/dev/stream0

I woke up this morning trying to crack a problem I'd been thinking about: how can I test if my router supports PPPoE without a PPPoE server on the other end? A bit of googling and I discovered rp-pppoe, a userspace PPPoE server for Linux, written and maintained by Dianne Skoll.

"What's the rp for?" I wondered. Roaring Penguins. Well, that's curious. I wanted to know more about who this Dianne Skoll person was, so I looked up her personal website and navigated to her "who am I" section.
Dianne, it turns out, enjoys writing prose as well as software. She'd written a short article about the deleterious effects of social media, a topic I'm deeply interested in. The article references Jaron Lanier's book on the subject in which he argues that the best course of action is to delete your social media accounts right now. I'd already downloaded a copy of his book and started reading it, so I picked up where I left off. I read for a couple minutes, then I became very distraught.

Is this normal human behavior? Am I hopelessly distractable, forever condemned to jumping from topic to topic in a frantic, futile attempt to satisfy my insatiable curiosity? Do other people have this problem? Can I spin this liability into an asset if I try hard and believe in myself, or is this aspect of my behavior a consequence of some deeply embedded cognitive circuitry that I am simply too weak-willed and undisciplined to tame and control? Why is every day a constant unceasing battle with my impulsive, information-seeking nature, making me feel like a failure as long as I have internet access, i.e., all the time?

By writing about it, am I seeking external validation, or accountability?