She popped our friendship like a swollen zit

"Even though you think you did nothing that needed forgiving..I have forgiven you." she says

Oh really, I think

"But that doesn't mean that I ever want anything to do with you, ever again. Or contact in any way."

Figures.

"I have no ill will or malice torwards you. Believe that"

like it matters

"I'm sorry. That's all I can say. BTW, give the Rumi book to someone who will appreciate it. It meant something to me" I reply.

"I'd be happy to mail it to you"

soaked in rit dye, no doubt.

"Sure, got my address?"

"Its in the mail Monday"

grand. (shuffles to closet and makes some room)

"Au revoir, have a nice life."

goodbye.

goodbye

I never understood why people go to graves of loved ones and talk to them. Of course, no one I've ever loved has died. I couldn't imagine talking to an object that won't talk back, and if it did, like the audible voice of God, you'd likely die of fright. Me, I just talk to myself.

I haven't found anyone who, when I don't know what to do, I can go to for advice. Part of it is my own arrogance. I see how people I know have led their life, and I just don't see how they will be able to relate, so I don't go. I don't want people to shrug in my direction or say things that are totally off the mark. Everyone I know is married or hasn't had a relationship in years and it would be rude to whine to them about my issues. Those that are married have been in that married mind so long that remembering what it was like to not be married is a struggle for free memory. Also, most of the married people have kids, which is so far from where I am it's laughable.

I live in this dual world, one where I want to believe that everything can only be taken for its value right now, that we are promised and guaranteed nothing from life. But you just can't believe that and believe in something like love, or other people.

So I'm sitting here, drinking piss beer and wondering what will come of it all. I am the master planner. I can react to most situations with a reconnaissance mentality. People say I am a survivor. I say to myself that I will get through this or that simply because I always have. I remember someone telling me once that in scientific circles they even state that the likelihood of something to continue is much more probable than the likelihood that it will stop. That some things boil down to terms that simple.

I always told myself that it wasn't the fear of failing that drove me away from challenges; it was the fear of succeeding, because that much more will be expected from me. Keeping something going is always more scary for me. Ending things has always been my default setting. The decision is as much mine as anyone else's how far anyone can go within my life.

My eyes burn when I close them. It must be time for sleep.

I really need to vent. Normally I would talk about it on my online journal, but all the people I need to vent about read it.

Jesse and I started talking again. It was wonderful for a while. He said that he missed me and that he wanted to see me when I came back for Christmas break. He wanted to take me to the movies and I could wear my red dress just like our last date. Which was over a year ago. And we're stuck in the same cycles that we have been for over a year. We go through these good phases, when I remember why I loved him. We reminisce about stuff we've done, he tells me secrets and comes to me with problems that only I can help him with. And then something happens, usually his current girlfriend gets pissed at him for talking to me, and its all over.

This time it was over something legitimate. I came to Berkeley for many reasons. Yes, to go to college, and a great one at that, but also to get away from him. Fact: Jesse is not good for me and my mental health. And then I find out that Jesse is moving to San Francisco, just 30 minutes away, in a matter of months! He cant do that. I live here, and Im safe from wanting to drive over to his house in the middle of the night just to succumb to his whims. And if he lives here, anything could be possible. And that scares me. So we talked on the phone, and I freaked out like I always do. Its not like I want to be with him, but something inside of me snaps and I cant control throwing myself at his feet. Thank God he doesnt want me back because I dont want to be with someone whom I would have to worry about cheating on me all the time.

So then his girlfriend, damn her, got mad at him for him talking to me and thinks that shit will happen between us when he comes here. Nothing is going to happen, I dont want what he has to offer, relationship wise anyway. So then he thinks he can block my online name and block all mail that I sent him. This really hurt me. The fact that he could cut me out of his life on a whim. So I talked to him tonight, and it didnt go so well.I started crying right after. Maybe he has the right idea. It would be best if we stopped talking, really. Easier said than done though.

I really dont understand myself when it comes to him. I dont want him in my life, but the idea of not having him in it scares the shit out of me. He's been the one constant in my life through all those major changes. I knew I could always call him late at night when I had no one else. He was someone to think about when I had no one else to think about. I want someone else to think about.

IT'S SNOWING

After months of pointless rainyness, Jack Frost has finally got his arse in gear and made me some snow :)

I was woken up at 7.15 by the following message arriving on my phone: "Sorry for texting you so early but its snowing, its snowing, its snowing!", as you may have guessed, me and my friends like snow. Although we live in a city thats 150 miles (give or take) north of Moscow, we only get snow a couple of weeks a year, so it is worth celebrating. Now it has stopped and the sky has cleared and everything looks sparkly.

Other than the snow, not a lot is going on worth writing about.

Oh yeah, Guy Fawkes night. Now, for all you Americans, this is a (as if any was needed) excuse to make a big fire, burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes and let off dangerous quantities of fireworks. I went up into the country and we let off a lot of fireworks. We found out lots of interesting facts, that a rocket stuck far enough into the ground will not take off and will explode on the ground. That a roman candle can be used as a fuse to let off 6 air bombs at the same time. That 5 Catherine wheels can be put on the same nail and run at the same time. Finally, that the other end of a sparkler is very, very hot.

simonc ugh.
simonc I had a very cool experience tonight which I might node
simonc I was having dinner at a neighbourhood restarurant, when a boyhood hero of mine came in...
break don't tell me more! node it! now! :)
simonc The Right Honourable Al Grassby, AM, Minister for Immigration in the Great Gough Whitlam's cabinet of 1972.
simonc EGW's cabinet was the most progressive in the history of Australian politics.
simonc And Minister Grassby was the most socially progressive of all the cabinet ministers.
simonc His portfolio was immigration.
simonc Being of Italian stock, he was one of the first non-Anglo ministers in the country's history, and definitely the most high profile.
simonc He legitimised being "ethnic" for a million Australians.
break cool
simonc Heh, yes.
simonc Anyway, I was trying to make the dogs (which we had tied up at the front door of the restaurant) quiet. They were barking at the great Al Grassby.
simonc Al came up to the door and I couldn't help myself.
simonc "HELLO Mr Grassby!"
simonc He warmly shook my hand, resplendent in his floppy suit and trademark ugly purple tie.
simonc He thought I owned the restaurant. hehe
simonc I indicated that this was not the case, but he pointed out that he had given a speech earlier this afternoon... you get the idea... (hic!)
simonc He and his wife, Diana, came inside the tiny neighbourhood restaurant ("Blue Citrus")
simonc and sat next to us.
simonc Now Gemma, my partner, is also a great admirer of leftist politics in Australia
simonc and also recognised the great Al Grassby, now maybe 70-something.
simonc And we chatted. And chatted. A lot. For a couple of hours! hehe..
simonc Anyway, would you believe that Al and Diana live one street away from us here in Canberra, and we're invited to drop around any time at all, and yes, Al and his wife would love to come around for a barbeque some weekend soon.
simonc I was so honoured to meet and talk with this fellow. His opinions are still right on the money, and he opposes this terrible wave of racism that Australia is gripped in, with our conservative government.
break seems like a worthy boyhood hero to me
simonc mm, a very good man. and what a great story, that he's retired for 20 years now, but still living here in Canberra and is remembered by almost everyone.
break in a positive way, I bet
simonc Well, it depends on politics!
break ah, of course
simonc But I like to pretend that I live in a world that does remember great men in the history of anti-racism in this country.

Ah, the joys of software.

Magazine cover disks, to be precise. My wife needed a 3-d modelling program to create some new objects for the house design program we use. The latter imports objects (via another program, supplied) from TruSpace - a popular cover disk filler and free up to version 3.

She installed it. (Not me!)

Her computer would no longer boot.

It was my fault for buying magazines with cover disks, of course :-).

I spent yesterday re-installing her Win98SE and MSOffice software. After which her computer booted but failed to ask for a user name and otherwise behaved oddly. Useable but very odd. The "re-install" I'd done appeared to have been somewhat half-hearted - some settings had been retained.

After further minor, but continual, problem, this morning we gave up trying to repair the install and executed

DELTREE /y WINDOWS

which was satisfying - if rather long-winded. Then re-installed.

Ugh, drivers... lots of drivers. "Unidentified device"s, too - which disk does it want?!! "I thought Windows was meant to be plug'n'play," she said. Win98SE failed to even see the NIC - we had to run the setup.exe from its own CD! I think we're down to just the one unidentified device, now...

I guess I'll be feeding the MSOffice (Premium) disks this afternoon...

---

Hmm, however.

This afternoon we spent finishing of the final preparations for the loft conversion and discussing (read, "arguing") about the merits of Microsoft Windows XP. We're buying it. Okay, it's got to be better than Win98 as it's WinNT but... hmm, it just doesn't feel right...

Well, the deed has been done and the new version purchased from dabs.com. We shall see, I suppose, whether its legendary stability is a myth...

Looks like it'll be arriving tomorrow - DABS shipped it already...

Before I get into my log for today, let me give you some backround information about my current relationship with "Fred". I met Fred in mid-September. Since then, I have fallen in love with him. He is the perfect guy for me! Initally, he didn't want a serious relationship, having just gotten out of a two year hell with a psycho hose beast. I can respect and understand that. I knew early on I would want to have something serious, and knew I shouldn't push him in this type of situation. So, as much as it killed me, I let him have his space.

Shortly after we started to date, I knew I had fallen in love with Fred. I battled with myself, had sleepless nights, and weighed the pros and cons of telling him. I just knew I couldn't live without speaking my mind, so I did. He of course did not say it back, and I wasn't expecting him to.

After expressing my feelings, I felt much more at ease with giving him his space. So I enjoyed his company, had fun, and just totally dug hanging out with him, and being intimate with him.

(Now for the real beginning of my log) So here I am.....almost 2 months later, asleep in bed the day Fred comes home from vacation. 4:32am - My cel phone rings. I never leave my cel on at night, but for some reason, I left it on this night.

"Hello", I mutter, or something as close to it as I can force out at this ungodly hour.

"Hi baby, its me", me being Fred, of course.

"Oh hi, how are you I am asleep or was asleep." Still totally out of it.

"I'm good, sitting in the airport, waiting to come home. I miss you."

"I miss you to baby.....will I see you tonight?" I think it takes me about 2 minutes to babble this one out.

"Yes, I really want to see you. I'll be home around 5pm, is that ok?"

"Yeah that's ok....sorry I am so tired." At this point I look at my clock and collapse back down on my pillow with my phone.

"Ok I'm going to go now. Thanks for answering your phone."

"Oh.....sure....no problem." This kind of confused me at 4am.

"I love you."

"I love you too," I say, as if I had been saying it to him for years.

*click*

About 3 seconds go by. I jolt out of bed. "HOLY SHIT! Oh my god!" This outburst wakes up my best friend, who is asleep in the bed across the room. "Oh no, I am going to vomit," I think to myself. Super high jolts of love, joy, fear, complete hysterics. His groggy attempts of calming me down don't work much. I run to the bathroom, but calm myself before anything happens. I get back in bed, and fall back asleep.

The next morning, I wake up wondering if it was all a dream or not. Of course, it wasn't. A strange feeling overcame me. The only way I can describe it is like this: Remember when you were 4 or 5 years old....right about this time of year, the only thing you could think about was christmas. You made a list, checked it twice. And then finally, WHAM!, its christmas. The next day, you were like, Ok, now what? That's kind of how I feel....not disapointed, but in wonder of things to come.

I can't even begin to describe how good it feels to know he loves me. Fred, you make my heart soar to the highest cloud. You make me feel complete. I do love you, with all of my heart and soul.

I discovered something profound last night.

If Windows doesn't want to be installed on your system, BE HAPPY! Don't push it to be somewhere it doesn't want to be.

Last night started out with a simple goal. Nuke the Windows XP partition on my dual boot Linux box (my main workstation), re-install Windows, and get to bed early. Little did I know that fate had it in for me. Well, first I run fsck.vfat forgetting that this was not what I wanted to do. No biggie though, no harm no foul. I then ran the correct command, mkfs.vfat. It seemed to work, but when I booted onto my Windows 98SE boot disk it had strange and unusual errors. "Ok, just nuke the 10G partition under Linux with fdisk, and then re-create it.... it'll be fresh, clean, and windows will install nicely onto it." Or so I though.

Destroying the partition and recreating it under Linux didn't do what I wanted it to do. One of the great things is that if you loose your partition table you just re-create it on the same boundaries and bingo, bango, bongo, partition table restored. I forgot this and ended up with my old DOS drive exactly as it was before. I should have given up at this point, but persisted. I nuked the partition again, mkfs'd it, several times, using both linux and Windows (booting from the bootable CD. Eventually it appeared to disappear properly. I booted up into Windows setup and started doing things. At one point I ran format on it (from a DOS prompt) and it told me it was formatting a 30G partition. Not quite right! I reboot back to Linux and make sure that everything is ok. It is, partitions all appear ok (cfdisk bitched about partition table not working properly, but normal fdisk showed everything was fine).

In retrospect, I should have started backing things up at this point.

At this point I booted back into the setup from the Windows 98SE CD and continued. After it had finished formatting, it said I had a 30 G drive. Not good. I booted back to linux to find...... "Invalid system disk...". ARGH! All is not lost though. Just boot up on a boot floppy, re-run LILO, or nuke and re-install the / partition. No harm no foul right? Wrong :( Booting up on a boot disk showed me my partition table was completely hosed, and of the original 7 (I think) there were 4, all showing errors, all with totally wacked out numbers. I quickly hopped over to another box, my MP3 server (not quite done yet) and started surfing to google to find how to fix this.

Most of the information I found related to simply re-creating the partition table under linux to match exactly what it was before. Of course, I didn't have a good idea of what that was. I popped the hard disk out of my workstation to throw in the MP3 system and of course, no Reiser FS support (which I have on all but / on the workstation. Even if the first couple of partitions were blown away I could survive, /home (where all my stuff is) is the 3rd of fourth one down, and even with 30 G formatted and fubared, it should be recoverable right? Right? please?

After much fighting I admitted defeat. I nuked all the partitions and created (once again) a nice big 10 G chunk for Windows, which I then installed Windows 98 and then, just because I was feeling like a masochist, Windows XP. Around 1am I started re-installing Linux, and once it started going I decided to leave it for this morning. This morning I got what I thought was a good setup going.... a base install of Debian, with ssh running so I could work on it in the background from work across the VPN. Well, it was a good plan in theory. Unfortunately when I got to work my workstation at home is not around, not even pingable. So much for getting a kernel compile and so on going huh? I forgot two important things before I left for work.... create a user account, or set sshd to allow root login (as at this point I only have root as the user], and to actually test that I could connect from work, before leaving for work.

So I get a fresh start. I didn't want one, and as I roll things that I lost around in my mind, it really sucks. Not all was lost, I have a very similar setup at work to home, so I can transfer my bookmarks, various xmms skins, fonts, and similar things over. A fair amount of old files were backed up a while ago onto CD, but that was over a year (though some of the important stuff hasn't changed since then, so that's not too terrible. Things that were lost were any mail since the backup, new wallpaper, the fact I spent a day organizing all my wallpaper neatly.... All my MP3s are ok though, safe on a separate drive :)

I guess I have a busy night ahead of me again tonight, getting everything back up and running.

Did I mention lately that I hate computers?

Yuck. Some days you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed (even though you're tucked into a tiny corner of a dorm room and there's ONLY one side to wake up on) and feel like crap for no good reason.

You never node lyrics, but you're just so blank that you go ahead and node a little bit of your favorite album because infant reflexes simply aren't moving you at this point, even though you'll have to know all about those reflexes for the test and noding is a good way to study. You promptly receive a mini-lecture about capitilization and a sort of snide feeling that you shouldn't be noding lyrics at all. Thanks. I am NOT an idiot. Never talk to me like that again. Except you haven't got the guts to talk back, so you slide about and simply rant about it in a day journal. Coward.

Sigh. Alright, so now let's move into first person. Can I expect a lecture about using the proper tense? I'm typically the worst of the grammar nazis, and so of course my fello nazis annoy me to no end. Erik Erikson and Freud would call that a defense mechanism against my own faults.

The problem with taking and really loving a child development class is that all of the sudden you know all these things about yourself and your parents that you really didn't care to know. I can just read through my notes and get to thinking about how I don't think I'll ever become a useful member of society, or about how it is TOO late to become any smarter, the synapses in my brain are already connected, and from here on out its downhill.

Well, this isn't helping. Thought it would. I suppose I'll go outside and bike around and figure out that it isn't important to be esteemed on e2. It'd just be nice.

Once again I sit here at work with nothing else better to do (Translation: I have done what NEEDS to be done, and putting off the rest until tomorrow). Other than adding myself to the Everything People Registry, checking out bluebear's Nightscape Studios website (which by the way, is very cool, I recommend you check it out) and pestering a few noders for a bit (in turn, finding the perfect Christmas gift for my better half, AND supporting one very cool site -coughE2cough-), I find myself wandering the site, and reading random nodes.

Now, I also feel so very close to becoming level two. I want so very badly to vote, and let people know that by voting them up I like what they have done. There is one small problem. I know I am not the greatest writer on the face of this earth. In fact, I don't think I am very good at all. I find I have trouble finding things to node about, and find some of the suggestions I get from others to be even harder to node about. I am not very good at spelling, and I suck (again not very good) at grammar.

This makes things very interesting for me. It's almost like being a child on Christmas morning every time I log on (maybe that is why I rarely log off). I wonder how many have looked at what I wrote, and if the node took a month to write (a few of them have) I am even more nervous and child like, because I am proud of it, and afraid to be shot down (this also, has happened).

So, I guess what I am saying, is thank you.

Thank you for criticizing my writing when it is needed. It makes me better in the long run, even if I hate the fact that you said it.

Thank you for letting me know when I have done something you like. It gives me that extra boost for those days when I am down from being criticized.

Lastly - Thank you for giving me hours upon hours, for days at a time of wonderful writing to read.

Its time I got back, Its time I got back. I don't even know how I got off the track. I wanna go back. Screw this crap I've had it. -- Weezer "The Good Life"

I can't sleep at night. I was so tired last night. And I kept thinking, "This is great, I'll get up early and do homework." Then I couldn't sleep until 4am and I rolled into lunch-as-breakfast at about 12. I got nothing done.

I feel off track, to quote the above. I was so happy when I was with him. Like I was still how I am, who I am. But it was different. It was ok to feel like that, because I knew I'd feel better later. I don't know when I'll feel better anymore. Sometimes its when I wake up. Sometimes its when I finish something I've been working on. Sometimes someone will say something to me. Sometimes it takes an hour for me to feel better. Sometimes I'll feel down for a couple days.

I feel bad for my roommate at times like these. She's so sweet to me when I'm like this. And usually its ok. But sometimes I get drunk and tell people things I shouldn't. Things like how I want to be thrown into walls, but there is no one to do it but myself. Or I just talk about things I never told anyone but him.

I guess I'll just terrorize him into complimenting me until I see him in December. Until then, my mouth is dry, my eyes can't take the bright sunlight, and I'll do that fakehappy game.

I don't feel as bad as I make it sound. Its just one of those days.