I hate it when I can't sleep. I'm supposed to get up early...today...but it's already early and I haven't slept yet. I need to take my wife to work as she is still recovering from arm surgery and can't really drive yet. It's about an hour commute, but I guess I'll be working with her, since she roped me into helping her with this web stuff.

I learned cascading style sheets this weekend. Well...not all of it.

One of the reasons I am still awake is because I have slipped back into my old ways. A million thoughts go through my head while I'm laying in bed, because of all the mental stimulation.

I have been thinking about a cool program I wrote (well, you know, never quite finished) years ago before I started using Windows. Back before DLLs and ActiveX and COM, I wrote a program (set of library routines, really) called Ubiquitous. It was pretty cool, because it allowed two programs to run together over a serial port. What I mean by that is that one program running on one computer could actually call a function or procedure that was part of the program running on the other computer. Just like a normal function call...only it executed on the other computer.

I had a set of cool windowing routines (for DOS) that I wrote earlier, so I used that unit as a test. I wrote a wrapper to encapsulate its functionality (actually leaving the original unit unmodified!) so that its routines could be called remotely. I could manipulate the windows on one computer from another computer.

It was cool.

I never completely finished it, but the core was done and it worked. It worked! That's pretty amazing to me. Usually I give up before I get things to work. I don't remember what originally gave me the idea, but I think it had to do with wanting to play multiple-player games with other people via modem. Back then, a 14,400 bps modem was all I had, and I got to thinking that instead of passing data back and forth that needed to be interpreted and processed by the receiver to update what was going on, why not have some way that I could just call a remote update routine, directly?

Seemed to me like that would save time.

But the idea opened up other possibilities. The part I never got to was adding the ability to send binaries and have them load up, dynamically (hey - like DLLs!) and be immediately available to use. Of course, that opens up a HUGE door for virus possibilities.

Anyway, so that has been on my mind this evening/morning, for whatever reason. I want to dig it up again. I am wondering if there is some way I can adapt it to Windows (gak!). I have been having thoughts about some built-in routines that would allow memory to be allocated and accessed on remote systems. Plug it into some kind of networking scheme, and you could set up a huge distributed computing environment. "Memory" access would be a bit slow over remote connections (and the memory could be on disk or in RAM), but it would be basically unlimited. Not sure what such a configuration would be good for, but it's fun to think about.

Aside from all this computer nonsense going through my head, all of my acting monologues are going through my head. From The Apartment, the Goodbye Girl, Grapes of Wrath, Apocalypse Now, an original work of my own, and a couple others that I can't remember what they are from. Plus the scene I did from Silence of the Lambs.

And what did you see, Clarice?

I'm thinking of recording my monologues and putting them online for any prospective agents or casting directors to review. I think I could do one a week...if I can get off this stupid silicon device.

By the way, now I know my muscles are atropheing [sp]. I went out to chase off those horrible squaking birds today (I've had it with them) and got winded and noticed some minor cramping just going down and up the hill. Time to get back on the bike. Which reminds me, we have a treadmill on consignment that I need to check up on to see if it has been sold. I haven't heard anything. It's been two years now!!!

I also want to put together a reel of Hobby Hut out-takes. Hobby Hut was a public access TV show some friends and I put together quite a few years ago. I also want to set up a web camera. Man, I am just thinking of all these things I keep wanting to do but never get around to it. Why is life like that? I just want to to what I want to do, not what I have to do. :-)

Now I'm hungry. I guess I'll eat something before going back to bed. Such fun this business of life is.

Oh, yeah, in case you didn't notice, I tweaked the look of my 'blog ever so slightly today. I was just looking at the style sheet code that is used for the template. I want to change it, now, too. Yeah, like maybe right after I finish building that time machine. Ah....I'll do it tomorrow.

One more thing. I learned a new term today. "Linky-love" I guess I am out of the loop - apparently the term is not quite as rare as I thought it might be. I guess I've got to stop writing in the dark and start scoping out the 'blog scene a bit. Not that I have time to read these days. ;-)