Strange thoughts pass through my head. Like, why was I at Denny's at 3am on a school night. What was I doing with a woman that I'm pretty sure I love when I had told my girlfriend that I'd try to never see again. Am I a bad guy? Is eating only once a day making me fat? Do I really need to read the play we're supposed to read for my Drama course? The other woman read my terot the other day, and I'm wondering if what she prophesied is coming true because of the reading or would it have happened without the reading?

Today, I worked. I worked 8.5 hours today, which doesn't seem like a lot, but I also went to class for 2 hours. I decided that when I go for my PhD or MFA that I might go to Iowa. Yeah, Iowa. This is better, according to my girlfriend, who was scared I'd go to Brown in Rhode Island or some similarly far away place. I hear, also, that Iowa has a really good creative writing program. I can't afford to take the GRE.

A friend is moving this week. To San Francisco, which is a Million Miles away from here. I'll miss her, I know.

I got about 60 nodes out today, which seemed to get some people upset. Evidently, I was pushing the New Writeups thing too quickly through. Some person whose name I don't recall said that he/she felt like he/she was in school again. Afraid of learning? Seeing these terms scrolling by? Scary.

I finished DFW's essay on TV in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. I'm not sure if this is an effect of having the essay written in the early 90's, but I think he's dead wrong about where fiction is going in this culture. Exciting things are happening, even at this low level of being a writer that I'm at now. I can feel it.

No bills came today. I did cash my pathetic paycheck today, which is 50 short of covering rent. I am, therefore, once again, soliciting pennies to cover my tuition. Dan/405 Normal/Normal, IL 61761. I'll put your name in a book, whenever I get published.

There is no progess in the tale of two women in my life, except this: I love them both more than ever. Am I given a fixed amount of love? And once that is gone, I'm given no more? What a sad world. Maybe that's why we try to make love, because we think it's a zero sum game.

Weekends of Sound

yes i stole that from the new 764-HERO album

it started friday i'd taken off work so i could drive to Austin for the Yo La Tengo show. We're so damn busy that even on this "comp" day they'd given me for working so much, i still had to come in and work. bah! after leaving work i stopped by one of the sushi places nearby for a quick lunch. a little bit of ika, they were out of anago so i settled for unagi, an amazing aspargus tuna handroll, some green tea and of course, a bit of tofu tempura. i step outside, shout a quick little SOY! SOY! SOY! soy makes you strong! strength crushes enemies! SOY! and i'm off. i play all the standard road trip albums, the charm of the highway strip, autobahn, this is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about, ABBA Gold. a few hours later i'm there. and the show is sold out. that'll teach me to show up without a ticket. i hang out with a friend who moved to austin a couple years ago. bars, expensive cigars, martinis and other assorted decadently bourgeois activities. the bar we're in has the best juke box ever. ring of fire right after freedom of choice! can you beat that.

Saturday:
i get back to Denton with just enough time to shower and drive to Dallas for the Yo La Tengo show at Trees, which i thankfully have a ticket for. the show, of course was brilliant, i could describe it in detail but all i really want to say, their live version of Blue Line Swinger is the most beautiful, most amazing thing i've ever heard. now, i'm really quite a fan of music, i've had music take me places before, but nothing has ever taken me for a ride like this. the performance was simply gut-wrenching. it quite literally made me weak in the knees to hear it. that song, an instrumental no less, instilled in me simultaneously a great dichotomy of so much pain and so much joy. i wanted to smile and burst into miserable tears. my heart aches, but it hurts so good.

Sunday:
homework! homework! homework!
drove to Forth Worth for the Modest Mouse show. before the show starts, i'm hanging around by myself. watching everybody else talk to each other, mingle, form social bonds. i feel lonely. three years ago, i'd go to the Argo, i'd know or at least be able to talk to nearly everyone there. i knew most everybody who worked there. i knew most everybody in the bands. now, i don't even recognize anybody. i wish i was more outgoing. i wish i could just go up and talk to them. get to know them, have somebody to take these road trips with. 600 miles is a long drive in a silent car. not that i have no friends at all, but well, when your girlfriend and your best friend are at odds and you end up losing both of them. your circle of influence shrinks drastically overnight. i believe junkpile said it best: Do you remember the first day of college or your first week in a new city, when you didn't know anyone and didn't know how to start knowing anyone? I have felt like that for years.

for a while now i've been the stand in the back/corner with my arms folded type. but what with me getting happy again recently i felt like being right up front with the crowd. i'd forgotten what it's like, to simple be wall to wall people, not even room to move your arms, so many individuals, jumping, swaying, moving together like one giant organism. i get scratched, kicked, bruised, knocked down, shoved around. so sweaty, exausted and wired. i feel alive. afterwards, an all night diner. i get home at 5am, into bed at 5:30, asleep at 5:45. alarm at 6:00, time for work! Yay!

Monday:
work was, well, work. no sense going into it. but after work, in my film class. there's this girl i already had a crush on, red hair, chucks, barrettes, and tonight, a t-shirt that said "i love math." sigh. it's a beautiful night out. i wish i lived farther from campus so i had further to walk. to make up for it i walk all the way downtown to check my mail. currently: tortoise on the stereo, sitting outside my apartment with a slurpee and my iBook. noding in the dark. not a bad past few days i suppose. and now, sleep, sweet sleep....

Morning.

11:57

I woke up late! Well, the Really Important Lectures are in the evening...

I think I'll now switch to Mozilla permanently. bk2site seems to work with it nicely, as long as I run the resulting files through recode to change character set from UTF-8 to Latin 1.

I'll soon go to the uni...

13:38

Installed Mozilla nightly build to temp directory in the university. It comes with the Classic theme. This rocks. This rocks a lot. Now, if only the Classic theme would have the "Picture buttons only" option...

(-1 again? If some twit is votedumping, please at least votedump with upvotes... And remember, votedumping is pointless. You don't need to use all of your votes every day - what would happen if I'd use all of my chings every day? Or, if someone's carrying a grudge against me or something, come out and we'll talk. =)

Well, the bad thing: Bye Bye, Java Cheddarbox... I guess I have to tune appletviewer to work with the cheddarbox.

16:21

OK, reading Usenet. Finally. Forgot to say: Thanks to kaatunut for Datalinks! Who says E2 has zero useful information? =)

18:56

Looks like I've become a Trusted User in K5. Hmmmmm... and it's almost seven. Got to go home soon. And I've not even touched E-mail yet. Damn damn...

Well, Mozilla M18Nightly has worked fine. So far. One embarassing K5 submission error, and bookmark handling is a bit clumsy.

19:04

Spam... from uu.net? Man, I haven't been getting spam originated in uu.net for a looooong time.

Speaking of spam, I now attach this one to my spam reports:

According to the Finnish law (565/1999, article 21) sending UCE to private persons is a punishable crime. Punishment ranges from fines to imprisonment. Finland is part of the European Union and a member of Europol and Interpol.

...just to counterbalance the "this spam is sent in compliance with such-and-such-overturned-US-bill"... =)

01:54

Time to end the day.

I upgraded to nightly Mozilla at home, too, because Debian's M17 seemed to have a curious problem: The bookmark comments seemed to vanish. Not Good, if you're thinking of the fact that bk2site wants "PRIVATE" keyword in certain categories or it'll cruelly publish them =)

Uh, yeah, the reason why there were not too many updates today: KPNQwest's network seemed to be down for a while. Well, on the plus side, The X-Files is back in TV.

Well, goooooooood night, E2...


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: The New America
Updated:

The second day on MC. Today, the runny nose is slowing down to a walk, and I managed to node Milo. Yes, I had hot Milo for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's great energy drink.

The guys at the office, must have missed me. More than one of them called me up on my handphone, even though I was answering their emails from home ...

During my annual company conference, a presentation was given entitled 'Let's go for a swim in Lake "us".'

As if this wasn't bad enough, questionnaires were given out at the end of the session, which we are all required to completed by 4th October - tomorrow.

They contain psychological profiling questions and ask us about our feelings about our company, work and colleagues.

We were told that we could be completely candid in our answers, and that it was not a test, but "an exercise in team-building" etc, etc.

Sceptical as ever, I suspected differently.

Sure enough, today everyone in the office is diligently filling in their answers and furiously conferring to ensure that no one knowingly sticks their head above the parapet and says anything different.

People are changing their answers to ensure that their set of responses make them appear the perfect, loyal ,satisfied employee.

So they don't get fired.

I knew this would happen, and I feel vindicated and simultaneously nauseous.

Even if I wanted to I couldn't copy their answers because I left my questionnaire at home.

back | days | front

yay! I asked her if she wanted to be my girl, and she said yes! And she asked if I would be her boy, and I said yes! Eep! We are going out :-)

I am a little scared at the total switching of my priorities. I found myself thinking that it would be really no matter to move to michigan permanently. I'm supposed to take huge amounts of time to think things over, but here I am, ready to drop everything and go to see her.

Well, you see: I love Dana.

*Dizzy collapses into fits of ecstatic giggles

I wonder how different Michigan is to Hampshire in the UK? Ann Arbor must be mucho better than boring old basingstoke...

In other news:

I keep fielding questions from work about the clearcase source control system I "installed". I got so annoyed just now that I just told them to phone back much later when I wasn't so tired. (I am recovering from an operation, dear reader)

Andy from work bought me Kid A by Radiohead yesterday: I am quite happy with it after about 5 listens. I know that it isn't OK Computer, but somehow I find it very listenable.

The bruising on my leg has started to change; I have developed new bruises on the underside and the existing bruises all down the inside of my left leg are now turning bright green and yellow. Most of the really black bruises are still there, showing finger marks where the surgeon had to really wrench me to try to get the main tibia pin out. (He failed, the tibia pin is still in there).

Mark from work (pretty much my best friend, yay!) should be bringing around my 19 inch monitor from work this lunchtime. This will be so cool and will add to the nest I have created for myself around the sofa.

12:25 BST

Hmm, that was a little too easy... I just applied for an internet banking account with first direct. I was astonished that you could actually sign up over the net.

Why do I feel as though I am in control of change?

14:10 BST

YAY!

I am now in possession of a beautiful 19 inch monitor. Flat screen. 1280x1024. Yum!

Mark came around and gave me a get well soon present: it's a yoyo with proper clutch and it lights up when it spins. He has one as well and we spent 10 minutes spinning them just above the floor. He also got me CHOCOLATE!! "miniature heroes" which are tiny versions of popular sweets here in the UK. I am so spoilt!

Mark also showed me the creamy nutritious goodness of pdflatex which produces gorgeous PDF files from my silly little LaTeX files.

And I paid my credit card off, so I can spend, spend, spend!

Mental Note: do a proper Eep! node.


more later, my naked slippery elves :-)

The club was named Anarchist’s Cocktail, and it opened directly underneath Corey’s apartment. I decided to check the place out, having heard a few good things about it. Corey was apparently chummy with the owner, who went by the name of Butcher. Cute, no?

I had barely managed to walk in the door when I heard a booming voice behind me.

“Hey, blue-hair! What do you think of my place?”

I turned to the voice, straining to hear him over the distorted Trent Reznor. It took me a moment to focus on the face, the smoke machine and nightclub lighting impairing my vision considerably.

He was large, furry, wearing a beret of some kind, had two earrings, two nose rings, and they were all connected with barbed wire which ran along the side of his face.

This was Butcher.

Given the situation, I said the only thing I felt was appropriate.

It’s fucking great!

“Good! Lemme buy ya something to drink.”



Christo and I walked into a bar, expecting to sit down, and perhaps have a few drinks.

We did not anticipate the large man in drag named Shirley at the door, calling bingo numbers.

We took it in stride, best we could. We laughed, and played along when she started to poke fun at some of the patrons. We chuckled quietly when she took someone’s cell phone away, and started talking dirty to the other party. We were still amused when she started to comment on my hair, or refer to Christo as Jesus. In fact, even after she learned that Christo was a massage therapist, and announced “he’s a hooker!” to the amused patrons of the bar, things were still under control.

I think the situation went downhill, however, shortly after she asked me about my genitals, gave away a ten-inch vibrator, and demanded that some poor poor man take his pants off.



(P.S. - To the raver girl who yelled “What’s up, sexy bitch?” to me as I walked past her today: I just thought you should know that was perhaps the most kickass pickup line I may have ever heard.)
Where I live it is Autumn now. I am lucky enough to walk past a few trees on my way to work. They were beautiful today. Red is spreading through the leaves, as though the roots are sucking up pints of red food colouring.

I've been 22 for 2 days now. It's funny, when you're a kid you get so excited about birthdays. This is the first year when I really didn't look forward to it for days beforehand. Must be old now. I was actually fairly excited at about 8:00am, when I opened some Lego and a good book I didn't know I was going to get.

Oh well. Now my Degree (Comp. Sci, but of course) is over I seem to have long evenings to fill. I've been playing with Lego Mindstorms - last night I built a (quite basic) pneumatic hand. I managed to obtain an air-chamber to hold pneumatic air pressure from a mail-order company. I've been buying lots of things from them recently. The air-chamber is excellent. It holds about 40 regular pumps from a pneumatic pump. Tonight, my hand will tidy the floor under instruction from my Palm III.

Went to a party the other day, and my 21 year old friend and his 1 year old baby were there. She is so cute. I gently tickled her feet - she sat very still, just enjoying it without making any noise. Eventually I stopped and she turned around, and reached for my hand. Interaction.

Pause, stop, sing

Today my presentation skills course started. It's strange, it's with a friend's husband, an acting teacher. It was like being in fourth form again, with my teacher placing her hand in the small of my back, forcing my stance upwards. I am more aware of how I stand. Catching the tube back to work, I watched people's stance, slouching, preening, pull upwards, hiding, chest forward. Normally I cramp up, draw myself lower. Perhaps it's a throw back from being the skinny kid at school, avoiding the bullys' gazes. It could be because I'm 5"11', and my mother is only 5"0'. Who knows. It's fun to walk tall for a change, to be aware of my breathing, to feel the ache in my back as my spine straightens. We're swapping tips at work now, a few of us have gone through it. It's all been personalised, which, I suppose, is the only way to do this.

I feel a little more prepared for my SF presentation. Wintersweet and Factgirl have already said they'd like to meet, and Dem Bones is considering it. Wonder if he'll bring the jar of node gel he keeps under the bed.

At this writing, Marc has been here twenty-four hours, and I'm ready for him to go home. The sad thing is that he's been much, much less obnoxious than he usually is. When he asked me if he could stay with me for a week or so because he had no place else to stay, I was a little leery, but I couldn't very well say no. I mean, what would have happened to me if my friens had said "no", when I was out of a place to live a few years ago? Anyway, yesterday he mostly played Civ II and watched that egregiously stupid "Sexiest Bachelor" pageant on Fox; so he really wasn't in my way too much, but his stuff is everywhere and he keeps finding things to complain about.

For instance, he didn't really want what I cooked for dinner. Well, I did and since he didn't buy any groceries or contribute anything but comments on how I wasn't cooking anything the way I should (which is funny because he can't cook and I've been cooking since I was twelve), I told him, "tough titty" (a phrase I've actually never had a reason to utter before). Anyway, while I'm cooking for two people, I'm going to have to switch to recipes that stretch the amount of food that I have, because if Marc isn't going to help me buy groceries, I'm not going to buy extra food. Looks like I'll be having dirty rice and stew.

My Mother is visiting on thursday and this place is too small for three people, so I wonder if Marc will still be here by then. I mean, I have two bedrooms, so I have the physical space, but there's only one bathroom and sharing one bathroom with three people is always unpleasant.

Oh well, this is my last month in this apartment, and I've survived much worse than an obnoxious friend. I can keep myself centered until he leaves.

THE QUITTER

So I quit smoking on the last Sabbath, and already, two days later, I have felt the post-pangs of addiction. For over 8 years I've inhaled 20&25 packs of lung-lashing delight, and never had I considered not sucking the cancer-stick, until Saturday night. With that lingering notion, I quit, and now I understand how people may have difficulty with a change in habit.

It's like saying "good-bye" to an old friend. One that's seen you through the worst and best of times. But it's a new era, and I'm still young enough to save myself from the cancer. Still, smoking will always be glamorous to me. A calm self indulging super cool, if carried out right. Along with quiting I have an accolade of non-smoker rules.

1) don't smoke for at least a year
2) I am allowed a cigarette after good sex
3) don't have sex just to smoke

Obviously, with the sheer magnitute of pride I possess, along with a life-time subscription to "mind over whatever", it's easy not to smoke. Factually the so called "cravings" aren't so bad. It's true, I could see something like gum being helpful, but c'mon if it's not gum, it the idea of fulfilling a void. So I can't chew gum either. This leaves me to coffee, and believe it or not it's not impossible to have a good cup of coffee and not smoke. In fact, the caffine, relaxes my so called "urges".

Whatever the circumstance, however the mind-set, it's just as the story goes, just gonna have to take it... one day at a time.

Well the rent is late again. It was late yesterday too, but today I'm going to pay it, so I can now think about it.

Let's talk about bad power supplies. When your power supply goes on your computer, it's immediately obvious. Things get black on the monitor, and nothing happens when you push the power button. When the fan on your power supply goes, the problem is not so obvious. Here's a hint though, if the computer boots and runs for 15 minutes and then dies. You've got a heat issue. Since we've verified that the power supply is in fact producing power (you saw something didn't ya?) perhaps the fan on the power supply has stopped. I only mention that because it just happened to me. Took me a half hour (two overheats) to figure out the problem, and five minutes to fix it. Bogus.


Work Log
  • 8:30 - 11:00 Hardware errata: Setup sound under NT on CHARLIE, fix TWIGGY's power supply, image JENNY's new ME partition
  • 11:00 - 12:30 Nessus Scan of the network
  • 1:30 - 5:00 Image three more machines

...Binky...Samuel...

10:00 - 10:47 AM EST -- Economics test

Guess what? Time to pull out the ol' Scantron 882-ES forms, it's test time in Economics! Bleh.

The curious part was that our normal professor wasn't there. In her place was someone whose sole purpose seemed to be to distribute the tests and collect them as we completed them. And tell us that there will be no class on Thursday.

This disturbs me, as the professor that's SUPPOSED to be there is the same one that collapsed about a week or two ago.

11:19 AM EST -- NIGHT of the LIVING ZOMBIES!!!!

En route home from class, I saw fire trucks and ambulances all stationed around the church that I pass every day to class. My first instinct was "Well, nobody's behind me, so <VOICE STYLE="Dopey">I'll just rubberneck!</VOICE>" Until I saw the students.

All in uniform. Every single one a clone of the next.

This nearly made me sick.

NEW NODES TODAY: needlessly fuck with things

Still in Sacramento. Still consulting.

Things to note:

  • I've been alive 9966 days (kinda a neat number)
  • it's day 51 (of 92) of wearing this neck collar (as a result of my hospital adventures)

A friend of mine back in Calgary e-mailed me a while ago with this simple message:

Are you sure that you want to come back - it's snowing.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to say to her. I like this nice weather... a lot. Of course, if I had my motorbike down here, I'd like the weather a whole lot more. But really I do want to go home... I gotta date on Friday with a girl I've like for quite a while. So, cold or not (it's -2 degrees Celcius in Calgary) I'm gonna go home. A date's a date, you know.

It's been raining all day. It's been raining all week in fact, but today it has just poured and poured. The grassy depression next to the building I work in at the university is now a small lake. It makes me wonder what the roads will be like.

I already know...huge puddles where the water table has reached the surface and there is no unsaturated area left to infiltrate. Crazy folk in SUV's driving too fast because they feel safe. The elderly and the sane driving to slow just to be safe. The rain-slicked roads are a dangerous place to be when driving in the sunshine state.

Don't get me worng, I love the rain. I love the rainy season. It gives back some life to this overdrained swampland.

I am just not looking forward to driving home in it.

2 hours later:
I just went out to my car. It won't start. It figures.

Ahh! Curse the Universe!

It started trying to install StarOffice in Linux. Whoops, out of diskspace. Oh, well, let's make a Linux partition from the massive one that I never use. HPFS is readonly.

Now I have a mess of partitions I can't use, the Gnome panel is dead, and my mind is going.

My only choice is to use the QuickRestore CD that came with the computer to wipe everything and install Windows95. Nooo! AND I'll lose ALL my work! I'll have to upload it somehow, but since my panel is dead, I can't access the Internet.

Today was not the greatest of days. Although I have been pretty excited about moving into my own place, I was faced with something very difficult; telling someone that they had to choose between two people.

I never thought I would have to do that in my lifetime, it isn't the nicest thing one could do. Anyhow, I had to do it. It went well in a sense, but I feel rottenabout it. I was told that I must not put the person in such a position, but it also made them realise just how much pain they were causing, and hopefully, thus should bring about a change in their attitude.

I also went shopping for a few things I'd need for when I move out, it was great. I also realised today that I am truly in love with somebody, who I don't think feels the same way about me. I am in a horrid position, because I don't know which way to go about finding out how he feels. *Sigh*.

I guess life throws all sorts of things our way, we just need to deal with them.

I was running late for my dance class, and this was not a good thing since I cut last week's session. I had probably missed out on a lot of new steps. Fortunately, my class had been progressing rather slowly, and I dropped in the middle of a review. We were doing the basic swing step, with rotation. I grabbed a partner and just enjoyed the activity. Then we were taught how to do an open break and underarm turn. Hijinks ensued. To be fair, the women had it much harder than the guys. Guys pretty much just had to hold their hand out in a certain way and give a slight push. Girls had to do the extra footwork. We later reviewed the waltz, adding a promenade around the room. This resulted in everyone bumping into each other. It's a small room, and the class is large. We transitioned to the rumba, which is essentially the waltz (box step) with different timing. It was a nice start to the day.

I stopped by home to check up on my DVD ripping. Yay, FlaskMPEG finished converting to AVI in just under 6 hours. For some reason the final bitrate was well below the available space on a CD, so I decided to re-rip with a higher quality. Fixed myself a bowl of Corn Pops, and I was good to go for my next destination.

Client meeting in the midafternoon, to discuss a website redesign. The project looks extremely interesting, since it deals with Thomas MacGreevy, an Irish poet and literary guy. He's a modernist, and that's my kinda poetry. Anyway, the project will also allow me to integrate a little bit of actual programming through DHTML. So this weekend I will be coming up with mockups and color schemes and typeface examples. Funfunfun.

While working on some classwork, I let the presidential debate prattle in the background. As expected, each candidate skimmed over the actual question and launched into a prescripted speech. I'm pretty much set to write myself in this Novermber.

I also joined up my friend's open source chat framework development team. Sure, it's more work, but it's fun work.

Ahh, miles to go before I sleep.

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