zebra, back to the reality tree, and more.. [1129.1999]

My head feels too small for all the ideas I'm trying to work with. I miss having fellow web coders around to bounce ideas off each other. Out loud, I mean. I've spent most of the past few hours figuring out how Zebra ought to handle forms. I wound up going in random directions, coming up with a whole slew of new ideas, and solutions to several other problems I've been working on. I may even have an answer to the forms question, but I want to let the thoughts cool a bit and see if they crystalize.

I've been trying more and more of the thinking tools Eli Goldratt and friends have created. I started reading Theory of Constraints and it's got me thinking about writing a novel that teaches computer programming using socratic methods... Or maybe NLP.. Maybe both.

One of his big things is to verbalize intuition. I've been doing that a LOT with Zebra, and it's paying off. It's also lead me to some self-discovery. I wrote earlier about current reality trees, and how it lead me to verbalize my tendency to avoid conflicts and identify it as a "core problem". I've since found this to be a factor in other problems.. Like getting nervous when approaching girls.

Well, in NLP, "avoiding conflict" would be called a metaprogram about a value (away-from the value called conflict). But how to change a metaprogram? Or how to change the way I value conflict? Turns out you just elicit the whole value hierarchy (or enough to make submodality distinctions) and then make the value more or less "valuable" by moving through the hierarchy. I haven't done it yet, mostly due to not sitting down to do the submodality work.

I've pretty much decided to make manifestation.com free, and just encourage donations to sabren foundation. I think it would actually get a better response that way. I refuse to put ads on it, but I might "remind" people about the fund drives.

Heh. I've got about three or four more weeks of constant work, and then I'm going to take a vacation. Go see friends and family back in texas for the holidays.

I'm rambling. I'll stop.