myselves) before I had to leave for work. Sheesh! Anyone could do it. It didn't even allow me to fuck up once!

Anyone with a mac (or more than one mac!) ought to check out SubEthaEdit -- collaborative live text editing over rendezvous. Nifty.

So -- let's see if I can modify something on the site!

1/17/05

The hardest part when I (loose-I) come back to read my website after a long hiatus is that I am most definitely no longer the person -- or, more accurately, persons -- who worked on it. I am continually astonished by what I see, the excavation of my head. Or even better, the evolution of it. It is its own social structure and more mutable than the external social landscape. Changes take place quickly -- often blindingly quickly -- and most often for the eventual betterment of The Crisses as a whole.

I come back after too long away astonished to be witnessing the Internal Landscape jpegs people in here labored over on a machine rightfully dubbed "Doorstop" which continually kernal paniced but miraculously held itself together and stable (for the most part) for at least 5 days of intensive rendering in Bryce 5. Eventually we were able to get the replacement dual cpu daughtercard, but that was after this project.

I see the highly detailed Lego maps, the long pages that are filled in for the never-ending numbers of people in our head, and I am grateful and astonished at my headmates' -- or is that predecessors? -- labors.

Grateful because if they had not gone through the trouble I may come back to it -- like I do today -- not really knowing myselves. I need to read. Someone left us a breadcrumb trail so we may understand ourselves again.

Thank you!

1/6/05

Where was I?

July -- not making enough money -- trying to get some other jobs on the side and failing miserably

August -- did I mention purchasing a car? Of course not! I didn't have the money for that! Someone else bought me a car so I could accept the new job. My first few days on the job -- while my predessessor was still there -- involved a 4 hour braindump and being essentially left alone while he frantically attempted to document some of the more complex items there and failed miserably. In fact he left without giving me vital password information. And the first day after he left everything went to shit...trial by fire.

September -- only minimally moved in -- keep trekking back to Bklyn in a vain attempt to pack so I can get a truck -- sleeping on the floor on a futon mattress -- living out of a couple boxes -- not enough sleep and too many miles on my car.

October - hustling to finish up the requirements for starting a business -- which I now realize I have screwed up some of and need to repair -- urk! Complete the moving process -- rented trucks multiple times to try to get my stuff moved. I am finally moved in! Yay!

November - dealing with Chris moving in also. *sigh* So moving is still a nightmare of renting trucks and ceaseless packing. Hosted Orphan Thanksgiving Dinner at our place which was successful.

December - trying to prep for holiday madness and stop living out of boxes both of which fail miserably compounded by financial problems -- I am just squeaking by on a good month and I havent paid my taxes. Yum. I am being paid as a consultant having started my LLC -- forget medical benefits, I havent even purchased liability insurace yet. Spent a chunk of the month voluntarily doing the post-production for a movie celebrating the 20th anniversary of the new job and a surprise for the president of said company. Suffice to say he was ecstatic. :)

January - I am financially insolvent and otherwise happy except that noone who knew I was willing to celebrate my half-birthday seems to have remembered it. I havent really allowed anyone to celebrate my real birthday in a long while.

1/4/05

Worked on the Insomnia page a lot

Updates Archives 2004 - 2002-2003 - 1999-2001

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