Thank you sweetheart.

I am honored. I am flattered.
The fact that you would feel so comfortable in my presence means so much to me.

I am pleased for you. I am proud of you. I am awed at how amazingly you understand, how deeply you grasp. I wish I had of known. I wish I could have hugged you and smiled and let you know how happy I am for you.

I bow humbly and deeply, with tears down my cheeks. I am so thankful to have you in my life. I am without words to describe how much you mean to me. How much I love having you as my friend again.

I how what you gave me, in that little revelation, didn't mean much to you... but, it, and what it shows, is wonderful to me.

Have you ever really been to the woods? Have you ever really heard the woods? Silently standing with open ears.

Have you ever taken of your shoes and so childishly just stomped around in the mud. While walking on the shallow end of a lake, letting the cool water lap at your feet.

Have you ever really seen nature in the morning? It's so relaxing, just to watch the sun rise while it casts liquid nets of light on the lake, while it wavers in the blue depths of the lake.

It's almost breath taking to smell the sharp smell of the grass and pine sap.

Nature is so endless, with a rare beauty of it's own. To come and see the beauty is amazing. I remember as a child, running aimlessly through the woods chasing the lit fire flies as they zig zag through the cat tails of the lake.

It's really easy to find peace there, and to find peace in your self. If the rest of the world could just take time out of their busy lives, maybe there would be a little peace in this world.

I'm coming down with a cold. Heck, I already have a cold. I only say that I'm coming down with it because it attacked me very very suddenly. This morning I was fine, and now I feel terrible. My nose is stuffed up and my ears hurt and my throat hurts and I have a fever. And naturally, this will develop into a sinus infection as my colds always do.

But enough whining. Do you guys get the feeling that I only log on here to have a forum to whine in?

So, what haven't I told you yet? Oh, well, if you've been following my saga, you know I got into the Carnegie Mellon robotics PhD program. Well, on Wednesday, I got into Georgia Tech, and today I got into the University of Southern California. Three down, three to go. Come on, Stanford, don't let me down!!

Oh, and yesterday was my boyfriend's birthday. I got him the best present. I found cufflinks made out of old keyboard key. Now, when I say old, I mean really old-school keys. They are black and square and one of them says "home" and the other says "return". He's also a computer scientist, so naturally he loves them. Have you noticed how hard it is to buy really great presents? I mean, I know what I want, but how am I supposed to know what anyone else would like? So when the perfect thing just appears, it's a relief.

I had a meeting this afternoon with the two juniors who will be working on Robobuggy with me. I haven't noded Robobuggy yet, but I definately will. It's the research project that I'm working on this year, and I'm very excited about it, so I'll tell you all about it very very soon. The meeting was scheduled for 1:30, and for some reason, I had remembered that it was at 2:30. So, at 1:35, I was just getting back from lunch, when all of a sudden I thought "Hmm. I wonder if my meeting is at 1:30, not 2:30." And of course it was, so I was 20 minutes late. Sigh..

I was supposed to go to a ballet tonight, but we didn't get tickets. So I stayed home, ordered Indian food and watched television. I love game shows.

Well, that's about all that's cool in my life. Keep your fingers crossed for an exciting weekend so I can tell you something you actually want to read next time.

I can see them from here. I predict most every move they make.

At the moment, I'm watching a pair of monkeys. Except that they aren't actually monkeys, they're people. But they might as well be monkeys. The way the act, the way they interact, they way they respond... its all so predictable.

They dress to impress each other, somehow thinking that they should need to. I guess they're still going through that beginning period.

They think that all they need is love. Love love love. Love conquers all. They think that true love exists, and they think they have it.

Its really interesting to sit back and watch. They are my monkeys, my observed research subjects, and like any good research subjects, they don't realize it.

And its even more interesting because I used to be friends one of them. Reality entertainment at it¹s finest.

Let them look into each other's eyes and think they see something. They suit each other very well.

trent'ani buté via

Which, in Parma, would mean "thirty years thrown away". Today (the 16th) was my 30th birthday. I am celebrating by having a minor outburst of psoriasis and wild re-emigration thoughts.
I spent the week filling in one of those accursed endless application forms from Outer Hell. 17 pages. The only missing questions were

  1. dick size
  2. reincarnation plans
  3. favourite drug
... but this is the way it is with US recruiting.

As far as the Irritating Lump Company goes, it has messy aspects and agreeable ones. One of my two main projects is undergoing secession. The Big Kahuna decided that somebody different from my boss would lead it better. I do not agree, because this person just learned how to use a keyboard and know zero zip jack shit about the subject at hand.
But I am not a Kahuna, not even a Lesser Kahuna, so I have to play with the cards that a crooked dealer gives me. O tempora ! O mores !.

The Avantel people visited, and they were very nice. I am really looking forward to seeing the nice new dish, before the whole thing is snatched away from my hands.
What really worries me, is the fate of the staff. I have two excellent, brilliant people doing system administration. They keep the system fit as a fiddle, and I would hate to see them fired for reasons that are first political and then idiotic.

Don't you ever stop reading ?

I have been indulging in books, as usual. A nice Patricia Cornwell, still reading Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook" (not so readable, that one).
And I have started books 3 and 4 of the "Book of the New Sun", by Gene Wolfe. I freely admit to being a literary snob (and a slob), and from the height of my snobbiness I proclaim that Gene Wolfe is almost as good as Tolkien, and certainly as good as Stephen Donaldson.
If you have become thoroughly bored with fantasy/science fiction and you have not read "The Book of the New Sun", go for it. You will thank me.

I sincerely hope I have not gotten on ophie's nerves. I like her persona.

I noded Opinel, a tool that I really like. I put a cute hentai but entirely acceptable girl in my homenode pic. I like the idea of implying pornography without actually showing it. Could it be erotism ? Nah, too high brow.
I also noded Nocino, which sent me on a jag of nostalgia - many things seem to do that to me these days.

... yes, but only for noding

The major noding was on HTML and The first version of HTML, on which I think I did a good job of commenting Mark Andreesen's semi-spec.
The reputation is ridiculously low, but I don't give a radioactive rodent's nether parts.
Other nostalgia nodes were my high school class and Salesian.
But the really fun node was nut, anklenut, kaatunut, donfreenut. Good fun all around. I have some more like those in my homenode, if you want to take up the challenge. donfreenut did, and now he has to actually fight his way through crowds of girls that want to love him inconditionally and give him money. Really.

And noding prevents exercise

I should have gone to the gym, but I have not. I am a ball of fat. Well, not exactly a ball, I can still walk rather than roll and bounce, but you understand the concept.
The weather has gotten disturbingly hot. Today, it being my birthday, I was taken out to lunch by my good friends Jennie, Nuria, Belen and Miss Nice (whose birthday is tomorrow ! Happy Birthday Miss Nice ! stay nice !).
Of course, after a vast Mexican lunch with copious libation, I was unable to work.
I could not even comment on Eng. Caveman's last insane memo - I will have to accumulate bitterness all weekend, and use it to fuel a venomous -yet formally correct- little answer on Monday.
He wants to fuck around with my network, and inconvenience my users. And restrict services, and having people fill forms in triplicate to request an email address with a piddly 2 Megs of quota. He is a troll. I will not tolerate his ingerence.
Am I being territorial here ? No, it is just that my professional obbligation in this job is to provide the best service to the users, under the restrictions that our hardware and connectivity poses.
Not to create more stupid paperwork and little power games.

Anyway, I will win, because I am serene and unperturbed, and he is easily rattled. I am a database monk.

    short takes

  • In order to sound like Sean Connery, first practice the accent and delivery. When you think you've got it as good as it gets, put a dozen Jujubes in your mouth.
  • Anne Rice has written one book 18 times. So has Jack L. Chalker. So why do his stay fresh?
  • Eponymous Resurrection Rune
  • I have now become part of the nodegel. A fellow noder has declared me to be his "most hated enemy". I would like to state at this time that I have no enemies, but have been known to fight a little now and then. Am not planning to fight with anybody. Chatterboxing and noding is much more fun. But Don't Tread On Me.
  • You might enjoy my writeup on XP Whoreing
  • Graceland is one of the 10 best albums of the 20th century.
  • The chocolate candy conversation heart I'm eating right now said Much Ado.

Chatterbox caught my eye...
m_turner says in The Stranger, you forgot an open square bracket at the begining of Scenes From An Italian Restraunt.
glassonion: interesting...ten years ago George Bush takes office, U.S. bombs Iraq, silence of the lambs is out for 13 days the giants win the super bowl. Yesterday George W. Bush is now in office, U.S. bombs Iraq, Hannibal is out, and the Giants lose..
Gorgonzola: Bigmouth: The weather often causes just that.
Mitchevious: lol glass, bwha ha
dunne: ...we must be close to THE RAPTURE!!
Gorgonzola: At least one good thing happened this time around.
glassonion: the super bowl (Hannibal is also out for 13 days)
Roninspoon: Just to set teh facts straight, Congress approved the declaration of war back in 91(I think) an accord was never signed with Iraq and tension has been high as they refuse to recognise the American embargos, both military and economic
glassonion: weird
Wedge.net: Thank you for that statistical info glassonion :)
dunne: So is the US still technically at war with Iraq?

I'll be at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco today, at Trina Robbins' table. I'll also probably be at Terry Moore's talk, dressed as Tambi Baker. Should be a lot of fun...it's my first APE.

11:15

::yaaaaaaaaaaaaawn::

Morning.

Um, I'm sort of worried about the computer, it keeps weird noise. I mean, more weird than usual.

Terabyte of backups would need to be done...

Last night, nothing unusual happened. I hanged out in IRC and did boring things.

Uh, as a random observation: Good that my writeups seem to be better than nothing... I'm just not used to the idea that so many of those have been C!'d.

Time to face the challenges of the day...

13:21

Oh joy.

http://www.archive.org/movie/

I wonder if they have the "Duck and cover" stuff? (I saw that one originally in Quantum Leap.) They seem to have old movies with titles like "About Fallout".

14:55

Seen in the UF comments:

"Mens sana in corpore sano" has turned into "Siemens Sanyo incorporate Sony" these days.

16:59

Ha! Found the Metal Gear Solid music I was looking for. It's the end theme (The Best Is Yet To Come)...

22:10

I moved my machine a bit, now it's next to the table. It used to be on the floor under the table. This mostly to help vacuuming...

It seems really noisy now. I know the table surface ate most of the noise, but... argh! I think I'll get something other than Seagate disks next time =)


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: chameleon theme Microsoft Advertising The Best is Yet to Come

I write this to share my excellent experiences over the past two days. I would have to say that I am incredibly psyched right now.

Okay, first things first. I participate in (on?) my school's Academic Decathlon team. Yesterday was our regionals competition. It had been pushed back a week due to the god-awful weather we had here in Iowa. So, our speech and interview was Thursday night. I got about 850 on both of those. Yesterday was the testing. Then, the awards ceremony. I was very anxious. I was hoping that someone on our team would get some ribbons. I was hoping that I would get a ribbon.

As it turned out, I kicked ass.

I got 6 ribbons. I am in the large school Honors category, and my ribbons are as follows: Third place, math; Third place, language/literature; Third place, speech; Second place, music; First place, art; and first place, science. It was such a rush getting all these ribbons. I was shaking! The rest of our team did decently as well, including a Varsity student that got a perfect 1000 on her interview. Our team placed fourth, and we might go to State. It's very exciting.

Then, today, I performed a piano piece in our school district's solo festival. It didn't go perfectly, but it did go well. Things just kept getting better. This is a good thing, because my school's winter formal is tonight, and I'm not going. It makes me feel a bit loserly, but it can't really cut into how happy I am now.

As a final note, I am writing this on February 18, server time, but it's still Saturday here, so I thought I might as well put the daylog on the right day. Thanks for listening to me brag a little bit!

Today saw the first day of real sunshine after three days of snow and freezing rain here in the Frozen North. The unique combination of precipitation and temperature fluctuations has covered every tree, streetlamp, and any other surface with a layer of pristine white snow that is frozen solid and will not come off for some time. Everything here is beautiful. The view outside my window could have drifted right off of a Hallmark greeting card.

To get away from work and cabin fever, a group of friends and I made a twenty minute jaunt to an abandoned ski hill south of here to do a little sledding. After an hour, my hair was a solid helmet of ice, and my ass was impossibly sore from going over unforeseen jumps. Coming down is a bitch when there’s only a few millimeters of plastic between your bottom and packed snow. Going thirty down a forty-degree slope doesn't help much either.

Beautiful Girl came up from the city last night to spend the weekend with me (she was part of the sledding expedition). After the two of us warmed up and regained feeling in our hands we went into town and had a nice dinner at the local boho coffee joint. She is currently zonked out on the bed as a result of a poor night’s sleep and absolutely no stamina whatsoever. She is also snoring to wake the dead. I have been periodically throwing candy sweethearts leftover from Valentine's day ($.88 at Ames) at the back of her head—softly of course—in a weak attempt to wake her. Actually, it's more of an experiment to see how deep this girl actually sleeps. I've known Beautiful Girl for a long time; she sleeps like a log. Over twenty candy hearts with messages such as "FAX ME" and "URA STAR" and still no response.

Last night, I was with M. It was bliss, heaven and rapture. Tonight, I was supposed to go to a party. I was looking forward to it for a week. I didn't go. I felt nameless things swirling around inside, pushing their way up to the air, fighting to come out. I didn't want them to come out. I tried to keep them down but it didn't work. I called M. I went to his house. I planned to spend a couple of hours over there, then go to the party.

I felt strange and weird. Nothing felt right. So I just laid in his arms. And all the things came up; I cried and cried and cried. It was awful. They are still with me. I am being haunted by my past, things that happened so many years ago. Things that should never have happened, bad things - that happen to women every day, every hour.

I've done so much work to get over those things. And they still haunt me. What is it going to take for me to get over them? How many more months, years of therapy will I have to endure? How much more do I have to stand? When will it end? Will it end? I can't believe the memories I have to carry around; the dark evil deeds of so many men visited on me. I hate the men who hurt me.

Not too much today.. CR stayed over becuase we were up playing with half-life's worldcraft editor until like 7 in the morning. We crashed out and woke up to resume where we left off. At a little past midnight we (and my brother) went to Dennys for some food-type stuff.

It's amazing how long you can go without food when you're totally preoccupied. It's also amazing how fast time speeds up.

12:30 PM

I'm in Newark. The plane ride was incredibly turbulent, but I was too excited to be scared. A few people got sick, which was kinda gross. Especially in such a small plane.

Got out of bed at about 8 this morning, through a few t-shirts, a sweater, boxers and some books in my backpack and left. Left at about 9:30, had some coffee and a bagel at Dunkin Donuts and got my boarding passes. On the plane I sat next to an obnoxious yuppie lady on the plane. I just read and tried to ignore her.

The plane was the smallest I've ever been on. It only sat 30 people and was very small. Tje pretty girl in front of me got sick, which kind've ruined her mystique.

So, now I have 2 hours to kill at the airport I'm eating ritz bits sandwhich crackers that I took from home. They are good. The Obey Giant sticker on the mailbox reminds me of home. It is good.

About 1:15

Fear my chili dog eating skills.
Water, flat sprite sucks.
I'm so thrilled to be here on my own. I can make an ass out of myself and no one will yell at me! I pondered giving Marc or Dylan a call, but I decided against it because I should save my calling card minutes.

The clouds rocked. Like freeze dried smoke. Everything was bright in the clouds. Think of white silver opaqueness.

I AM PACKING A SWEATER

Shit.. I just slipped back into quasi-existential angst mode about Kaylan and Corey. I shouldn't do that... I just keep thinking about it all.
I miss her so much.

1:40

I just had massive fun putting goatse.cx on all the free web terminals here. I also read some E2 and checked my e-mail and some amusing pornography.

There's a hot asian girl reading Kafka in front of me. She has glasses, too!

2:23

My flight was supposed to board 30 minutes ago!

Overheard snippet:

"You said my mom called? What'd she want?"

5:15ish

At Laguardia airport.

The flight from Newark was cancelled so they threw us in taxis to get here. We're lucky the flight from here was delayed, or else we would've missed it too and had to wait until 6. I've pretty much gotten in contact with Jon. Left him [messages[ anyway.

The man I taxi'd with is also giving me a ride to campus from the airport, 'cause he has a car in Rochester. It's kinda sketchy, though, 'cause I don't know him. So I'm a bit apprehensive but whatever.

Time Unknown

Going to land in about 15 minutes.
Getting a bit scareder to accept a ride from my travelling partner. I don't even know his name (note: I later found out it's Haran.)

I got pretzels and bloody mary mix on the plane. They were good.

Forgot to mention earlier that I napped in the taxi from Newark to Laguardia and had upsetting Kaylan dreams. oh well. whatever.

Jon's probably insanely pissed off at my lateness. I was supposed to be there 4 HOURS AGO

4:15 AM (2/18 but...)

In Jon's dorm room. Tonight/Last night we saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Dude, Where's My Car?. DWMC? is such a stoner movie. Jon has good mp3s.

The food here is so sketchy.

Cool people I have met:

  • Matt
  • Albim
  • Brian
  • Jay

I'm still fucked up about Kaylan.

Coalesce is good!

Laura was looking pretty good, tonight. She reminds me of Liz with bigger tits.

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