So this is what it sounds like when technology cries...

I think I understand what it means to be a piece of technology - to fear becoming obsolete and being replaced.

Today, well, today's the last day of my summer vacation at home with the family. Tomorrow, I'll be flying back to MIT, good friends, the bathroom server, and two wonderful people that I care about so much that it hurts sometimes.

And I'm scared.

Scared that I'm returning to a place where I've already been replaced in my absence. Yes, it's true, I understood what kind of a bummer it was going to be to leave the world I'd built around me all by myself - even if only for just a couple of months. But well, a lot of things can change in a couple of months; and they have.
Surely the fact that I've been living in a virtual information void hasn't helped with anything other than prompting me to assume the worst of things. When you've really got no one to talk to, save the few precious moments you can catch a trusted friend on zephyr to chat a little and keep the little link alive, you just can't help but feel a little like everything else has gone on without you, and you've got no control over the outcomes of the situations you care about while you're gone.

Maybe it's that I think... no, I know... that I've already been replaced in the heart of someone who meant a lot to me, and still does... and even though I know that the mistakes I made are ones that I have to live with, it... doesn't make it hurt any less, and I'm just afraid of what it's going to be like to return to a place that might not have room for me.
I guess that's the price you pay when you disappear from both your problems and the people you love... you can't take one back without taking the other, and I'm not sure that I can...

Further bulletins as events warrant.