I woke up at 6:00 A.M. today.

I wake up at 6:00 A.M. every day.

But today was different. Today, I noticed exactly how warm my bed was. I had to choose between getting up and waking up, or remaining where I was and enjoying the womb-like warmth of my bed. I had something I needed to do at church today, so I got up and woke up. Reluctantly.

You see, the choir director at my church was putting on a production called Bandari. It was in an African setting, and so required many African animals to add atmosphere. My friend and I had built a giraffe (well, the neck and head at least) which I had to move around a little bit during the performance. I also had to participate in the actual performing part of it. We had never done a run-through of the thing, so it was quite a challenge. But it went well, and I will probably get to keep the giraffe. It's about 8 feet tall, so it doesn't fit in our house, but I figure it can be used as a lawn ornament.

But that's not really why I'm writing this daylog. I know none of you care about my church. Many of you out there must think I'm stupid for believing in God, or practicing Christianity. My response to that would require a completely different writeup. What I'm really writing about is a little update regarding what I talked about in my last daylog. My Academic Decathlon team is going to state! This is so great! I can't convey how happy I am. I thought I might try to share a little bit of my joy here, this being the lovely community that it is. I will go to sleep tonight and dream dreams of Anchorage, Alaska, where Nationals are to take place. It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

Work was fun. I had the amazing fortune of being talked down to by some complete IT morons. One guy thought he knew how to connect up an ST-ST Fibre Optic Cable and managed to break off the ends. In the sockets. Which cannot be repaired. So one expensive media converter later, he was sorted. By me. In all of 3 minutes. The last time I do a favour for desktop users.

But no.

I had another call, and a very distressed secretary said that their access to the file server was down, they couldn't get to the Internet, and "Oh, we also haven't been able to get mail". I made the mistake of relating to her how these three things are actually the one problem. "But the Internet is different from our mail, and certainly different from our files on the server". *Sigh*

I do a bit of diagnostic research and see that they are still connected to the network. I then ask for an IP Address to ping to see if they are just not doing something right. And lo and behold, there are problems. SO I wander over to them, look at their computer, determine that their hub is working, they have their stacks functioning, but no connection - hence an uplink problem. I take ONE LOOK at their hub and flick the crossover (MDI-X) switch, and walk out. Without seeing or saying anything to the secretary.

Five minutes pass and I get a phone call.

Same secretary.

"Oh, it seems to be fixed. *Pause* Did you do that?"

Why was I so chagrined? Because 6 weeks ago, I did EXACTLY THE SAME THING, and pointed it out to the secretary, and pointed out that the switch was not to be touched.

This is why I don't do desktop support (usually).

Chest and abs at the gym. I am up to 17.5kgs for dumbells. Soon to be 20kgs.


Life is what you make of it.

Sometimes I hate people

#include <rant.h>

"sometimes i hate people" I commented to anemotis after reading Saige's writeup in Mother Teresa. No, I don't hate Saige. Just people in general, sometimes. When someone says something so downright mean and spiteful sometimes I just get disgusted with humanity. I wonder if it's some peoples mission to destroy any figures of hope, or love, or altruism. And I wonder what happened to a person to make them be like that. (I'm not talking about Saige, I don't know her, just talking in general, and probably out of my ass. The Mother Teresa writeup was just an example).

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And as I walk on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

But I ended the conversation on a happy note: "but, sometimes I love people too"

The day slipped away. I couldn't sleep last night, and found myself braving the cold at seven am for some yummy McDonalds breakfast food. Call was at one pm for actors, and I cut it close as usual, with a stolen kiss from Wayne on my way out. He had already seen two of our shows, so I assumed he'd find a way to amuse himself while I was gone...possibly by reading through my private journals again...and assured him I'd be back by five. He went to the show again, which is at once sweet and a little creepy. Quoth my professor, "He yo' groupie!" The show went smoothly for a Sunday matinee/blue hair special. We usually have to struggle to get the audience active on Sundays...it seems they all eat after church, then slip into a drowsy state in the theater. Today's crowd was no exception, and their laughter was subdued, but Mr. Coke's compliment after the show made the entire festival worthwhile.

Mr. Coke is an elderly gentleman in our community who has long been a patron of the arts. He isn't wealthy, but he does give generously when he can, and he never misses a show. He asked the theatre professor to snag me on my way out, and he said "I recall seeing you in Dancing at Lughnassa and Ballyhoo, young man, and wanted to commend you. You're better than many actors plying their trade in New York."

I gushed. What other response is there in the face of such flattery? It made my week. Unfortunately, the demands of sleep deprivation led us into an after-dinner nap that stretched until midnight. There's a strange feeling of lost opportunities and waste associated with sleeping away the better part of an evening. Here we are, wide awake in the witching hours with nothing to do except each other.

Well it looks like my interactivity call scared away more than 50% of my voting readership... so BAM-BAM it's off the table. Anyhow, I had a great weekend, went shopping at Porta Pallazo, bought all sorts of goodies, including blood oranges from Sicily, fresh Salmon steaks from Genova (I suppose) lots of nice vegetables and a big chunk of hash! Played frisbee with Eugene on Sunday, there was a neighborhood parade celebrating Carnival that wound it's way throught the streets of San Selvario and my neighborhood, there was a large group of Phillipine immigrants who had a dragon dancing in the streets.... After that it was home again for a dinner of various cheeses (brie, scamorza, mozzarella, and a soft creamy one that I spread on some crackers) some wonderful tuna in olive oil stuffed into a red pepper, a tomato soaked in basalmic vinegar and some pringles and olives. Yummy! On more serious note i was really sad and angry to hear GW Bush bombed Baghdad. So I listened to Lou Reed wax eloquent about how fucked up America is on his New York disk. What else could I do... Man I hate the Bush family,,, I wish they would just go away. In other news... I really miss my girlfriend. She lives in Bonn Germany, and I live here in Italy and we only get to see each other ever couple of months. My mom and I were talking this weekend and she asked me, "is it serious?" and I said, 'Well ma, were not having kids, but... I'll stay in Europe as long as I can to see where it will take me." She reads these logs so I don't want to say anything that would embaress her. Hi Kristi! I miss you! Seems like the day is taking on a nagative sort of feel, the coffie machine is broken. And on another note... I'd like to address those who have downvoted my day logs: plase, why do youse louses do this??? I take this far more personally than when you downvote one or several of my other nodes. My life is mine... and if you don't like it don't read about it. Also to the E2 editors who nuked my rants on this subject....grrrr.
It's really quite sad.

I just got a new sofa and coffee table today. The sofa is pretty standard, though it somehow seems huge now that I have it in my apartment. The interesting thing is the coffee table, which allows one to achieve new levels of couch potatoness. The top levitates up to form a usable desk. It's perfect for use as a dining table, right there from the couch. If you have a wireless mouse and keyboard, this table could make it practical to surf on the boob tube, given a PC with one of those TV out jacks.

I played around some more with my OmniRemote Springboard module for my visor deluxe.I'm gradually training it to replace all of my remotes and I'm mostly done. Just imagine, a single remote, where there was once five. This little guy makes my visor purchase worth while all by itself. I will completely eliminate my remote control clutter. This is truly the ultimate remote control for the money.

13:19

I finished Metal Gear Solid!

...at Normal skill level, early hours of this day. I was ranked Deer. Total time 12 hours and then some.

I know, they call it a relatively easy and short game, but this was the second game I've beaten in short notice.

<spoiler encoding="rot-13">

Whfg jbaqrevat: Va gur raq, Fbyvq Fanxr fnlf uvf erny anzr vf Qnivq. Uvf ibvpr npgbe vf Qnivq Unlgre. Vf guvf lrg nabgure sbhegu-jnyy oernpu? Jung qbrf Fanxr fnl uvf anzr vf va gur Wncnarfr irefvba?

</spoiler>

And then: "Ravens on the roof..."

I encountered the first bug in MechWarrior 4: I made an Instant Action mission set in a city, and got to the action... the first enemy 'Mech was a piece of cake, but the second was harder.

It was a Raven that, for some odd reason, was standing on the roof of some theater. Well, I tried to shoot it down, but...

...it fell to the space between two buildings.

Even my lancemate's AI wasn't good enough to kill it from there. I needed a tricky way to send my alphastrikey message. =)

Well, time to face the challenges of the day.

20:27

"The Moon doesn't exist. It's a conspiracy."

I've spent some time reading about the "conspiracy" that the moon landings were a hoax...

...the arguments given by the doubters didn't make me a skeptic, but inspired me to download some cool space photographs from NASA. I found that famous photo of Buzz "Man On The Moon" Aldrin, for example...

22:40

Argh. Leafnode's posting thing seemed to get confused. I needed to repost some of articles I posted today. Well, Leafnode is still luxury compared to some other mail/news products. =)

00:08

If anyone were brave enough to look at my webcam right now, they'd see me having a small problem with noodles...


Other day logs o' mine...

(Goddamned lack of inspiration...)

Yet another daylog from me.
I haven't been around much, I've been on another project at work. This one actually involves me working, so I can't spend all day on E2. I've been voting everyday, but only a couple. Reading through a couple of writeups when I get in in the morning then getting back to grafting.

I've sort of lost the habbit of linking things in my head and I haven't accidentally put square brackets around something I was writing for a while. I'm still softlinking in my head but that is going too. Does this seem sad to you? I know how much I enjoy this but I don't seem to be able to find the time.
Who am I going to play Mornington Crescent with now?

I am glad the weekendis over with. No more drunken binges, no more getting home at 6 o’clock in the morning and have to be at work at 9 o’clock. No more having to carry a friend home and leave him all wet outside his door because he was locked out. Well this is what happened.

My friend came down to visit from Kingsville, we had agreed to go and pick up the drums at bobs house we got together and we jammed for a while. Later on we decide to go and get some grub our choice was pizza. we decided to go to the new peter piper pizza in the outskirts of town. so we went. when we walked in there shit it was like a high school reunion well at least all of the staff I knew more than half of them. I felt weird because I was wondering were these people were going to school and well they said they weren’t. Fuck!, so many bums.

Well we ate a shitty pizza, we complained they told us the chees was different oh well its not like we care. After that we saw one of our friends Foobar he was hanging out with this chick named Cindy we said hi and got an invitation to go and drink we got directions and we took off to do something. Later on we went to circle k to buy some beer they have a sale of a 12 pack of longnecks for $6.00 so we bought 3. I don’t know what the fuck we were thinking when we got to the house they had the freezer full of beer and a bottle of Crown and a bottle of Don Pedro. It was a fun night. That night we also saw some movies we saw It, The Exorcist, and Road Trip.

on the way to dropping my ass off we encountered a cop. He was south bound and we were northbound. We were all like fucking shit, We look back and see him pop a U. I tell lupe just keep it cool, don’t worry about it city cops cant go past mile 10 we were at mile 9. when we got there the fucking cop backed off “pussy”. Fuck were we scared shitless.
When we got to Elsa to drop of our friend bob shit I had to put him over my shoulders and take him to his door. Everything was locked shit we weren’t just going to leave him there, I mean he was passed out . Lupe got the water hose and soaked him in it fuck did that wake his ass up quickly. We get a lawn chair and sit him by the door. We get in the car, we move to the other side to the street and make a phone call to his house. His sister answers and we tell her the situation. We see her go out side and take him in so we leave. Fuck that’s the last night I drink like that with bob he just can’t take it.

This morning I sifted through the river bed of my thoughts for a few golden nuggets.

I got the Oxford Tube this morning back to reality.

I notice that a lot of day-loggers mention the hour at which they awake as an introduction to their commentary, which is a phenomenon that I find really interesting. I think that both for morning and non-morning people, waking up and taking stock of the day to come is an important part of the day, one that can be critical to the unravelling of the sixteen hours (or so) to come.

I woke up at three AM today, as my son was crying uncontrollably in his crib, and would only calm down when I brought him into bed with me and his mother. Being woken up doesn't really bother me any more (I think that it becomes habit after a while), and I have begun to appreciate that tranquil, magical moment when he drifts off, cradled in the arms of my partner.

This morning, however, in my reflection I came to the acute realization that E2 had truly invaded my soul. Falling asleep, I thought about noding, about things I could contribute, about how much it depresses me that I haven't been chinged in a while. (Yeah, I know, bitch bitch, moan moan).


I'm off tomorrow to visit my father and step mother, and I'm flying to Calgary with my son. I'm worrying about how I'm going to manage all of the crap I need to bring, and how Luca's going to deal with the flight. The last time we flew as a family, he was only six months old, and slept for five of the six hours in the air. This time, however, he's likely going to scream like a maniac for a good period of time. I am dreading not only the stress for him, but also the stress we're going to impart to (on?) our fellow passengers. I just hope that, given it's a morning flight, he might sleep for a couple of hours.

Woohoo!

Tomorrow the men from the Gas Board - ahem, whoever British Gas have sub-contracted the work to, I mean - will be coming to fit our new boiler. The parts arrived today...

Newsflash: our dinner just exploded... oops. Don't overboil potatoes in the microwave!

...and they reckon they can fit the boiler and replumb in two (maybe three) days. Then we'll have hot running water for the first time in over a year! (Excluding the electric shower, that is.)

Not only that, the window people are coming on Friday, so we'll be able to keep more of the heat in and more of the rain out (our windows leak... a lot).

But it means I have to take time off from work... it's never a good time, nowadays...

after missing a possible morning coffee with him, i read starrynight's dream log from 02.02.01...i found confirmation of some things i'd always suspected about the way his mind functions, the way his reality is structured. i've always known him to be a very different type of animal from myself, but there are certain base similarities that are unavoidable. i'm still surprised (as usual) that we get along as well as we have so far...as i recall he's surprised i still subject myself to him. but here end my public speculations on this. i hope he finds this, but i won't tell him it's here --there are just things you don't say to people's faces...

Nervousness is setting in.

My wifes last paycheck has come in and she hasn't found another job yet.

As I get more nervous I notice that I am also more grouchy. She knows how to calm me because I am a guy and that almost always calms me.

We have enough money to last for another 8 weeks but for some reason that doesn't calm my fears of being broke and losing things we own. Doesn't stop my fear of getting bad credit. Am I anal about this stuff? Did my parents bring me up expecting too much? Am I spoiled? I am spoiled. I've never worried about money until college and even then I knew my parents would be there if anything happened. I suppose that if my parents weren't financially well off (they aren't rich) I would never have grown up this way and probably wouldn't feel like I do now. How do people without money do it? I think I would have a mental breakdown. I am beginning to admire those with less money and security than I have.
woke up, went to work, got distracted by my plants. decided the opuntia is etiolated. There is a coating on the window of my office, blocking much of the natural spectrum. i went out and bought a 48" fluorescent grow-lite, but decided it is far too dim to be helpful.

i tried to steal someone else's fluorescent fixture (the furniture is steelcase and modular) and see if I could fit two into the area above my desk. it was a no go, but a good effort. since i now have a good strong source of light in my new grow-area at home, i brought home a few pads of the opuntia to plant there. damn the glochids, those fuckers hurt.

i have trimmed my dracaena marginata, and rooted the cuttings in moist sand. i placed them strategicaly above the zygocactus, which is a jungle cactus (survives in low light, rather than low water) and appreciates the stippled shade. the zygocactus is growing two new sections, and every day i check for more.

my philodendron selloum is dormant and frustrating. i know it will resume growth once the weather gets a bit warmer, but i am anxious to see it expand. durn the cat and dog for chewing on it so much.

the aeonium is looking quite strong, the leaves are perky and horizontal as they should be. it is a wonderful dark purple.

the jade plants are all growing well, with new leaves popping up everywhere.

so yeah. i get distracted by my plants. i'm a plantgeek.

...It's just another Manic Monday. (Woah ooh Woah)

President's Day. Today was an elective holiday at work, but I decided to go in anyway because I had the weekend's logs to catch up on. If I waited another day, it would be another 24 hours to sift through. Not fun.

So I went in to work today. Checked some E-Mail, sent some off, same old drill.

Trying to get shit paid for on PayPal today, and ran into a problem. It seems PayPal was having tremendous network problems due to network connectivity issues. Lots of heavy traffic on their site, so I had to keep attempting to resubmit my payment, thanks to their handy "Your payment was not processed due to heavy traffic. Click here to try again!]

So PayPal charges my credit card. TWICE.

Putting it over the limit.

And PayPal Customer Service is closed today.

So I had to call my card issuer and ask for a credit increase (which I really DON'T want), just so I can avoid any fees because PayPal made a mistake. They're going to hear from me tomorrow. You betcha.

Lunch Log: Wendy's Spicy Chicken Combo (With a Baked Potato instead of Fries), and a Small Chili.

Today is a good day. I have what I call a perma-grin because of an incredible weekend. Friday night Becky and I watched old tapes of my wrestling in high school, which brought back some very incredible memories, ate home-made mac and cheese that her mom made, and watched tv and talked upstairs in her room. Saturday, I went with Becky to her American Freestyle Tae Kwon Do tournament, where she took 2nd place in forms, but lost her first match in sparring which took her out of the running for the finals match. I am so proud of her. She has accomplished so much, and it's wonderful to know a person of such caliber. Saturday night, we were going to sneak into a hotel hot tub, but wound up losing track of time, and talking for three hours instead. Then... Sunday. Sunday night I made love for the first time in my life to a woman that I love with all my heart. She means the world to me, and I can't even comprehend how incredibly fortunate I am to have been able to fall in love, and then make love to such an incredibly wonderful, sweet, caring, and beautiful individual. even if i wanted to, I dont think that I coud get this grin off my face. I am now forever a different person, for I have given myself completly to the woman I love, as she has to me, and it's great.

There was nothing about today a healthy dose of amphetamines couldn't fix. Unfortunately, I have no such miracle cures.

Following a weekend with beautiful girl I was exhausted and had completed none of the work I was supposed to. She left in the early morning, and I found that I simply couldn’t get out of bed. Forgot all of my obligations, turned off my alarm, and slept far far too late. Had vivid and rather strange dreams for a couple of hours, and then woke in a sweat in the early afternoon.

After waking I found that I couldn’t shake this depression. Ran a few errands, the most productive of which was making an appointment with the auto-body shop to get my car door fixed. I'm really tired of climbing in and out of the passenger-side.

Tonight was spent drifting, and to be honest I cant even remember half of the things I did. I listened to my new Elvis Costello disc and cruised e2, wrote a few write-ups that I'm not particularly proud of.

I have to go to sleep now. I really hope that tomorrow will be better. As Nina said "It's a new dawn, it's a new day"

I wish it was that simple.

I should never node when I'm depressed

Wow.. this is the first day that I completely forgot to do a daylog for. Oops.. I guess not :)

I finally got my project to a state where it is considered finished, but not polished. If the situation called for it, it can be used as it is.

I'm anxious about meeting Sara on friday. I need to get over this anxiety and stuff. We're just going to be close friends. I need to just be myself and relax.

Wow, today was a great end to my three day President's Day weekend. Saturday night i went to Blockbuster and rented all three Evil Dead movies (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness) and stayed up until about 1:30 watching them. All I have to say is that they were the best movies I've seen in a long time (the third best trilogy I've seen, second would have to be Indiana Jones and first would be Star Wars ofcourse, once the other two The Matrix movies come out I may have to do some placement changes, heh). *Anyway* the Evil Dead trilogy is not what make this weekend great. What made this weekend great was getting a *lot* of sleep, something I haven't gotten in a long time, and something I needed very badly. Well, after watching the Evil Dead trilogy and getting tons of sleep on Friday and Saturday I woke up Sunday expecting more relaxation, but around 4:00 Adam told me on IRC that he, Oompa and Scott were planning on going to Wal-Mart and the mall, although a little reluctant to ride around I finally decided "What the hell". After a while of hanging out with my closest friends I understandably got a little hyper and immediately started doing my usual stupid cheap laugh tactics by staring at people in other cars and re-enacted the Bad Ash scene from Army of Darkness and moving my fingers like an idiot and going "You're a little goody two-shoes", which needless to say was hilarious at the time, but after this hot chick started waving to me when I was trying to be a complete idiot I stopped because I was suddenly very self conscience. *Anyway* (trying to wrap-up this already longer than what I intended write-up) Sunday night ended up Adam, Oompa, Scott and I talking about buying paintball guns (Scott already has a very cool Spyder Shutter with a nice barrel and had played his share of games so he was the resident expert on paintball). Well come Monday Oompa bought a cheapo plastic $20 gun which had terrible accuracy and everybody was eager to play some paintball. So we head out in Adam's car to Scott's house to play in the big forrested area behind his house, and start up a big game of several small 1 on 1 'deathmatches'. My first two games weren't that great, I played Adam at first cuz I didn't want to die hard fighting Scott, the game consisted mainly of exchanged fire from the trees we were hiding behind, most of my shots ended up blowing up in the barrel(of the Spyder no less!), and finally he just ran out of ammo resulting in a win for me. *Then* I fought Oompa which was a bit better, he was trying to flank me and sneak up from behind, but I saw him 'sneaking' around the hill the whole time, this game also consisted of exchanged fire behind trees but was somewhat a lot more thrilling than my match against Adam. Well he won cuz my gun was fucked up....Now my third and final game was me against Scott. This game was very fast paced, he ran off to hide and I eventually found his location, we then exchanged fire from trees whereas his shots cut it very close to me, in fact two blew up right next to my hands. After thsi Scott tried flanking me and sneaking up from behind, however I knew it was coming so I was ready, as charged me from his hiding place behind me I jumped from my protective cover of a giant tree, and skillfully pulled the trigger of Oompa's cheapo plastic gun, fully expecting the splatter of paint against Scott, all I got was *click**click*, the gun had jammed with apparently several paintballs in the chamber, before I realized what happened I felt the sudden twang of pain in my right shoulder, I had been shot, the game was over...as if the pain wasn't enough I had to put up with the gloating of the victor, when I *knew* that game should have been mine.

Oh well, there's always next weekend, perhaps this time the taste of sweet victory will be mine...or maybe I just suck and Scott won cuz he's better...
Well and that was my President's Day weekend...yeah I know *yawn* but it was fun to me.

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