why be so petty as to vote this down? go play outside.

We were both out of bed at 5 this morning, and soon after were in an immensely stupid argument - albeit a calm one, mostly - involving the "dumb motherfucker" search on google. It actually had to do with me seeming 'smug' and 'arrogant' and not letting things go when I should - both of which I heard about in brief lectures as well as one longer one. Y left for work shortly after.

I went outside yesterday in the windy rain, to join Y and and some others for lunch (outside), which brought back my flu symptoms that night. My nasal passages like to clear into my throat only during the night, making me cough and have to get up every hour. During the day I feel fine, but I'm staying in until the weather drastically improves (though I'd rather it rain, actually) or my flu goes away.

The Rushmore soundtrack is on repeat; I've heard it several times in a row. Now it has stopped, as though tired of playing.

The male funnel spider comes out to mate in warm, wet weather (what we have now). It is seven times more deadly than a full-grown female. I suppose this is significant, though the paper never mentioned how deadly the latter actually is, but they are not spiders to be messed with, regardless. This is one of those potentially lethal Australian beasties you hear about.

There is a call for citizens to capture them so the people who do this sort of thing can milk them for anti-venom, one drop at a time. Apparently you put a jar over them, slip a piece of cardboard underneath it, bring it up, drop a water-saturated cotton ball in the jar, and cover it again, without airholes. I can tell you right now that if I see one, I won't be doing any of this. Maybe ToasterLeavings would, being a good Australian citizen.

Every time I hear a noise I think it's a male funnel spider the size of a football.

Yesterday I spent six or so hours studying and taking boson tests (which kicked my ass at first). Today I just want to read, but want to take this test very soon, so I'll probably take more practice tests and focus on trunking, which I hear from a few people is most of the test.

And beware that you don't fall into another kind of error: the folly of those who wear out their lives in ceaseless business, but have no aim on which their every action or thought is focused. - Marcus Aurelius

I need a haircut.

school started today. It rained and was cold, there was ice on the ground, I saw several people go flying on the ice during my walk to class this morning. For breakfast I had rice and salmon furikake. I have realized now that I don't have enough food to last for more than a two weeks at this rate. I already have eaten about half of the (admittedly small) rice in the bag that I bought last week. I am going to have to fall back soon on my instant noodle supply, but that too has its limits.

Classes were good. My linguistics professor told us some good stories about how his professors resolved a disparity in his findings with those of the "god" of Chinese linguistics, Y.R. Chao. My professor had been doing research on the amount of tones in Chinese dialects in this case one of the Wu dialects. Y.R. Chao had done his research on the tones using his own ear and an huqin (a type of Chinese musical instrument) to replicate the tones. Chao had arrived at the conclusion that there were at most 11 tones. However, my professor had gone to research using a microphone and recording equipment, so he got a more accurate reading and found there were 12 tones. However this presented his professors with a difficult problem. Y.R.Chao was known never to be wrong, yet my professor's evidence was incontrovertible- their solution was thus accomplished: since Y.R. Chao had done his research 50 years previously, the professors said that the language had acquired an extra tone in the interim! Therefore both Y.R. Chao and my professor were correct...

Japanese class was also good, although it seems that a lot of people from last semester dropped and were replaced by a bunch of people who laugh loudly and nevously at anything that is even vaguely humorous. I "screwed up" by saying a lot of stuff that my ex-roommate had taught me instead of using the japanese that is in the book. Still in my opinion 9 times out of 10 you will learn more from a living individual than you will from a book, because if one were to write a book that captures the entirety of the potential expressions that a person might say, I would have to trade my bike in for a sled and a team of dogs in order to carry my books acoss the frozen tundra of this campus to class. (TWAJS)

I've been absent for quite some time from our little geek paradise here. Lots of reasons - mostly the trip to Hawaii and illness.

*bleagh* Whatever ... anyway, I'm back.

This was quite an eventful month, though. Oahu was beatiful and the three people I was with (two others that were traveling with me and the friend from school we were visiting) managed not to not kill each other or ruin any friendships, even after spending constant time together for two weeks.

Coming back from Oahu, I continued to spend more and more time with cute girl and her ex-boyfriend (strangely enough). He got kicked out of his house and needed a place to crash for a couple of weeks (he's about to move to Seattle), so he's staying with me and my roommates. The day that he moved in, she and I ... well, "opened up" about our attractions to each other.

*blush*

I have a girlfriend. It's kind of a weird feeling. I mean ... I've had boyfriends before and I've had flings with girls, but I've never had a girlfriend before her. And, the strangest thing is, it doesn't really feel that weird. That's what's really throwing me for a loop here. It feels so natural, I worry that I'm already too deeply involved, that I like her too much.

She worries about the same things.

I'm happy, though. I need to learn to take that for what it's worth - I need to learn how to be just plain happy.

The past few days have been surprisingly pleasant.

I was finally called to perform before our band director in order to assess my musical abilities, and I was rewarded with advancement in status. I am once again on my way to becoming first chair - only two more to go. Later that day, I was sitting in the library proofreading my essay that was due at three o’clock. I found several minor errors that demanded the entire paper be re-written in order to present it at highest quality. Thankfully I had thought ahead and saved the paper on a disk, which I managed to sneak into the library and open on the one computer containing a functioning A drive. I made the few corrections, printed it off, and was back where I belonged in less than five minutes.

Around twenty to three, I left for Hope. I arrived more or less on time after parallel parking into a snow bank in order to fit between two SUVs. Handed in the essay, and then proceeded to take the test on French philosophers. We were given one of the Blue Books to write all the short answers and essays in. Those always make me nervous; they’re so impersonal and bare. I couldn’t remember what Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s real name was. This wasn’t a question on the test, but when I forget a simple piece of trivia such as that, my luck is running low. I managed to complete the test without any problems, however, and be the second one finished. I turned it in the Madame, who was in her office, and then was on my way home.

Today, nothing exciting happened. But it was pleasant nonetheless. Last night I had spent an hour downloading 23 songs from Napster and making a compilation CD for my friend, Norman. He rewarded my kindness with a lunch trip to Blimpie’s. You know I was excited!

I talked to my A.P. Psychology teacher after class about the lecture she gave on Anorexia the other day. Although she had warned me ahead of time about the specific subject of the lecture, I wasn’t really worried about it. What’s in the past is done; if I was touchy about every experience I’ve ever had, I’ll end up being a complete and utter bitch for the rest of my life. I offered to let her borrow my notebooks from the University of Iowa, where I received most of my treatment. I also threw in the Linden Oaks notebook as well, since that had a lot of information in it too. She thanked me profusely and asked if she could keep them for a while. I said sure – when am I going to want to look at them? Yes, I really really want to remember what my life was like as a patient in a mental hospital - please let me keep these memories close at hand. I was more than glad to hand them over.

We had a substitute teacher in Reading and Writing Workshop (a total senior slacker class), who was supposed to read to us our daily does of Le Petit Prince. Well, it was the English version, but the title The Little Prince just doesn’t have the same ring to it. I read this book last year in French class, so the story content was nothing new to me. I usually just zoned out while the usual teacher read in her harsh, lisping voice with a phony English accent, but today was different. Our sub was not at all impressed with the plot of the book, so she blatantly skipped several pages and read the last paragraph. She then handed out candy and let us leave twenty minutes early. It was too good to be true.

The garage door motor is broken, so when I got home I had to lift it up manually. It was a lot harder than it looked. I couldn’t get it to lift by using the handle on the outside, so I went into the garage and tried pulling on the cord hanging from the top of the door. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough body mass to counterweight the massive wooden door, so I was forced to leave my poor car out in the cold until my parents arrived home to open the garage door themselves.

I talked to my boyfriend on the phone for about an hour before I had to go to pep band. He was telling me about his religious views, and how he thinks he’s agnostic now instead of an atheist. I was pleased to hear that. Atheism is usually associated with bitter, hardcore younger people. Aaron is just a sweet, oversized college student who was raised with an absence of religious convictions. This is, in fact, the best way to be brought up. He was left to make up his own mind without bias and the encouragement to jump on the Christian bandwagon. However, I am quite happy being a member of the Christian Reformed church.

Good night.

I began my new semester of school today. I had to rush to school to pay my gym fines, so that they would give me my schedule, so that I could go to class, so that I wouldn't fall behind on day 1. Last semester, I got 3 D's in Geometery each six week period, so I was dropped from the AP class to the normal one, but it doesn't matter much, it's not that I don't understand it, it's just that I don't turn in the homework. Not to worry, I was good enough in Competitive Speech to be brought up into the AP class, so it won't effect my GPA much.

Then I came home, did my homework, and started noding. Yay, I got blessed for the first time. (huzzah)
Well after another 12+ hour day at work, I am finally sitting down here at home. I poured a couple of Heinekens into a stein my sister gave me and celebrated her birthday.

This weekend, I found a neat little CD shop downtown, and picked up The Smiths, Alanis Morissette, and emmet swimming. I guess they are pretty good.

David Letterman is on in the background. I am not sure, but it seems he is not as funny as he used to be. I'm not too excited about Jay Leno either, but at least they both have cool guests. Letterman does have better regular features... and tonight he has Dolly Parton on. Talk about a blast from the past. And they just showed a clip of W patting his wife on the butt. Hmmmm.

I almost forgot to pay my rent, but lucked out again this month. And joy-of-joys, we got our W2's at work. Ugh.

Today I finished my first mix tape. I made it for a friend of mine. I hope she likes it.. one thing I learned: I had no idea how little I knew about music until I tried to make a mix tape. Hrmm.. My taste in music sucks ( ; I definitely need to persue music more actively. Anyway, here's the track listing.

Side A
-------------------------------------------------
The Promise Ring      - Make me a Mixtape
Harvey Danger         - Carlotta Valdez
The Dandy Warhols     - Bohemian Like You
Sugar Ray             - Abracadabra
Weezer                - Why Bother?
Sunny Day Real Estate - Seven
Collective Soul       - December
Modest Mouse          - Neverending Math Equation
Pixies                - Where is my Mind?
Guided by Voices      - Echos Myron
Bush                  - Cold Contagious
The Beatles           - I'm Only Sleeping
Built to Spill        - Time Trap


Side B
--------------------------------------------------
At the Drive-In        - One Armed Scissor
The Eagles             - Get Over it
Weezer                 - Holiday
Live                   - Supernatural
The Allman Brothers    - Soulshine
The Derek Trucks Band  - #6 Dance
Modest Mouse           - Tiny Cities Made of Ashes
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Otherside
Pink Floyd             - Wish You Were Here
Alice in Chains        - Nutshell
The Smashing Pumpkins  - To Forgive
Radiohead              - Exit Music (For a Film)

I hope she likes it. I feel like I have been rather distant to her recently.. also, the last time we talked I inadvertantly got us into an argument. Hopefully my silly letter and mix tape will do us good. ( : I'll report back later.

13:10

I had... uh, dreams that wouldn't be exactly good to tell to the children.

Well, as mentioned, I got my Palm to work, and that was Good. I got down my inspiration on this thing - I had a good idea about one article, and one pretty interesting idea for artwork.

Oh, and a cool thing I noticed: I got nodevertised in Slashdot (they [?]'ed my MUA writeup... I needed to make it better, it was one of my E1 writeups =)

Well, time to face the challenges of the day...

18:25

I tried XFree86 4.0.2's new and improved DRI, and lo, it works a lot better than 4.0.1-phase2 stuff! I played a lot of Tux Racer... I wonder if Tux the Penguing: AQfH is available as a Debian package?

Quake was pretty... DARK with this setup. I tried to turn up the contrast but that didn't work!

19:20

Oh yeah: the DRI gaming environment launches X in 800x600x32bpp mode, and uses... surprise surprise... twm as the window manager.

Ha! I could scare newbies with that one! =)

twm: When you really, really don't want a bloated UI.


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: Elite Four Bootleg 100-in-1 NES Game Carts McDonaldland

Updated: MUA

Here it is, my first day log. I have read a few and I guess there should be some template for this. People say they are not sure if they can spill the heart out here because they know other noders in person and are worried what they will think. I am another of these people so I will keep this simple and share my views on E2 so far.

I have been using E2 for 2 weeks now and I have just done my first write up. The reason I left it so long was that I don't have much general knowledge so factual nodes are hard to write and I have very little self confidence and I thought that people wouldn't be interested in my opinions and that I wouldn't 'fit in' to the E2 community somehow. I am now convinced there is a place for me here. My first write up got a reputation of 2 and C!ed in about 30 seconds, so I'm happy for now.

Well, last night I was feeling sad. I could feel it welling up in me, missing M. A friend was supposed to come over for dinner, so I was glad about that distraction. But she had to reschedule - so I fixed my dinner and ate it, alone. Then I went into the kitchen to clean up and found myself eating another cup of rice, standing up at the kitchen counter, telling myself to stop the whole time.

It's amazing how fast I can let this disease just knock me over! I thought I was doing well - I guess I forgot that I have a reprieve when I surrender, but not a cure from this disease. I haven't read any material for a week, so I'm sure that's contributed. I was doing so well, too. Well, I've gotten back up, and brushed myself off. I am considering that a wake up call, so I am taking heed and paying attention! I surrendered everything - everything - before I even got out of bed this morning.

I feel very sad today. I miss M. I have this big hole where my heart used to be. It's as deep as my soul. I am so sad. I want him to hold me close. I miss him so much; we used to chat at least once a day, even if only for a minute. I have lost my best friend. There's a country song with a line in it that I love - love's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world.

But I'm clearer every day about the reasons for my leaving him. If I was tired, just low energy, say on a Friday, after working hard all week and not quite getting enough sleep all week, and all I wanted to do was snuggle or watch a movie with him, I felt fine being with him. But if I wanted to do anything more, ANYthing! then (1) I would have to initiate it (2) deal with his reluctance and hesitation and (3) it felt like I had to bolster enough energy to get him motivated as well as myself. This got really old. I felt dragged down by his presence. Even a walk was a drag. And a party? I invited him to at least 8 parties over the year - he attended 2, with hesitations, backdowns, and excuses for all the others.

I don't know - then I had to hear constantly about how late I was, all the time, when in the past 6 months, he would always be at least 30 minutes late picking me up. Meanwhile, I was late less and less and less. One time he was an hour and a half late - didn't call, or anything.

And he never really communicated much to me in terms of what was going on with him, emotionally, I felt. He would say things from an abstract, unemotional place about his "insights" and "this time I've hit bottom" but no emotions on his face, no emotion in his voice. I saw him cry only once this year. It was almost surreal, I've never seen him cry before.

But through all of this - he was always very supportive, loving and giving to me. He was always available if I needed to talk. He was wonderful and warm to me, consistently. He was 100% unconditional love - to me, if not anyone else.

After a rousing five hours of Ultima IX, I turned my attention to work. I have a tendency to code at the strangest hours. I fired up emacs and whacked some Java into it.

My girlfriend walks over sleepily, rubs her eyes, and yawns. I scratch her back for her, since she likes that. Her contacts are in the bathroom, so she leans very close to the screen to see what I'm doing at this hour of the morning.

Suddenly a jolt of recognition shoots through her.

"Hey! That looks like C!"

I was very happy. I gave her a hug and a kiss. Then she was happy. And I was thankful too.

Today SUCKED.

My car's transmission broke. My car is an 1983 Chevy Caprice Classic POS car, and fixing the transmission costs more that what the entire car is WORTH.

Now, you may think, big deal! Just get another POS car. I have no money. I have less than $50 to my name right now. That car was my home. I lived in that car. A poor college student who has to freakin pay for food can't afford rent.

Ah well. I guess I'll just have to start taking the bus to college everyday, and see if I can stay with some friends until I have enough money to get out again.

Anyway, enough of my bitching...
the ongoing saga of my guts. my trip to the gastroenterologist went fairly well. he was iterested and concerned about my symptoms. he recommended an MRCP instead of an immediate ERCP. the MRCP is similar to the ERCP except that they use an MRI machine instead of an endoscope. it shouldn't hurt. what i don't understand, though, is this: if they see stones or stricture, cool... they need to do an ERCP to fix it. if they see nothing, they will assume it is spasm of the biliary sphincter, which will also require a ERCP. i really wish they would do the ERCP now, since the pain is so bad in the mornings. but the doctor knows best, so i listen to him.

i asked him what i could do to maage the pain in the meantime... pain in the mornings is so strong, but goes away within 3 hours. by the time vicodin kicks in, the pain may have already gone. if it hasn't, the vicodin doesn't help at all. so he gave me hyoscyamine, a sublingual intestinal muscle relaxant which should take effect within 30 minutes. he said it would only help the pain if it was related to digestive problems, NOT if it is stones or stricture of the bile duct, but that it was worth a try. he also gave me an acid blocker in case there are ulcers causing pain rather than stones. this is also said was a long shot.

so tomorrow moring i go through the MRCP. i hope it shows SOMETHING. i want to figure out what this is and how to fix it. i'm 24. i shouldn't have such constant pain. wish me luck.
Humility:

I got into work feeling as if I was going to have a good day. I'd been trying to work with XML to create some kind of database files for our website and I was focused and feeling good about it.  I'd been putting off some of my other tasks to I could at least get some better understanding of what I was doing... but not getting very far - I still have so much to learn.

Anyway, I got an email from a software vendor. They sent the license info I needed for another project so I put away the XML and dove quickly into the replication task that I'd been putting off. This was something that I'd had on my plate for a while and was assuming it would come off without a hitch... hey, it was just replication, easy shit, I'd be back to my real project in a few minutes

Financial reporting has been such a disaster in the last year - most reporting has been a disaster in the last year (oh, how I love PeopleSoft). We've been trying to figure out how to keep it running consistently (if anyone knows what Nvision is and can make it work right let me know). Our recent solution was to remove the network reads and writes and try to make everything work off the local drive; then replicate the reports to the file server. It worked OK when we used it with sales reporting so this one was a no brainer.

I set up the local directory on the server for Nvision to use and the replication point into that empty directory. I then brought up the console, created the new job and set it up to backup the new directory to the production reporting area on the file server. It ran ten minutes later and erased all of the production financial reports for the last two years.

Our backup tape from last night failed and we had to go back to Monday night's backup... at least that one wasn't my fault.

The rest has my name written all over it and I feel like shit. At the very least we have it restored (as best we can) but I'm so paranoid about the replication that I'm afraid to use it.
OK, not afraid, just very wary...

I guess I learned how NOT to set up a replication. I hate feeling stupid, I hate having to explain to the accountants WHY the reports they ran this morning have to be rerun... they're being unnervingly nice about it.

Lesson learned, overconfidence is bad.

Humility can be quite useful when groveling.

I just wrote my one hundredth write-up. I feel all strange and tingly. Actually, I feel like I don't want to go to class in twenty minutes. We're learning creative thinking, only it's not creative thinking, because they're using the same "think outside the box" and lateral thinking exercises that have been around since the 70s. Talk about not getting outside of the box. Kids do this stuff in grade school these days. It angers me. I want more. Give us more, I say!

Today's smile is the picture on kamamer's homenode. If you don't get it, that's okay. It's funny to some people. Funny and sad. And scary. And what's more scary is that one day it will be Paul Martin in that picture. *shudder*

I'm really just blathering on for no reason. I just wanted to acknowledge my centennial write-up. HOOORAY FOR ME! Now it's over, and I shall be moving on.

I hope you all have a special day too!

today i drove around this small town, listening to all the songs that remind me of you.

and the shadows, as they fell where i sped, fled past and the time seemed to go by all too fast.

but how can you resist those shadows of the trees, of us, on windy evenings

where there's no rush to finish too soon the things we never have the courage to start.

over the lake the sun cast streaming, wavy light, just like the way i see you--

beautiful, undefined--

and the water always there to refresh my memory of you.

why does everything now always make me think of you?

and running from this thought i lost myself

in dead end roads and looped highways only to return to where i had begun.

(((circles))), always around you..

and i'm ending up where i never started.


and perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect..
i just can't get this word out of my mind.

Today was an alright day. We started doing some conversational stuff in Japanese class. It was difficult at first, but once I saw the writing to show how it was pronounced exactly, it was easier to memorize.

TC gave me some advice about college and where to go with a degree. She seems to feel that a computer science degree isn't really the place to go for if you're looking for a really interesting job. She is recommending some engineering type degree if I want a job messing with fun stuff (wireless, etc). It sounds logical. I guess I can handle the math if I just do the homework. She recommended getting involved with a research job on campus so that I can have the classes for free. There's an engineering department that works with NASA at FAU. That would be awesome to be involved in. She gave me a lot of interesting advice. I will have to check it out.

I went by the university gym tonight. It wasn't at all the same as the commercial gym that I go to. There were a lot more people there at a ratio to equipment. It seems adequate though. I may consider dropping my gym membership and save $45 a month. They don't have very good aerobic equipment, but I can get aerobic exercise just by jogging around campus or something. Maybe I'll get some rollerblades.

I still feel good since yesterday. I am still constantly thinking of what I'm going to get Sara for Valentine's day besides the CD that I'm going to make for her. I'm going to make a CD that contains only one song: Thank you by Dido. It conveys a perfect message for how I feel. I don't want to add any other songs to the disc, because I want this one to stand out. I will get some colored CD jewel cases from Best Buy and give it to her in red case. I want to get her something else in addition to this though; I haven't thought of what yet. Heck, I haven't even though how I'm going to give this to her. I don't want to make anything awkward since I know she has made a rule that she's not getting involved in a relationship while going to school, but I want her to clearly know that I still love her.

Well, I've got a dentist appointment early tomorrow morning and have to get some bills paid as well. I also need to focus and get caught up on some stuff that's piling up at work. I should probably get to sleep.

After three days of constant snow and freezing rain—these two alternating to create an interesting landscape—the sun finally decided to show its sore eye through the clouds. Oh, happy day! There is currently a quarter-inch think sheet of ice over both my windows as the freezing rain produces interesting effects and the sun was not strong enough to vanquish my chilly foe. I still can't see out my window, not that there is much to see.

The sunshine correlated with my waking to find my body did not feel like it had been sat on by a large pachyderm while I slept. This past week has seen me slouching my way through either a rather nasty cold or mild flu. It's hard to continue one's daily duties when their head and lungs are full of axle grease. I slept through yesterday and that seemed to do the trick. I woke today feeling more or less normal, coughing up the remnants of the disease.

Tomorrow will find me on the road again, south through the mountains to the city where I must help beautiful girl move into her new apartment following the total rational collapse of her roommate. I pray for sunshine as secluded mountain roads plus snowfall of any sort equals yours truly backwards in a ditch.

From outside I hear amplified tribal drums. The neighbors around the corner are whooping it up again. I wish I could simply lob a grenade over into their apartment and be done with it. Strike that, I'm not into death. Perhaps a combination electronic disruption/sterility bomb. Destroy their stereo while keeping the fuckers from producing any waterhead spawn.
Jesus, did I just write that?

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.