In the summer of 1995, I went to New Orleans and chilled while the band I was in went on a tour of the West Coast. I guess you can say I did the “punk rock” thing and quit before things got really “good” but I guess it all depends on your definition of success.

Anyway, I was a few blocks from Lake Ponchartrain in the part of town called New Orleans East. During the first few months there I did a lot of meditating along the south shore of Ponchartrain. From about 1990, up until that point I had been working two jobs (60+ hours/week), performing music just about every weekend in at least one band and had gone to church two or three times a week. For those five years, or so, I was definitely not in tune with popular culture. During my “extended vacation” in New Orleans, I got a chance to realize how much “life” I had missed. Before my move, I had a lot on my plate and the 13 months I spent in New Orleans proved to be very therapeutic.

One of the things I remember fondly is seeing a Pizza Hut commercial with Peter O’toole in it.

That Pizza Hut commercial really helped to foster my interest in the theatre.
So much so, that, years later, when I returned to Lafayette (Indiana), other than topics in computer science, I studied a lot of topics dealing with the history of Hollywood, Shakespearean history and the history of the theatre. (I studied all of these topics informally as I was not enrolled in any school at the time.)

I started keeping an electronic diary in June of 2000. At that period in my life, I spent 8+ hours/day in the library reading books.

Here is the first week of my e-diary:

Monday June 12, 2000
• read Shakespeare and the Jews and summarized and put last few readings into context; should I read more on Shakespearean History?
• read and familiarized myself with the drawing of sculptures at Georgian playhouses during the 1600’s and 1700’s
• thoroughly examined the idea of scalar variables; from own knowledge of computer science and math and computer math and how scalar variables might be applied in a computer programming language– the most interesting and sure application of scalar variables is with memory indexing, which can be used in the design of video games, network communication, etc…

Tuesday June 13, 2000
• found a book; not too entirely about William Shakespeare, although it should hopefully offer a different view on the theater, culture, etc…
• read more from Shakespeare and the Jews; summarized

Wednesday June 14, 2000
• read and edited nearly completed book summaries; hopefully I have a good understanding of the topic(s) and the importance, value, etc… of Shakespearean theater; should more than prepare me for the reading of the book Memory Theater…

Thursday June 15, 2000
• completed “page01″ and page 02 of _JavaScript Guide editing

Friday June 16, 2000
• completed “page03″, “page04″, “page05″, “page06″ and “page07″; some of the printed copies appear as if they’d been printed as to save toner

Saturday June 17, 2000
• read, paraphrased Shakespeare and the Jews until about 2:20 pm
• edited and completed “page09″ and “page10″

Sunday June 18, 2000
• edited and completed “page08″, “page11″ and “page12″ of _JavaScript Guide

You can find a free version of “Shakespeare and the Jews” by James Shapiro here courtesy of Google books.

Back in 2000, I was a big fan of Netscape, Mozilla and JavaScript. I remember placing a supreme importance on creating a JavaScript booklet that I could carry around with me when I did not have access to the internet..hence all the editing.