I’ve been working on getting mailr to work. It’s not easy.

There’s a host of tiny deployment issues that have to be smoothed out. Shebangs are wrong, developed on a Debian-variant, I can tell — the shebang reads #!/usr/bin/ruby18. There’s dependencies on Rails being installed, being the correct version, and being in a similar place as on the developer’s machine.

It ships in development mode, so one has to understand rails’ three-database development framework before you can install it. The docs assume you know this — I only know it having worked with Rails a little, but your usual sysadmin is gonna have a fit when first they have to install ruby, then install rails, then install a couple other dependencies, then start learning how to develop with rails to get an app off the ground.

There’s evidence in the rails environment.rb that the rails files were copied into vendor/ as is typical of rails, but they’ve been sloppily omitted — I’d prefer that rails worked this way from the start, really, since making local copies is equivalent to static linking. Great if disk space and memory are free, I guess. Makes it a pain to roll out a library update to a bunch of apps, though. Sloppily ripped out is bad, too.

It also requires a DRB backend process to handle persistent connections. That’s no problem, though I had to correct some of the code (and it requires it to be run with the current directory being lib/ in the mailr distribution. There’s no startup script for it, no SysVinit script, no suggestion of a cronjob to start it, nothing. You’re on your own here.

This is something I see a tendency toward in rails. The conventions that are convenient for a developer with a shell always open within the rails app files are a hindrance to actual deployment on a unix system. There’s path issues, lack of startup scripts, and you have to understand rails development process to even get an app running. Keep working, guys.

Oh, and it doesn’t work with my imapd.

My camera is at least under warranty.

Note to self: go to the beach at least every 11 months.

Photos of human products and waste. Urban grit that’s not like shooting fish in a barrel.

I watched Brazil, which is quite definitely the most bizarre movie I’ve ever seen. It’s like Fight Club mixed with Monty Python, some forties detective novels and a bunch of dryer hose. I wish raijna had been there to see it with me. I think I love it but I’m not sure yet.

I am blessed to love someone who can share themselves without fear.

I am proud to be someone who can be loved that way.

elliotpp‘s post about privilege hit me really hard today. To sum up: When you’re seen as a girl, you can rebel and stand up, stick your chin out when you walk, look drivers in the eye and take the road. When you’re seen as a man — especially a white, clean-shaven, normal-looking man — that’s assumed. Rebelling is quieter, stepping back to give someone space. Not letting someone defer to you when they’re perfectly right where they are. There are no “others” to help. Helping anyone is helping ourselves.

This is something I’ve known and felt for a long, long time, and never expressed well. It’s become one of the paradoxes that I deal with, to be comfortable with the power I carry, and to keep it, to keep claiming it. And to use it to help everyone I can. At the same time, the changes in my life are ones that would stereotypically be putting me at a disadvantage — but do they? The more feminine I end up being, the more opportunity I have to support others by standing up, by not letting others push me about. My loss of privilege is my ticket to take what I can. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Thinking about Affirmative Action, and the perception problem it can create, that someone can rise because of their race, gender or other minority identity, past those of greater skill. I fear the same perception problem — that I disadvantage myself to prey on the good will of others. My fears make me aware of the opportunities of others, and make me devote a lot of my time to standing up for people, and to seek out those with no voice.

It strikes me initially that there’s a paradox about being transsexual, working so hard to divorce ourselves from the stereotypes of our birth sex, only to have ‘normal’, or even ‘healthy’ be to express those traits as freely as we can.

Tagged by silverspring, I now list five simple pleasures I like most.

1. Rain, more than anything. Rain has always been a soothing force in my life, and I miss it when it’s not around. The first time I danced, no really danced, it was alone and in the rain.
2. Silence. My world is one of the few that does have silence or nearly so on a regular basis. After 9 or 10 here, the road is quiet. I can go walking and hear the wind on the trees, even if it’s only blowing softly. I hear grasses rustle, and animals moving about in the fields.
3. Warm tea. Tea is the center of the calm parts of my life. When I really do it right, I can sit quietly for an hour and really just feel and be. It’s my meditation, and it keeps me working all winter. Summer’s heat takes it from me mostly, and I miss it.
4. Trees with moss under them. They give me hope.
5. Scarves. I never imagined I would get such joy from throwing a piece of fabric around my neck and charging out into the cold, but I do. I laugh and smile a lot more when I’m wearing them. Start out a bad day, throw a scarf around my neck and tell me to go outside, and I’ll come in smiling.

I don’t particularly want to tag many people, but I’d love to know what klibs has to answer this meme.

I really figured out why I fall in love with who I do.

I’m attracted to personal integrity that shows.

Gorgeous sunrise out there, and my camera decided to E18. Bastards.

Oh, well. Time for quiet, camera-free walk.

Rest in peace, Rosa Parks.

Looks like my purity test score dropped 30% while I was in California.

Guess I did have a good time. Also explains why it’s hard to explain the trip to the parents.

I went to the Shining Mountain Café’s one-year anniversary party tonight. The whole crowd from Fractalia was there, and I ended up going, getting my cello, and jamming along. I haven’t had this much fun playing music ever.

Stosch kept hitting on me . Oddness, but kinda fun. I am so glad I know where my heart is these days.

Happy, tired and signing off,

Aria

I really dislike the sensation of having testosterone back in my system. Since my bags were stolen, I haven’t been able to take the usual pills, and I feel tense and now, after a few days, I see the rougher parts of my personality come out and it frustrates me. I start to wonder where I went.

eliottpp gave me a spare copy of Trans Forming Families, which he ordered a dozen of and sent to every member of his family (An act of bravery and pride that I am still in awe of and wish I could bring myself to do.) and I’ve been reading it. It struck me how different growing up was for me than most girls like me: I didn’t have school as a major force in my life, and what little school I did have didn’t have much of an effect on me. By being good at whatever the teachers threw at me, I could just take the tests and go hide in the library or with a book. I spent most of my time in the classroom with a book, waiting for my classmates to finish. Playground time, too, was usually not something I did, since I’d rather be in the library, reading books about folk myths from around the world.

I never had a moment in my childhood where I knew something wasn’t right — that hit me when I moved out, at age 18. Suddenly, I was forming romantic relationships for the first time, and moved to a town where I wasn’t already on a first-name basis with everyone. Stereotypes and first impressions suddenly mattered a whole lot more. I related to people more as a persona and less as a person. It was scary.

Halfway through the book, though, I find a story that is me. A kid who didn’t really toe the line as a kid, never any trouble, liked to sew and cook, intellectual, and did like some of the seemingly normal stuff, enough so that her difference didn’t stand out at all. Her parents, like mine, have tried to find every explanation other than the simple truth. “Maybe you’re just gay.” “Maybe you’re just afraid of relationships.” And they’d blame themselves, too, wondering if they caused me to be how I am. I spend a lot of time seeking out stories of people who haven’t always “Just known”, and instead discovered it later on. It’s a relative rarity, I’m finding, and that surprises me. My frame of reference for growing up just isn’t the same. I thank my parents for that, though sometimes it makes me even more lonely than ever.

Jem is amazing and has blown my mind entirely. I love her to pieces. Elliot’s done the same thing in an entirely different way. I can’t believe that I’m so blessed as to know the both of them, and to be so entirely comfortable. Relationships with no fear, no demands or needs from others are a new thing for me. There’s no dependence, just love.