..
I made my appointment to talk to a counselor today. Monday. bleagh
I'm taking this therapy thing slowly again. I just don't know if this is the road that I need to be taking, but I know that I need to do something. I will not spend my life like this.
My mom came to town this weekend - I haven't seen her since my grandpa's funeral at the end of August. We have, however, been talking a lot about the depression thing, which I'd never told her about. She doesn't even know that I've been in therapy before.
My whole family's being really supportive, actually. My mom made me this little box of "reasons why Krista is wonderful" - slips of paper why she and my dad, brother, even some of her friends think I'm wonderful. Very sweet. Actually, I cry every time I read them. Part of the deal was that I have to periodically add to the box, adding my own reasons why I like myself.
*smile* It's not exactly a cure for depression, but it's a sweet idea. Who knows? It might even help.
"Birds flying high, you know how I feel. Sun in the sky, you know how I feel. Leaves drifting on by, you know how I feel. It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me, yeah. And I'm feelin' good." - Nina Simone
Later, the student would return, wearing all black, save a small red ribbon. The students would not talk for the rest of the day. I soon found out that this was to represent the number of average people in a group that will die of drunk driving related incidents.
At the end of the day, all of the students lined up in the main hallway, standing stoicly, and remaining silent. It was really a disturbing spectacle to behold as we exited the building for the day.
Today I have a test in my computer course, {basic hardware/software concepts). I also have an appointment with an advisor where I will tell Mr. Dirks that I don't think the ACS minor is right for me, and why. Then I will decide what to do with my time. Do I abandon my now useless courses, or do I attend, hoping to keep my GPA up. I am getting an A or B in 4 out of 5 of my courses, so I may just not attend one anymore, as I am already failing it. It's not lack of effort. No, wait, it is. I just don't care. My other courses are far more interesting to me, and I really don't care about drawing Data Flow Diagrams using the CASE software: Cool Tool. A professor told me today that I was a "true wit." This makes me feel good inside, you know, as if my smart-assed comments are actually good for something.
Me and Bryon talked about our collabrative story, and I have a great idea. Something to do with the flow. We've got a ether theme going, involving ethernet, ether the drug, and T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
I've determined, after much thinking, that I really don't like a cow-orker of mine named Bill. He asked his girlfriend today over the phone, "What are you, stupid?" There was no tinge irony, I almost got up and slugged him, and I am not a violent person. He then insinuated that a friend of mine was dating some type of female animal. My friend is less tolerant of stupidity than I, so he yelled at him. I felt some pride well up in my soul as Bill was berated and mentally fucked with a chainsaw. You could see the confusion on his face, as if he couldn't understand that some people saw women not as something to be chastized, but cherished. This is my problem with the massive young conservative movement. I don't care if you're religious, fiscal conservative, pro-life, whatever, just leave me alone.
MTV had a campus invasion today here at ISU thanks to De La Soul, Black Eyed Peas (however you spell it) and Wyclef Jean. I secretly wanted to slice open the giant inflateable MTV logo with my Benchmade ATS-34 and the CRKT KISS knives I keep on me at all times.
Thank you for the happy birthdays. I don't drink alchohol, though, so I guess I'll have to settle with literature. :-)
I didn't sleep through anything today, and I didn't even use my alarm clock. I rule.
Went to the store and got what I would eat for lunch. Basically easy mac and hawiian punch, just by different names. There is no point in buying name brand anything... it's all the same thing.
Went to work and dealt with whiney customers, as per the usual. A couple bonuses were that I got my laptop 20 minutes after I walked in the door, that rocked. Oh, and I found out a co-worker who also went to high school with one of my best friends, is also Pagan. Very cool cause now I have someone to talk to that I haven't scared away quite yet.
Came home, realized that I don't have a cat5 cable for my new laptop, "the little guy" and walked up the street to mooch one off of zot-fot-piq. This makes two cables that I owe him. I need to take care of that, stat. As well as a few other things relating to zot. Oh, and I watched the history channel with sane guy tonight for a bit. As always, his presence is very educational.
Walked back down the street to my house and have been on everything ever since while being told that there are pictures of me at Saturday''s party. I'm scared.
I was supposed to study.. But then again, I'm supposed to go to class too. Whatever.
Morning...
Hmm hmm hmmm...
Strange TV program thing last night: On MTV3, 22:30: The X-Files, episode titled "Millennium", and 23:25: Millennium. =)
I made my own personal record... It was over 5 o'clock in the morning before I finally slept. What the hell they put into coffee these days if one cup keeps me awake for over 6 hours? =)
Well, I got the Schedulist's table creation routine to actually work last night, at least to some extent. First, I hated myself for not writing Readable Code... and when I sat down and read the code, I understood again how it worked!
Hmmm.
I made an interesting discovery: I commented out the MRU/MTU settings from my /etc/ppp/options and the Inttter net thingy started working MUCH faster. I got over 12 kbytes/second from ftp.funet.fi (with 2-channel ISDN) when I downloaded the newest Mozilla.
Oh, yeah, forgot to add... I had a haircut today. Just what I need to scare my grandmother. Next summer, even more so, for the Hedgehog shall Crawl from the Den. =)
Well, umm... I just spent some time fixing the Script-FU page once again. Homepage has now more links. I wish the iki.fi redirection would get updated soon...
I want a SuperCPU. I really, really do.
Just as no one probably already noticed, my home node now reads I'm an Artisan. Woe upon my soul.
Anyway... I'm probably too "old" to node about noding, but I'm telling ya something. My noding history shows I mostly node about ideas and things. I ocassionally node about persons, and rarely about places.
What does this tell about me? Probably that I'm a geek who doesn't go out too much, but at least knows someone. Or maybe not. Maybe I just use the word "stuff" too much, and use the brains producing nothing. =)
Other day logs o' mine...
Noded today by y.t.: Internet-Käyttäjät Ikuisesti SuperCPU IFLI Wave Updated: Commodore 64 How to prove the bible is wrong
On the positive side, I got a second wind of noding ferocity that got me motivated to node some more African-American History notables. I think that more people should know who Ralph Abernathy was. I'm going to try to work my way through the civil rights era this weekend. Unfortunately, the girl will be off at some teacher training sleepaway camp so I'm planting my butt in front of this here box and filling in some blanks.
Winter is definitely on it's way to Colorado. I can feel it in my nose the way that arthritic folks can feel it in their bones. I may have lived in Colorado for two years but my nose is still living in San Francisco. This is the most dry climate that I've ever lived in. Nothing like the daily nosebleed to remind you that you live in the mountains.
I was lucky enough to scam about $3k worth of tools from a friend who works for a large nameless corporation. It brings up an interesting question when thinking about the idea of stealing intellectual property. I would not use the software that I use if I had to pay for it. I would do without before plunking down $600 for some imaging software. I will never spend that kind of money on anything that comes in a box smaller than my head. I'm curious about what other people think about this. I'm sure that my radical ideas about the commercial software distribution have already occurred to others but I'm still curious.
A big ole happy birthday to danlowlite. Spankings will be held here and are not limited to those who were born today. Just those who were born yesterday...
What, it's almost the end of October already? This autumn is going by incredibly fast. I like it this way though, because up here in southern Finland we have already reached the point when all the leaves have dropped and sunlight is a rare sighting. With this type of season right after summer, I find it impossible to comprehend the vast amounts of Finns disliking winter. The crisp way-below-zero temperatures and the beautiful snow make a refreshing change to the ~15% of the year when everything is dark and depressing. Then again, the fall been much warmer than the x0-year-average, so we might be looking at +1c and heaps of slush until the end of January. In case this worst case scenario really happens, I'll be noding from the North Pole.
By the way.. Happy birthday, danlowlite! Who the hell says nobody reads day logs?
Hmm. I really need to become more active on E2 again. There's a billion things to node, but work seems to be cutting my time here severely. Intolerable! How could I node a lot more back when my workday was multiple hours shorter and there was just as much to do? I seem to be completely out-of-sync nowadays. Of course, quality should always come before quantity. I myself am quite happy with the improvement I've made regarding the content of my WUs, but judging from the downvoting many others are not. Too bad for them - I don't give a rat's ass about XP anymore.
While having lunch at the downstairs diner, I started wondering about over-sweet dessert. Apart from motivating a child to eat that asparagus, what is the point ? Granted, a well-though-of piece after the main course can really tie the meal together. But at least in the lunch joint in this building, dessert seems to mean a big load of insanely sweet goo which only makes you nauseous. Their rhubarb slime doesn't taste of anything other than sugar. I'm surprised my teeth are still intact. And that concludes the whine-part of this day log. Thank you for your patience. Ahh, this is so therapeutic.
Time to return to my PHP slave duties. More later. To be continued...
Description of argument in the wee hours of the morning about cardinal directions has been noded separately.
kanon42 meets my mom, today. The last time one of my SOs met my mom, the first few minutes (for which I, having gone separately from a different starting point, was not present) consisted of my mother
This also means we spend several hours amid rush hour commuters on public transportation. I intend to amuse myself with Pratchett.
back | days | forth
Damn my manic lack of concentration
I went into town this lunchtime, after solving the clearcase problems we have been having for the past 6 months. Apart from trying to navigate the teeming hordes of people that seemed determined to trip me up or block my path, I was moving fast and managed to get everything done that I needed. (I am on crutches after an operation, dear reader) I bought a train ticket to get to the airport on friday, and it was much cheaper than I thought it would be (£14.50 as opposed to an estimated £40). But, of course, I just had to look in River Island and saw the gorgeous tops and pants/trousers they have on display.
I Want, I Want, I Want!!
Of course, I made the mistake of telling my project leader that I had fixed clearcase; he instantly assumed that the entire team would have the software installed, connected to the new source repository and trained in it's use by this afternoon. Hah! It will take weeks until the whole thing is finished. So he will have to wait. For a long time.
Hmm, travelling by train with crutches, a rucksack and a weekend suitcase will be... interesting.
19:05 BST
Well, that was fun :-) I have been picking out photos from my Mother's vast collection to take with me on my little trip... This of course sparked off a huge nostalgia session, which was lovely :-)
Yay!
Last week I was leaving early while it was still dark, and had to stop because a group of four deer, including a buck, blocked the road. They weren't afraid and definitely were not in any hurry. They just stood there and looked at me and one by one made their way into the manzanita hedge and away. I didn't think until this morning of counting the buck's points.
I have to come up with a costume for a costume party this weekend. I was thinking of going as Bug-eyed Earl from Red Meat, but realized that finding a pewter cow-skull western tie clasp would be a bitch. So I think I'll go as a raver. That'll confuse 'em.
"It's better to regret something you have done, than somehting you haven't done at all...and if you see your mom..."
It gets worse from there. I had to make up a Sociology test at 7, so I go and take that, at the end of the school day I found that I have failed it, a nice 65. Also, since I got so little sleep last night, and had no caffeine, I went through serious withdrawl. Sleeping in school is bad enough in one class, but I recall sleeping through all of Music Lit and Chemistry and being repirmanded for both. Now I'm home, my mom just hung up on me for being rude on the phone and I still have no lock.
Central Station looks really weird when there aren't any trains in it.. With the recent spate of trains falling over and such, Railtrack decided to close the main line to London with just a few hours' notice. This means that you can't go much further south than Motherwell by rail. And because of some weird blip in the timetables, there was nothing on all but two of the platforms at the station.
With the recent spate of trains falling over and such, Railtrack decided to close the main line to London with just a few hours' notice. This means that you can't go much further south than Motherwell by rail. And because of some weird blip in the timetables, there was nothing on all but two of the platforms at the station.
so what else happened today? Went into work at lunchtime-ish, but didn't do a whole lot other than take advantage of their ADSL connection. After a bit of cable-swapping, I still couldn't get Windows Networking properly, though. Dunno what's up with that, but they just plain can't see each other. Oh, and it looks like somebody's figured out how to get a line break in an SMS. Just got this: Press down. down more OK more YES ahh ohhh yes ur almost der yeah oh shit harder SO GOOD! mmmm That's textual intercourse! Pretty cool, huh? :) Original SMS available on request, /msg me your number and I'll send it on. Apologies for elongating today's daylogs
Oh, and it looks like somebody's figured out how to get a line break in an SMS. Just got this:
Press down.
down more
OK
more
YES
ahh
ohhh
yes
ur almost der
yeah
oh shit
harder
SO GOOD!
mmmm
That's textual intercourse!
Pretty cool, huh? :) Original SMS available on request, /msg me your number and I'll send it on. Apologies for elongating today's daylogs
Just checked my GSA email. Dear Student, Kodak have arranged a lecture for Wednesday 25th October at 1.00pm in the Mackintosh Lecture Theatre. The speaker will be Warren Saunders, a professional photographer and he will be talking both about his work and how to earn a living as a freelance photographer in an increasingly competative commercial environment. There will also be Kodak magazines and information available as well as an order form for heavily discounted Kodak papers and film. Regards, Postmaster This woulda been great. It's amazingly appropriate to the project we're doing in the class at the moment. But they sent the message at 9am. I didn't have time to check my mail before leaving the house this morning. Why on earth couldn't they have sent it earlier? grr.
Dear Student,
Kodak have arranged a lecture for Wednesday 25th October at 1.00pm in the Mackintosh Lecture Theatre.
The speaker will be Warren Saunders, a professional photographer and he will be talking both about his work and how to earn a living as a freelance photographer in an increasingly competative commercial environment.
There will also be Kodak magazines and information available as well as an order form for heavily discounted Kodak papers and film.
Regards,
Postmaster
This woulda been great. It's amazingly appropriate to the project we're doing in the class at the moment. But they sent the message at 9am. I didn't have time to check my mail before leaving the house this morning. Why on earth couldn't they have sent it earlier?
grr.
I got /msg'd by a user who found my original guilt-depression wu too harsh. So I removed the words "stupid", "cynical", and "self-absorbed", replacing them with less pejorative and more thought-out ideas. It is not my intention to insult anyone needlessly. However, when I posted the rewrite I noticed the original had been C!'d. Now I feel bad; perhaps my incisive phrasing was what earned the C!, and the C!'er now feels bad having appeared to C! a mealy-mouthed waffle.
I'm being a bit harsh; it's not mealy-mouthed, just a bit more politic, which is always good. And hopefully more useful.
I *am* concerned, though, about what prompted the complaint in the first place, which is my instinct to be dismissive of people's mental tribulations. This is because from teenage through twenties I was a too-clever, rebellious loner with all sorts of issues about self-worth, discipline, authority, obligations to society or lack thereof etc etc. In other words, I was pretty fscked up myself: failure, more failure, depression yada yada. And I turned out OK. Despite NOT being rich or even financially secure, having zero job security, living in a country this schizoid, going through an election this depressing, not even turning the TV ON for over a year because it's all crap, getting only 42k out of my modem 'cos we chose to live where the air is cleaner and land is cheaper, owning a six-year-old car and a thirteen-year-old car... I am happy. Most of *what matters* is actually OK. I have a wife I couldn't have dreamed up and a baby that's an angel. I have a job; I haven't killed myself or anybody else (that I know of; a couple of those rockets DID go out of sight, heh).
The fact that you have air to breathe is reason enough to be grateful the rest of the day, so I get annoyed when people whinge about stuff that isn't of mortal peril. Whoever said "the more you complain the longer God lets you live" is a person I'd like to choke the living shit out of for being an unimaginative ungrateful blinkered Philistine clod.
Today's morning was off to a really bad start. I literally had to drag myself out of bed this morning for some reason. Once I was actually dressed and at Voyager.network, I felt better, but I wanted nothing more than another, say, six hours of sleep or so.
Last night my roomate and I continued our slow process of watching all of Babylon 5. That show completely blows me away. We'll be finishing Season Two tonight, I think. That's becoming the high point of my week. I'll be really sad when we're done.
Well I'm all registered as a speaker, my name badge is even a different colour to "mere" attendees. One problem though, they haven't printed my white paper. So now they're rushing around trying to run off 200 copies of a 17 page PDF file. Such organisation.
There's a welcome dinner tonight. I may go. In my usual hormonal self I was pleasently shocked. I watched the attendees check in line, and there are geek girls, lots of cute SQL geek girls. Damn!
Total attendees are running at around 1,500, which means filling 200 people for my talk will not be a problem. This is the largest group I will have preached to. I may even end up using a microphone, which I always try to avoid.
Meeting New Riders for lunch tomorrow. I was supposed to meet factgirl today, but mini-factgirl decided to stream snot from her nose and turn into a grouch, so that was called off. Still off to Wintersweet's Saturday and I'll meet a few noders there.
I love American drug stores. Migraine started at around 1:00pm, all the perscription drugs in the UK are available over the counter. Worrying, but great. The doses are smaller, but you just end up taking multiple tablets to make up perscription strength.
I'm excited about speaking. Worship me cute SQL geek girls. (Yea like that's going to happen)
