02:20

(Caution: Depressed babbling ahead. Brighter stuff, I hope, coming up later today.)

Bah.

Depression. SQL. documentation with no examples. These things don't mix.

At around 00:30 I sat down and had a cool idea about putting YiffCam news to the database.

Around 02:15 I was already getting suicidal, but I successfully told myself to calm down, it's only ones and zeroes. =) =( =(

"Get stuff from database where date field says it's more recent than n weeks." Sounds easy stuff, ready in minutes? Yep, it sure sounds.

ERROR:  Unable to identify an operator '<' for types 'date' and 'interval'
        You will have to retype this query using an explicit cast

Grrrrrrrgrrrgrrrrrr... ::deep sigh::

Whatever I did, I got an error message.

WWWWolf-Hak-Lyc-Mal-Cha, killed on level 1 by PostgreSQL.

Maybe I should go to sleep. Too bad SQL will be equally unintuitive in the morning.

(And don't even THINK of suggesting "return everything and junk uninteresting dates in the script". I let the RDBMS to do the dirty work.)

Other stuff? Downloaded Mozilla 0.8.1 (took 30 minutes over 128k ISDN - from Sweden. %#@$ng clotheslines.) And the Inttttternet connection keeps sucking. =(

Well, good night... Tomorrow should, should, be a bright new day.

(Again no one probably cares about me anyway. =( )

11:43

::sigh:: Good morning...

Folks, what do we learn from this?

Strongly typed languages are not meant to be used by mortals! =)

Time to face the challenges of the day...

(First problem: the ssh-able Linux machine, that also had my screen session, seemed to be down... =( )

16:42

(Yep, the screen was definitely dead.)

Yay! I finally did get the SQL stuff to work! =)

SELECT date, headline, article FROM yiffcam_news WHERE date > ('now'::timestamp - '$period'::interval)::date ORDER BY date;

Intuitive? I think not.

Remember what I said above... strongly typed languages are not for mortals. Typecasting leads to anger, and anger leads to... suffering. =)

21:33

Made a card for fox friend of mine who has a birthday tomorrow, and I faced a hard task: How to find something nice and positive to say to him when I'm down myself?...

::sigh::

(And please stop downvoting me. Do not hit the fallen.)

One cool thing: Mozilla 0.8.1 seems to handle form text area copying right - it no longer strips HTML from these input boxes. Which Is Cool. =)

00:51

You gained 1 Kinsey!

...To me, for most gratuitous use of the word "fuck" in bug report I'm now afraid to send because of gross profanity. I just CANNOT express it otherwise.

Sorry for strong language, but I'm fucking PISSED OFF.

Tried to upgrade Lupinething to Everything pre-1.0. The Perl shit was easily upgraded. The fucking database wasn't. nbmasta refuses to connect anywhere, and reports the new ecore nodeball has no fucking version and won't install even when I use the --force.

Result? Lupinething won't display. When it does, it gives errors.

I need to hack it togheter one beautiful day, make SOMETHING to get my stuff out as nodeball, and... well, maybe it will work again in early 2206.

Is it so hard for everydevel to at least give UPGRADE INSTRUCTIONS???

This is sort of depressing.

Should learn to make backups or something. I have nothing now...

01:59

Danger over. Found 0.9.1.0 tarball and just overwrote the pre-1.0 installation with that. But, uh, my body lost about 20 liters of water. The tears that 1.0 upgrade shall cause will be, I tell you, counted in millions.

Real Men Don't Cry.
People who need to use MySQL, it seems, often have to.

The "mysql" tool is a piece of dareItellyouwhat. At least psql has online help. Ha ha! So, last night I thought PostgreSQL was bad, but today I saw what piece of *bleep* MySQL was! Password? No password? User or not, not or user? or usernot? (This may sound insane, but the MySQL, as I told, was sort of weird. It is way above mortal comprehension. =)

Homework. I write, and write, and write, until my hand cramps. I shake it out in a frustrated spasm. Every muscle that I can no longer move increases the liklihood of an A... right?

potential, n. - what every high school student wastes.

I thought today, in a spurt of hard work, that I might like to become a machine, so that I may excel in everything I do without worrying about silly things such as emotions and psychology getting in the way. But it doesn't work that way, it never will, and unfortunately there are millions of other people so much smarter than me... and there are millions of people who would be upset with a class rank of 12th. Fortunately for me, I'm just a machine, or striving to become one.

Fencing practice is tiring.  Time to go bug the pledges.

Tonight, homework for stupid numerical methods class.

Sleep.

Get up, turn in homework.  Leave class early.

Sleep.

Get up, mail some eBay tapes out.

Sleep.

Get up, have dinner.  Do some stupid circuitry homework.

Sleep.

Depression is closing in again...

I graduate from college this May. This scares the shit out of me. I can't comprehend what it will be like. Now, I'm becoming a grad student in August, and so I'm still in school, but it's a totally different situation. I will (hopefully) be a graduate assistant, which means I may be teaching classes. This scares me. I was always an enemy of teachers, and they of me. Now, I've always been fairly intelligent, but I never liked the authority they had over me. Now, I'll soon be invested with that same authority I so hated. I don't know how to deal with this idea.

But that's not the half of it. Sure, I intend to become a professor (either of literature or theatre). But what I really want to do is:

But I fear I lack talent. Do I have the talent for these things? I honestly don't know. I send my work out, and no one wants it. Nothing I do can get published. My bands fall apart before we can even get a gig. I audition but never get a call-back. I'm a hack, and don't know what to do with myself. My friends tell me not to worry, that I need more confidence in myself. I disagree--I think I'm just a hack.

Worse yet, my birthday is coming. I'll be 22. That's not very old to you, but when you hang out with teenagers (admittedly 18/19), it feels pretty damn old.

Ugh.

Today I spent mostly sick in bed. Nothing interesting there. However I did manage to finish off a mess of bitter poetry I had written a few months back.

You were there to help me fall,
To give that extra shove,
To feel the flames of hatred.
You gave me a place to run to,
but left me to return to my prison,
alone.
With you I was always alone.
The knife was twisted deeper and you were involved.
Always the first to watch me break,
Never the one to heal.
You'd give anything,
to see me hurt like you.
Someone who was tortured all the same.
You'd see beauty in the salty tears I'd cry,
and all I saw was coldness staring back at me in your stone smile.

This should be self-explanatory. The one person who I turned to for help, only made things worse. And I was left to be angry about it.

Boom. I'm damn tired. The schedule has to come under control! I barely woke up in the morning to give my mom a ride to work. Blargheth. And then when I left to work I forgot the Path of Daggers. Damn. Instead I went to mail my calculus 2 homework(polar coordinates! damn you! ) Then I went to the Half Price Computer Books. Useless. On the other hand I managed to fulfill part of my job description today. One of my automatic test scripts managed to kill the server. Yay to me.


Played some DDR today. My friend tells me some girl was lookin' at me. I don't know whether he was lying but I felt flattered (whoa, i can dance a nasty round of ddr mon!...come on fer god's sake!).


jesus, there are a lotta people i know on e2 right now. their dyalogs make for a interesting read. i mean who ever tells their friends 100% right? nodegel doesn't grow stale if i whine i tad (i wont whine i promise). i hate whiners.

Anyhow, no math for me today. I'll play some tanarusgotta finish the damn wu!!! and go sleep. blessed sleep!!


Never Give up! Never surrender!

carpe noctem!

The Rise and Fall of Rebelliousness

If you are bored enough to be consulting the day log of someone like me, please go and see Le Morte d'Arthur, or even my very own brand new writeup. Go on. It'll do you good.

I am a writer and my favourite pov (I wonder if that's been noded?), that is, point of view, is to write in the first person to an imaginary reader. I like to kid myself that someone is interested. I know nothing about E2, but it seems to me that I can dump all this stuff in a daylog, where there is the possibility, soothing to my (tortured, artistic) soul that somebody will read it.

BlakJak has told me that there is something called the zone, peculiar to programmers, and that when one enters the zone, one is able to program at high intensity. It is not unique to programmers. It is something that is common to most 'natural' writers and poets. 'Natural' writers and poets are the ones who say "I'm a writer... no, not like that, I just... can't help it..." before regaling you with the amazing tale of the Zone they were in last night and how they just *know* they've got something REAL, if only they could read their own handwriting.

I hope Thuper Ranger has a nice birthday. Happy birthday etc. Birthdays are special. You become aware of mortality and how you felt when you were four and how being an adult isn't really about alcohol and parties. No, it's about voting and carrying a bag full of plastic... bank card, credit card, medicare card, private health card, club cards, business cards, NRMA card...you realise why your Mum has a bag you can live out of for a week. She has to carry all this stuff too.

I was going to crap on in here about my parents who are manipulating bastards and my sister, but I did a writeup - my very first - and already it has, I think, been voted upwards twice. How small a thing it takes to enchant one of limited concentration span.

To be young again, I guess that is what I would wish to have once again. To have the innocence to look at the world through the eyes of a child, without knowing the true face of reality.

Due to my mental instability (I am going to a psychiatrist or psychologist tomorrow]), it seems like my day gets worse at it seems. Suicidal. Happy. Its a tilt-a-whirl of emotions. Humbug. Let me get it over with.

After midnight, I'm still on the phone, writing my day node from the day before. Still on the phone, I start to wonder how people can have small talk for the longest time without falling into the pressure of boredom. How interesting. Maybe if I can handle this turmoltuous time, maybe I'll write a paper about it.

Then, about 4:30 AM, when my phone pal left me because she has school the next day, I sat here, again where my mind can be at ease. I used to be able to contain the pressures that I am feeling with the use of meditation but not anymore. There are a lot of things I used to be able to do. Curiosity has left my mind. So has hope. I'm almost 20 this year. Actually, its MrFurious's birthday soon. How old have I gotten. It feels like the best days of my life has passed me, like the feeling when someone is about to die. The flashing of the life before your eyes is something that I have been getting for a while. Maybe its a sign.

I close my eyes. I sit in a meditative state. I cannot sleep, again, but I try to anyways. My body has not succumbed to the pressures that its environment has given it. I've eaten one meal a day for the last six days. Malnutrition is the least of my concerns right now.

Then I fall off into the world of dreams. Even then, I see no hope. Just pictures that torture me of the past and what guilt I have over what I have done before and what might happen to me now. Go see my dream log if you want to. To try to become friends with a former lover is not easy, if not difficult. I am not one to accept defeat easily but even I have my limits. I have breached that limit and more. I just don't care anymore about anything.

I hear my family scuffling the floors around my house. They think I am sleeping. I hear them muttering about how I skip too much school and how irresponsible I am. Each word stabs at my heart like a sniper's bullet. But I accept it because I cannot deny them what they believe. I might not be here for long to prove my point. I hope that the doctor can help me calm my mind, and my body.

Noon. Ring. My phone rings. My lady friend calls me. She wants to know how I am. She's so sweet. She understands me. I wish I could make it up to her soon.

I wake up in the afternoon. No cheery birds. Just the wind chime occasionally making a random tune to the wind's touch. MrFurious asks me if I want to eat. We go, and of course, we go get the cheapy teriyaki chicken at Richmond Public Market. Hmm. I didn't even taste the food. I didn't even want to eat but he did so I'm all good for that now. Off to the arcade. DDR. Sort of funny actually. There was a young lady looking at MrFurious while he was "performing". Hmm. I saw because I'm pretty good at the game and after a while I can glance back without losing touch with the rhythm. I tell him. He doesn't believe me. I don't have to lie. I'm pretty sure he understands that too.

Home I go. I was about to go out and take a walk with another lady friend of mine but my mom has taken my car keys away. And she yells at me about how irresponsible I am. I can't take this anymore. I walk out. I kept walking and walking. Even the cold air cannot calm my nerves. Back to the arcade for me. I go out and play some games. And then back to walking.

Then my phone rings again. Its my friend that called me earlier. She's so sweet. I've never had a friend that thought so much about me. Even my ex-girlfriends never did that before. I wish that I could thank her somehow. She tries to calm me down, and to some extent, she did. She made me think of other things but hiding behind a wall while people are shooting at you will not get rid of the people shooting.

Back home I go. Darkness engulfs the room as I extinguish the last light source in the place. The typing of the keys are what my nights are lately. And the ringing of my phone. But tonight, my phone is silent. I need that silence. I need to think. I need to know what to do. I don't have time to do it all.

A lot of people fear death. I'm not one of them. I embrace it. I am afraid of one thing though. I'm afraid of what is happening when I'm gone. But right now, I have no reason to stay as it makes everything easier if I left. While no one told me to go, no one has told me to stay. I have always prided myself on one that people cannot forget easily because I have always been there for them. But while they cannot forget me, I'm not crucial there. Fine with me. They can charge the expenses to my credit card.

The eerie silence mocks me, as the sky turns a bright gray. Clouds moving silently, along the grace of the wind. Which direction they go, they don't know. They follow where their destinies lie. I'm not a cloud, nor do I know where my destiny lies. I fear nothing anymore, not the light, not the darkness, not the void. They should fear me, because I no longer fear them.

Let the silence move you. Don't fear them. Fear me. I will strike. You just don't know when.

MrTunney and the £10 Sandwich

I'd booked up to have my haircut today and I thought I might go shopping whilst I was in London. Nobody told me there was going to be a tube strike today. So, I get to Theoblads Grove station to find a sign saying they'll be no Victoria line service from Seven Sisters and all customers should get on the tube at Liverpool Street. I wasn't aware to the extent of the strike action so I thought I'd risk it and buy a ticket. The ticket cost me £6.50.

So I got on the train to Liverpool Street, quietly confident of my chances to get to South Kensington via the Circle & District line. I got to Liverpool Street and headed towards the underground. What did I find? Only the Metropolitan line was running any services. I thought I'd get a bus there. Then I saw the queue for the buses. Obviously the whole of London had turned up for this very special occasion. What was I to do? I got a sandwich from the Pret à Manger across the street and got the train home.

I'd spent over £10 and all I can to show for it was sandwich.

I shouldhave been pretty annoyed at this point but I believe that workers should have the right to strike, especially when they're looking after our interests, as in this instance. I don't want the tube to be privatised, I don't want to see what happened on the overground trains happen to the tube. London can't survive without a good public transport system and I believe privatising it will only make matters worse. I'm also glad that it was only an appointment to have my hair cut that I missed and I don't have to work in London on days like these.

Ouch. My head hurts.

Last night, I ran into a friend who I haven't seen in a while, and he invited me to hang out and drink with him and another old friend. Sounded like a good idea to me.

Ouch. My head really fucking hurts.

But at least I got to hang out and drink in a dorm room, which is something I haven't done in a few years. In a giddy drunken haze, I got really excited and showed this site to them, and tried to explain what it was. I don't think I did a very good job of explaining, but I command-D'd the site, so they can look at it today.

Ouch.

I've got a new home!

Closing went well, despite a last-minute change in schedule that (at the LAST last minute) was reversed, so that everything happened on time after all.

My new contact information:

Ben Ostrowsky
107 Caldwell Dr #181
Brandon FL 33510-4208
813-657-6346

The phone number should be turned on early next week; I'll be moving on April 9-10, which is when my answering machine will move to the new number.

After closing, my buyer's agent -- whom I did not pay a cent for her services -- handed me an envelope with a "Congratulations!" card in it, and a $50 gift card to the Home Depot. Jävlar, que lagniappe, ne?1 I already used some of it to put a water filter on the kitchen tap until I find out from the county what on earth makes the unfiltered stuff taste the way it does. I'll put the rest of it into a new water heater, probably.

I slept there last night after doing laundry without using any quarters. The concept is still a little foreign to me. I do wish I had a full-sized dryer, though -- it takes an hour or more to dry half a wash load.

I met my next-door neighbor. I apparently parked in Her Space (they're not marked). Where do you suppose *she* parked? Not two spaces over: right in back of me, so I couldn't get out. Fortunately, she had also been waiting up to see who it was, so after a five-minute lecture, she let me out. She said she was glad it was me, because if it had been That Woman Upstairs, there would have been trouble, because she knew better.

1 If you understood that entire sentence, you may be eligible for a position in the UN, Mensa, or your national intelligence service.

Today is nothing but badness.

  • went to bed incredibly late after hanging out with this girl I sorta like. But it seemed all for nought as I didn't seem to make any progress there.
  • as a result of my late night (and combined with a late night the night before) I woke up late and dragged my sorry ass to work late, for the second day in a row; ya, sure... I work for myself, but that doesn't mean I don't have work to do. And I'm supposed to set an example for my employees
  • then I log on to Everything2 only to discover that yet another node of my went to Node Heaven, bumping me down to level 4... nice.

And it's only barely lunchtime. :(

I touched a suicidal person today.

I was actually having a good day, seeing all the colors around me, instead of just the dull gray monotone of my normal life. Happy. Hmm, I really like the taste of that word, rolling around in my mouth. So unfamiliar, but always welcome.

I walked into the building, still warm from the sun, when I realized I had just stepped into the mental version of a swamp. Dark water, bitterness, and a slow sinking/sucking feeling under your feet.

I already knew what it was. It was a personality so lost in its pain that it felt powerless to do anything, merely awaiting its doom. (This 'doom' might have been as insignificant as a paper that had to be turned in within a few hours. It's amazing how the human imagination can turn such tiny things into looming monsters). Of course I recognized the feelings. I felt the same way when I was suicidal.

I looked around, and toward the center of the pond, already sinking in it, was a girl. The was sitting on a small wooden box, staring at nothing. Or at herself. Or maybe she thought the two are the same.

I had no idea what to do. Some courses of action sprang into my head, from hugging her, to giving her some words of encouragment. Ever see Babylon 5? I wanted to tell her It can't be that bad. I thought it would be fitting.

But I didn't.

Why? I can rationalize: She would've clammed up, just like I used to. She'd put on a happy face, and tell me everything is just fine.
Perhaps I can plead shyness?
But I keep thinking back to that girl, all alone in her head. I think I simply ran away. I don't know how far I am from returning to that state, and I don't want to find out.

Catherine Wheel Alley

or

tube strike walk

or

hey, walk to work you lazy sods!

or

read this or the bomb at the end will go off

There was another london underground strike, starting at 8 pm last night, until 8 tonight (which pretty much means until tomorrow). this issue this time is for safety reasons, drivers wanting better standards for themselves, no worries for the rest of us: just either calling in sick, driving, busing, or walking to work.

it's about the same to me, I always support strikes. hey, power to the people, fight the powers that be! and all that. besides, the tube is in deplorable condition. I live three stations from work (seven minute walk from either end of the terminating station) and it really should just take a ten minute ride, but often it stretches to a half hour or more. the ten minutes between trains becomes twenty minutes. due to the way the stations I go through (Aldgate East, Liverpool Street, Moorgate, the Barbican) the train i'm on often waits in the tunnel for tracks to switch. and sometimes down the line someones jumped onto the line, or dumped leaves on it or something. I'd walk, or bike, but the past few months have been the most miserable weather straight out an Edgar Allan Poe dream: biting wind, spitting rain, hail, sleet, falling sheep.

But today was the first proper spring day since, oh, about last june. clouds so bumpy you want to lie on some greening lawn and search for cathedrals and menageries among them. sun that flashes off office building windows, dappling the streets in movie set filter glow. a warm breeze just at the right speek to keep you comfortable on a brisk walk. I didn't know how long the strike was, so i'd popped down to the north end of Aldgate East station, just past the Whitechapel Gallery. gates were shut, so I grabbed a ginger beer and headed off inthe the general direction of work.

Ok, if you're not familiar with labyrinthine london, I should direct you to a good street map, like the London A to Z (pronounced ay to zed). find where Whitechapel road and Commercial Road meet, move the tip of your finger to the right a millimetre (or a quarter inch to find osborne road. look, there I am, ginger beer in one hand, lighting a Gauloise Blonde with the other. Off we go!

Up Osborne Road to turn before Brick Lane left onto College street. An EasyEverything training center and headquarters is being put in there, maybe we'll see Nine9 there sometime! There used to be a great graffiti gorrila on the corner wall, with a cartoon speak bubble saying GO HOME! Cross Commercial Street onto Wentworth Street, which is pretty much what is known as Petticoat Lane now: lots of clothing tat. it's all crap. the road was just refurbished, and today they are putting in some concrete slabs randomly in the street, about a half a meter square, with really stupid line drawings of clothing sold here: a cyan tie, a magenta bra, a green striped shirt, a pink handbag, a yellow checkered sock. and that's exactly the garbage they sell in the stalls here. oh well, it's a living for some of them.

Wentworth St. bottoms out into Middlesex Street, although I cattycornered from Bell Lane to Cobb Street to Leyden Street to Saint Peter Street into Middlesex St. there's about six ways from here to Bishopsgate, all of these involving going through the Cutler's Gardens, a collection of office buildings I worked in last year, grave shift for a bank, where I discovered E2. But I found a seventh way today: following Middlesex St. north, and bearing left into Catherine Wheel Alley, wide enough of one to start, but whittles thiner and thinner, wriggling left then right, until it's literally popping out of a doorway right in front of Liverpool Street Station. Cut through the station to Liverpool Street. The station itself is filled with confused, frantic, and upset travellers, who should know by now that anything that can go wrong with London Transport will, right when you most need it. Lines of people wait futilely for busses and cabs, which are all queued in traffic together with lorries, white vans, rentacars, and police vans for several kilometers away.

Me? I'm twenty minutes into my walk, halfway to work. my hands are sticky from the ginger beer, and I think, yes, i'm smoking another cigarette. Right at the end of Liverpool St. onto Eldon Street, still going vaguely northeast. Eldon becomes South Place, cross Moorgate, down Ropemaker Street, right onto Moor Lane, left onto Chiswell Street. The traffic is still backed up. Right onto Lamb's Passage, left onto Sutton's way, I sort of triangulated a few extra steps. Back right onto Whitecross Street, going north. Another market street here, but most everyone's packing up; I glimpse at a rack of old silver rings a woman is covering with a blue canvas, but stride up to a cenotaph topped church. Left to a deadend on Warwick Yard (I should have known better), down Roscoe Street instead to and right on Golden Lane, crossing Old Street, turning left. Another dead end just past Red Cow Yard, so instead, right onto Goswell Road, and zlipzlop I'm on Compton Street and up to work. The sun is shining, the carpenters on the floor above have left a bunch of flourescent light tubes by the entrance. Later someone steps on one, and a poof of glass dust clouds up.

If you are looking at a map and wondering why I didn't just go down Commercial Street to Great Eastern Road to Old Street to work, well, trust me, it take a few more minutes, and the way I took today is more scenic.

A marvellous sunset thunderstorm and dull work shift later, I head home, basicly retracing my steps (minus the deadends). Lots of drunken suits ambling along. Lots of people talking to each other, laughing. Cabs wait by office buildings, holding yellow signs for the suits partying on the day's travel misbehaviour. I reach Liverpool station again, and head down Catherine Wheel Alley. The bar is playing 'I put a Spell on You' -- not the Screamin' Jay Hawkins one, or the Diamanda Galas version, but that new one, really poppy, and for shame i'm singing to it... 'I put a spell on you, 'cause you're mine.... I can't stop the things you do... you better keep me satisfied...' I squiggle down the alley, and near the end, behind a tailor's shop, is a clear blue cleaner's bin bag, beeping. I stop. The bag is beeping! I think of moving on, but stop again. peering at it. What to do?

There's signs everywhere around here about suspicous packages. They tell you to: 1. Stop 2. Don't touch it. 3. Inform Police.

A woman pops out of a side alley that twists into Devonshire Square, but I feel too stupid to ask her about it. There are two busboys at the bar's service entrance, and I go back to them and find myself asking, 'Say, are Bin bags supposed to beep?' Hey, how would I know? maybe it's some newfangled technology for a certain rubbish company to be able to track bags left specifically for them: a little homing device signalling 'Pickup at Sector 3niner0.' One of the guys says, "what, beeping, like a bomb?" "Yeah, there's a rubbish bag beeping down there." "well, I'm not going to touch it!" We chuckle about it, and so it's up to me to pop back down to Bishopsgate, where there's a handy dandy Police Station a few doors down from the head of the alley. What seems to be a Chamber quartet is being ushered into a police van (along with instruments). At the entrance desk, I tell a perky desk sargeant about the bag, who jokes about that being something to make the evening more exciting. I laugh, and she thanks me, saying they'll send someone right away to nose it out.

I plucked up my courage and went down the alley again. In the back of my mind the whole time were little scenarios. You know, looking too close and then, BOOM! So I had to walk by it again, listening to the beep like a sad digital alarm clock. Leaving it behind, I looked back, hoping it was nothing. The rest of the walk home, my ears were tuned northeast. Nothing but sirens in other directions, people booted out of the pubs laughing about the day and night, and cars heading out of the city.

OK, today sucked entirely.

Actually the suckage began yesterday, when I left work because I felt sick, and proceeded to put a rather large dent in my parents rather new-ish Ford Escort (1999).
Then I went to school, had a test, did poorly, and came home.

But enough of the past.
This is about why today sucked.
Well, I go to work, that's OK, I like it.
Then I go to school.
Another test.
I think I did better this time around (I'm much better in Humanities than Trigonometry!).

I come home and call my best friend about a rave we are supposed to go to tomorrow night.
He informs me that he hasn't gone to school since Tuesday, and hints at the idea of dropping out (he's still in high school, poor guy).
I argued that he only has 2 more months, and that he should just do the work he has to do, and get it over with, but I can't win any argument with him.

But I'm right, I know I am. I chose to homeschool last year, so I've been homeschooling for a full year, but it's a waste to start homeschooling when you are so close to graduating. So close to being free from all the evils of the public education system.

Yhea, so today was bad because of compounded suckage from yesterday, along with suckage that was isolated to today only..
Tomorrow is Friday, big compound party... dear Gods, get me through tomorrow without too much going wrong, and I promise someday I'll do something that isn't evil.
Words fail me.

This is the simple theme for today...

They fail to express my over-worked brain and how tired it has become with deadlines fast approaching...
They fail to allow me to discribe my eye-watering hallucinegetic vision and the pain from staring at computer screens...
They fail to describe my hopeless-adoration for one seemingly unresponsive woman...
They fail me in asking for help in many many ways...

They fail to allow me the finer detail to express my concerns
They fail to give me an outlet for bizarre ideas
They fail to exchange my hearts last gasp
They fail to find solace, peace or pleasure...

They simply fail me...

Rather I may have failed them... I guess this may be true... I can't find words still...to explain this here too...


For those keeping score at home: 1 year and 9 days...

For those who know my meaning here...game over - I lost...again...(I think it's obvious when I can't get ten minutes of face time as she'd rather watch her rented video but she'd plan whole blocks of her weekend to spend with others...)

But work's ... work...

Maybe I could be a English teacher in Japan...
I'd probably prefer teaching calculus in West Virginia though (Bluegrass...mountains...space...)

Everything but love...(sigh)

I got home late today. As I walked in my father looks at me and asks," Where the hell were you?" I just gave him a blank look and said, " I told you I wasn't coming home after school." He picks up my back pack and hurls it across the room and says,"Why didn't you call saying you were gonna be late?" "Because I figured you guys wouldn't care seeing as how I'm not at home on the computer." With those words I closed the door on his face and told him to leave me alone. He opened the door and said, " Explain to me this much, why do you smell like youve been smoking." "Because my friend smokes???" He just looked at me and walked away. I know he is one to me. Someone must have told him I smoke. But who?

Later that night he came into my room and woke me up. He screamed at me for not telling him where I was. What the fuck is going on here? My father had a smell of alcohol on his breath. He came in and punched my arm with alot of force asking me at the same time why I had smelled like smoke. I just pushed him out and closed my door. The next morning he looked at me with a sort of bitterness that just couldn't be ignored. He took me outside and said, " If I find out you were smoking pot again it will be that end of you and going out with anyone ever again." " I looked at him and walked away. He screamed once more calling me an ignorant fat ass so I flipped him off and walked away.

So, on March 20 I woke up at 4:20 in th morning... smoked some hash and called a cab to take me to the airport...

I got to the check in counter early and slept on a bench for half an hour.

The Torino airport is tiny... makes me thing of the Portland, OR Greyhound station... My co-worker arrives and we have an espresso together before getting on our flight to Zurich to connect to Hanover, Germany as we are on our way to the CeBIT tech expo...

The flight is fine... borring and business class. We get to the Zurich airport and Paola has an earlier connection than I do so I see her off, before heading out of the airport (so I can get a Swiss stamp on my passport and to get to the street where I can smoke a cig.

Making it back inside and throught customs and control I find a free internet terminal from which I use my day's allotement of votes and write the Killing Time in The Zurich Airport node...

Then I'm on the plane to Hanover... I meet Paola and we head by taxi to the firgrounds to check on the Telecom Italia Lab stand... and eat lunch.

Then we check into the hotel... about 125 km away from Hanover in a town called Gottingen or something like that... the hotel is 100m from the train station and is called the InterCity Hotel.

My girlfriend shows up next and we go out for dinner at this nice Korean reastaurant next to the hotel...
During the course of the next week I'll be responsible for sneaking my girlfriend into my hotel room so we can ... be togehter.

It's a nice hotel but they have a lawn jockey outside the reastaurant... you know a short little black guy in servants clothes and red lips holding out a tray... So I bring it up with the management saying it's kind of offensive... and she says she can relate, such as if she say a Nazi flag in the U.S., but that these little black dwarves are common in Germany and nobody has ever complained before and that they wouldn't remove it for me...

So... the next day we got to the CeBIT even though it's not open to the public and we kick it there... Where I will kick it for the next week, standing around in shiny black leather FBI shoes and my suit and tie (thank god for thefour in hand knot node which taught me how to tie a tie...) demoing Link TV and Internet Easy Video.

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CeBIT... a weird experience.... it was huge! 860,000 people and all of them looking to make some kind of deal...

My girlfriend and I were in aggreement that it was very superficial and that the money could have been better spent on homelessness issues and starvicg babies in Cucamonga...
but the freebies were kewl! See: Cool Freebies at CeBIT.
And the after expo parties were pretty swingin... lots of loose flesh and free drinks... but the music was the same 20 top ten disco hits... I heard YMCA 2 dozen times, and Sex Bomb 13 times and and and... it was really generic, but did I say the free drinks were nice?

So CeBIT and a week with Kristi in Germany... free of charge, care of my work... it was fun... it was tiring... I lost my voice, I ate really well and splurged with the compnay money whenever I could...

Flying back I was on Sabena which sucked... we had to fly through the Brussels airport on our way back to Torino and the Bussells airport looks like some B-film set and the waiting lounge made me thing of communist Romania in the 1950s... sad, sad, sad...

Plus to top it all off they wouldn't let me cary on 2 bags... so I had to check a bag with a fine fine fine bottle of Coline Sinese 1999 Chianti from Tuscany///

Bue you can guess hwta happens next... yep I pick the bag up and the straps to the backpack have been ripped out and OF COURSE the bottle was shattered... destroying nearly all my receipts that I needed for work and all the wonderful brouchures and reading material I had brought home with me...
ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.../.

I'm still trying to get them to pay for the wine....

(They paid me some 250,000 lire{120$} reparations in the end for the wine and other losses.)
The goddamned police helicopters are back. They are. I hear them. They're right above my apartment building.

Oh, how I wish I were paranoid. Then I could at least be comforted by the possibility that they're delusional. But, alas...I am not. I don't think they're coming for me. I don't think. But they're definitely there, and it's aggrivating.

Yup...there're the searchlights. Centered on the intersection just up the block.

Some dude (I assume) is out there dashing back and forth between the Mobil station and the Exxon station directly across the street. Why won't those fuckers just pick one name to use? It's the same goddamn corporation...or maybe it would look "silly" to have two of the overtly-same gas station right next to each other.

But I digress. Those goddamn police helicopters are still up there. Two of them. Whupwhupwhupwhupwhupwhup.

Herein lies another interesting demonstration of the Doppler Effect.

whupwhupwhupWhupWHupWHUpWHUPWHUPWHUPWHUpWHupWhupwhupwhupwhup.

Again and again and again.

Somebody get these black death machines out of my neighborhood's air space.

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