June 30, 2001

Another fine day. Actually went to Comp USA like I planned..walked around for a few minutes, got an app. Whoo ho..the excitement. Talked to my neurotic mom, thankfully the cell phone decided to discharge the battery midcall (and pre-throw). Going out to a new bar or three tonight, then Randy (my new roommate, old friend) is going to follow me up to CT, where we part ways. I should be back down with Lilith this monday or tues. Can't wait to get her. No word from Baltimore, surprise surprise. Ah well.

After a few days on E2 it became my policy that if I wrote a daily log writeup it would be under the current day's log according to server time. Still, it sort of throws me sometimes, like just now, realizing that for some people, Saturday is already well under way.

Anyway, today was, umm, so-so. Jay left for her 3-day retreat thingey at the Zen Center. It's the end of the "Practice Period", which is this several weeks of intense Zen study and stuff, with classes and ceremonies and stuff. I don't know close to everything that it entails. You pick a precept to work on. You have tea. And at the end you stay silent for week, or for people like Jay who actually have to work, just a couple days.

Sometimes I think she will just pass me up. She will gradually beomce wiser and wiser, until, say, 10 years from now she'll be like a super-enlightened being, a monk or something, and i'll by comparison be this coarse, crude, unspiritual person still. That is, if we're still together. We've been together 10 already so part of me thinks, what's another 10? Another part of me thinks there's no possible way in hell. That would be, umm... 20 years. That would beat my parents, at least.

So anyway, today I had all to myself, and will tonite and most of the rest of the weekend. With her not around I enjoy myself, in a way, I feel more free, but also more lonely, and kind of un-centered. Like I might just float off into some pathological never-never land without her to hold me down.

Accomplishments today: spoke to josé about the South to the Future server we are going to build, and the finances associated with running it. Had lunch with him and ben and katherine. Katherine is very cool. Ben is writing a sit-com, and one of the characters is based on Katherine's ex-boyfriend, a heavy metal fan. She notices immediately when he starts describing him. Later she emails us all and asks:

you're not starting a sitcom with some giant hairy gaijin celphone wielding phd-bearing .com loser chick who never stays through lunch, I hope?

After lunch I tweaked and horked my home page on detritus.net. I didn't like it anymore. I want it to be leaner, more spare and "designed", instead of this big jumble of text. But I don't have enough time to make it look that nice. I ended up only do half the job before I had to leave my studio. At least I added the crucial info, like the fact that I need people to donate money to me, lots of it, so I can fly to Australia and speak at this festival which can't afford to pay my airfare. So, uh, please go to detritus.net/steev and click that little donate link and gimme gimme. ha ha. no really. It's true. just a little. i'll send a free copy of my CD to the first 10 who donate. It has to be at least 10 bucks, tho. ok?

Okay so then I went to the post office and sent a package to that same festival, with press promo stuff and some CDs. Then I went looking for a travel agent place I could use my Southwest Airlines gift certificates so I can go to Portland in a couple weeks. No one will take them, or they'll charge me a dumb stupid fee. So I think I'll just BART out to the airport tommorrow and buy the freakin' tickets there. no big thing.

So, uh, now it's friday night but I don't feel like doing anything. I'm just going to drink Newcastle and watch a video, a Japanese psychothriller called Angel Dust. Wow, I just realized, Newcastle is also the name of the town, near Sydney, where this festival is. I wonder if that was some kind of subconcious thing, that I bought Newcastle. No, I doubt it, I just like that beer. I had it first when I was in Brighton last year, introduced to it by someone who was from Newcastle, and I bloody well liked it. So I'm drinking it. That is all.

Car accidents suck. Big time.

A van ahead of me had to brake suddenly: so did I, but it looks like I wasn't -quite- quick enough. Add to that the fact that I was going downhill at the time and you get..well..bang.

I was pretty pissed off: it figures that I last 7 years without an accident, and then two months before I turn 25 (the age at which they stop charging you insane insurance prices in Australia, and just resort to plain outrageous ones) I hit another car. In my imported japanese sports car. Which costs just a little bit for parts. Oh well... I guess that's the insurance companys woe now.

On the plus side, I really did need to repaint that front end.

11:00amEST

The lab is so nice and cool compared to the surprizingly oppressive Massachusetts heat.My users are few and mutual ignoring is working quite well today. I've recently begun to wonder the possibilities of having EverQuest on the consultants pc for my annoying 12 hour stretches of lab time that I somehow have to work tomorrow.

Kim₁ has Imed me with interesting news, she's poking around Everything2 and wrote something. A medium chill works its way up my spine and become a sense of intense worry. What does she mean that she posted something ? Seeing how Kim is staying on my floor and I have my much loved computer set for remember me , its a very reasonable fear. I quickly assure that Kim isn't actually using my account /me exhales with great and deserved relief and ask her what her username is. She has a problem with formatting and doesn't know the proper html tags and after a few false starts get her first post all fixed up. I'm not a html goddess by any means and explaining it by AIM is itsn't that great either.

I'm feeling somewhat chipper for the most of the part. I'm not too keen on where she decided to post considering that in the same node are two marked for destruction write ups of three writeups before she added to it and perhaps her node would do better somewhere else. However, that didn't bother me too much and I asked if she had visited Everything University so she could learn about where she is standing knee deep in. She doesn't do directions which confuses me because before you dive in anything head first, shoudn't you read your directions? I insist that she just read what the E2 culture is like at least, I imagine by now I'm pleading/whining at her. Its a horrible trait of mine and I must sound zealous at the least. What she said next mad me somewhat angry and now I wonder at it.

"I'm not staying, its just my morning entertainment."

I wonder now if for my surprise and anger, whether any of it was warranted. I felt like she genuinely wasted my time and Everything's space and even the person who voted her down. I tried explaining to her that she could have just read if she wanted to do something on E2. I had hundreds of good reasons that she didn't need to share her ideas if it was just her having fun for the day. The more I look at the reasons, the more shoddy they look and ridiculous I feel. Her writeup wasn't horrible for a first writeup. I could only imagine that I was upset that she decided to play drifter in my online community.

12:37 EST

1. The name was changed to protect the privacy of "Kim".

This writeup will cover three days as is so often the way with my daylogs. If it's a short one, there's nothing really worth writing about, but on the days when I feel there's something to say, it often spills over. Judge me.

So on the Friday we were striving for alpha. It was bad, because we thought we had met the deadline a day early, on the Thursday night, but Friday morning felt differently. It's never nice when it's your work that's let down the whole team. But in the end it turned out to be one of those mysterious bugs that you could not have done anything about.

So Friday, we eventually got unofficial approval that the game could be played right through. So we all went down the pub for drinks on the company and just a chance to start to unwind before the nights' Team Jolly.

I gave out a number for a taxi firm, to take us all down to the restaurant, but for some reason, the taxi co refused to pickup from the pub we were at. And a couple of other pubs up the road. Weirdly, they didn't seem willing to come to anywhere I had previously called them from, so we all ended up walking back to work and getting picked up from there.

After nearly getting killed by the cabby's ineptitude (going through red lights, lanal driftage and heading towards Peru instead of Mornington Crescent), we made it more or less on time. Pizza Punani. A small Italian restaurant with a penchant for noise and a night club in the basement. And I got stuck in a quiet seat.. let's just say, 'between two boring guys, one who would not shut up and one who would not speak.'

Everyone cool was planning to go to the Electric Ballroom after, but having sat there for three hours I paid my share of the bill... £20 for three beers... and snook out. I hated leaving so early in the night, but could not face going clubbing, almost sober, with a headache and thinking about the next morning.

Saturday... the day my ex was due to come and take away the furniture... the TV... almost everything. It was not something I looked forward to, so I decided to try and avoid facing the experience completely mashed and/or hungover. Of course, having forfeited one of the year's better nights out, she rang and postponed until Sunday.

So Saturday was spent doing nob all. I sat at the PC. I sat at the PC a bit more. I had some excitement on Planetarion and eventually got my act together and went out for beers. Back home with a few cans things picked up. I watched Red Planet at last. I had wanted to see that film last time I was in New York, but ended up watching Charlie's Angels instead... not quite the same Sci-fi feel. Turned out to be good and inspired me to work on a collection of film robot writeups. Things could be worse.

Oh yes, I said three days. Well... it's the third one now. I made it to almost 3am on Sunday on the same mood swing. Only now I still have to look forward to waking up to find everything in my flat being removed. Anyone know any good, single player, pencil and paper games?

Things are getting better, I can feel it.