Everything Day Logs
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Everything Snapshot

Time: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 00:03:44 GMT
Everything server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) Debian/GNU mod_perl/1.21_03-dev
Number of nodes: 615829 (1422 new since July 18, 2000)
Number of users: 16956 (31 new since July 18, 2000)
Number of links: 2457787 (20506 new since July 18, 2000)

Node to user ratio: 36.319 nodes per user
Link to node ratio: 3.991 links per node
Link to user ratio: 144.951 links per user

New Nodes: [Augsburg Confession - Article 28] [E2 nuke request] [Will to Live (for Everything2)] [Gawyn Trakand] [she's probably not single] [I Think (about Everything)] [Farewell my concubine] [poll: describe your mousepad] [midi] [she's probably not single] [she's probably not single] [Augsburg Confession - Article 27] [the girl who came in to fix her server] [I Just Wasn't Made For These Times] [Dream Log: July 18, 2000]

Users Online (26): [dannye] [tregoweth] [/dev/joe] [Sylvar] [juliet] [Orange Julius] [Dis] [hatless] [birdonmyshoulder*] [coby] [Electric Mollusk] [pealco] [Zari] [AlexZander] [junkpile] [Eloquence] [tribbel] [dejiko] [Mojo Jojo] [dann] [pziemba] [filmboy] [shifted] [HalcyonX] [Quill] [fmaurer]

JeffMagnus node count: 3852 (1 new since July 18, 2000)
JeffMagnus experience: 7747 (96 more since July 18, 2000)
JeffMagnus experience to node ratio: 2.011 XP per node
JeffMagnus nodeshare: 0.626%
JeffMagnus node of the day: Everything 2 Civil War

I had to wake up early today. I absolutely hate that. Waking up early. With the... goo in your eyes and nose and you don't have even the slightest inclination to get up but have to anyway.
I went to the mall to buy a tie for a wedding that I am to attend this weekend, the man at the counter asked me if I would be using my Meier and Frank charge card today. I briefly explained to him the fact that both credit and clothes shopping are evil and that my possessing a charge card for a department store would surely signal the comming of ragnarok and twilight of gods and man alike.
He looked at me a little strangely.
When he asked me if I would like a paper bag for my tie I informed him that I would simply pocket the tie. He looked at me again quizzically and said:

You don't do nothin fancy; do ya?

God, I hate the mall.
I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that I, Debbie, am in love. With the day logs. I know, it doesn't sound that impressive, but I will make my case.

The day logs do not judge. The day logs understand. With exception to the occasional boogerhead, no one votes you down for your wacky, irrational, insecure thoughts. In fact, the more real and intrinsic the idea, the more interesting it is to read. I am so in love with the comfort of day logs that I have composed a little song:

When I'm feeling blue
All I have to do
Is write a node to you
Then I'm not so blue...
We've got a groovy kind of love

Ok, maybe I didn't really write that song, but I meant it.

Today was a bit of a strange day. Yesterday I noded about enjoying every moment of the day. I have been missing the joy of waking up in the morning, missing the energy to make it through the day, missing my natural (annoyingly) sunny disposition. I woke up this morning at nine o'clock and considered going back to sleep but I remembered my promise to myself and actually got out of bed. I had a whole list of things I wanted to get done today. I didn't get most of them done, but I did get out of bed at nine in the morning! For a college student, who doesn't work until 6PM, that is quite an accomplishment. I have to admit that the reason that I got out of bed this morning is because I was excited about my Nsync web page project. I recently got in touch with one of the concert promoters and asked him for some info about setting up a fan based web site. I am trying to talk my way into getting an interview with the band. I doubt it will ever happen but the whole process is really exciting. Everyday is a challenge since I started this project. How far can I get today? What new information can I get? Who can I talk to today?

I am a people person. I cringe at that term, most people I have heard say that really annoy the bejesus out of me. But I am a people person. I love interacting with people, I love to listen to people talk. I always find someone interesting to talk to. When I was staying at the hotel in Buffalo and Nsync was on the same floor as I was I ended talking to one of the hotel employees for almost an hour. He told me all about his children and his grandchildren. My friends tell me that I could make a killing if I went into sales. But I can't do that. I just can't be pushy.

So I think it's a bit weird that it took a project like this to break me out of my funk. But it has worked. I wake up every morning with a specific goal in mind. I have actually been going to sleep at a decent hour so that I can wake up refreshed, ready to take on the day. I was considering giving up this project until I started watching MTV last night and I caught an Alanis Morissette MTV Unplugged concert and she sang You Learn. The line that really stuck with me was, I recommend biting off more than you can chew to anyone, I certainly certainly certainly do. And I thought, fuck it, I am going to throw myself into this thing and take what comes to me as it comes. I am going to dive right in there! I am NOT going to pull a Debbie!!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term 'pulling a Debbie' it's something that I do quite often. I only half-heartedly participate in something that I really care about, pretending that I don't care about it, so that when I fail I can comfort myself with the thoughts that I didn't really want it anyway, and besides, I didn't try all that hard. I know, it's also called setting yourself up for failure but it's just so much more appropriately nicknamed 'pulling a Debbie'. I don't even know why I do this? What's the point in even bothering if I am just going to shoot myself down before I take off? I don't know but this is a new beginning. Combining yesterday's theme with today's: I will enjoy every moment of my day, and I will do it by living, and living is putting all you got into everything you do. They might take our land but they cannot take our freedom!!

Booyaa: I hereby bestow on you 1% of my sunny disposition. I would have given you the whole 10% but this stuff is pretty powerful:) You have to ease your way into it! But seriously, know that Unisys was not the right thing for you. Otherwise you would have gotten it. The right thing will come, you just have to wait a little bit. And the harder the wait the more you can appreciate what you've got. It sounds so unbelievably hokey, but trust in yourself and know that it will all work out. Eventually. I'll check in with you and see how you handled the one percent and maybe I'll give you two tommorrow:)

Yesterday | Dizzy->Day_Logs() | Tomorrow


08:50 BST

At the breakfast table, we have a good conversation until he arrives. There seem to be some people that want to monopolise every discussion, every meeting they come across. Every situation relates to something he has done, or someone he knows. He may not have seen the television programme we are watching, but he will be able to ramble on at length about the subject. He seems to be saying "Look at Me!" whenever he arrives. I left the table early to prevent my scowl being noticed. I discovered this node and must put the advice contained within to good use: When to leave a cubicle conversation

Mental Note: Listen twice as much as I speak.

I bounced an idea about ClearCase off the engineers who will be using it. They don't want to use the full UCM functionality, neither do they want to use NT boxen for checkouts or builds. One wants to use CVS and bugzilla, another wants to use SourceSafe; all want as little hassle as possible. They don't seem to realise that their reluctance is causing both me and our Project Leader immense hassle.

So far, yesterday's trip to London hasn't set my Asthma off - maybe I was lucky this time?

09:10 BST

It seems that our General Manager wants my project team moved away from the rest of R&D. His reasoning is that the rest of R&D are just a little too laid back and are a bad influence on our product development. I can understand this, but don't want to be moved away from my friends.

I work in a department with some very, very bright people. Why are they incapable of turning the correct light switches on?

10:30 BST

I just asked our secretary what I have to do wrt my trip to Amsterdam - she said nothing at all, she will sort everything out. Mental Note: Our Secretary deserves flowers after I get back from Amsterdam

13:30 BST

I am very, very proud of Please Stop Annoying Me. Noding this, as booyaa put it so well, is the equivalent of screaming into the glass jar in a cartoon. This node, I think, prevented me from committing murder today. I offer Everything as therapy and Everything as an outlet for anger to anyone who wants to node them. I have uploaded my anger to E2; I am mellow and calm. I am the calm lagoon on a deserted island.

16:10 BST

My Project Leader just offered to take my Sky Digital subscription form to our General Manager. It's sad that I'm suspicious rather than grateful.

12:38

In an attempt to promote a healthier lifestyle, I had an oatmeal breakfast today. Hopefully it will turn into a permanent habit soon. I have already switched from excess daily usage of caffeine-rich soda into water and 100% orange juice. And with the (almost) daily 4.5km walk, I'm feeling quite good. All that's left is resisting the temptation walking past Carrols...

Some of the guys at work just left to donate blood. I'm feeling a bit guilty about not going, but I really have a problem with needles puncturing through my skin. At least it's safe to say I'm not becoming a heroin addict anytime soon, right? (Then again, I wouldn't become one even if they sold it in raspberry-tasting candy.)

I finished my first long writeup yesterday, and the first thing I get is some soft-linking coward accusing me of theft.
Let me get this straight: When a noder nodes more than three sentences of something other than personal things, it is automatically considered a copyright theft?
Fine. Whatever. If short writeups with only a tiny bit of information is what you want, that's what you'll get.
Granted, I have copyed bits of text directly (with credits) a few times, when I was a bigger E2 newbie than now. That's not something to be proud of, and I have since ceased to do so. So get off my back (or at least /msg instead of being a coward). There are worse copyright thieves on Everything than me.

Sorry for possible incoherency and tpyos, I was up quite late playing Sonic Adventure. How do they make those games so damn addictive? :)


14:11

Bah. My plan on weaseling out of work for the second day in a row seems ruined, with my boss wanting me to start designing some totally uninteresting web project with him. But in any case, I'll be out of the office by 15:00.

Say, where's Booyaa? This day log node looks too.. er.. peaceful without B's contribution. :)

Note to self: For the love of god, Shave!   (or at least cover all the mirrors you encounter)
Today, I think I fell in love.

Realted links:
The most beautiful song in the world :: You make it easy :: emmaline

14:00 BST

Hmm. Got to sleep about 06:00 this morning, and got woken up around 12:00. Grr. That was because my pseudo-employer (apparently I'm self-employed, hence the pseudo) got round to emailing me what I have to work on, and felt the need to phone me about it. Which is what I should be working on today. Now in fact...

I've also been struggling with stupid bureaucracy from the inland revenue about registering as self-employed, which I have to do. I think I've got that sorted out now. Just to post off the form. And hope they don't send it back because I've missed something or filled it out incorrectly.

01:16 BST tomorrow

Well, I had an unproductive day. My boss's description of what I have to do is vague to say the least - he doesn't really say the point of the whole task - and I was unable to reach him today. That's the thing that sucks about this job - the communication is just not happening. My boss sends email, sure, but is either vague on the important points, or just plain fails to say anything in response when replying to an email, just ignoring the important things and concentrating on the stupid, miniscule, unimportant things. He has this desire to keep meeting face to face, which is annoying as it takes time and effort, and I have to not look too scruffy. He also phones, typically in the morning, and almost always waking me up, yet is not available if I try to reach him unless it is just a quick call back in 5 minutes type thing.

This morning I spoke with him, and agreed to look at the options of what online auction software his company should use, and call back later. He wasn't available when I called back, and he still hasn't contacted me yet. Which means instead of working today, I just mucked about, which wasn't as much fun as usual as I was waiting for a call. I discover a mind-numbingly vague email, which doesn't mean anything to me when it comes down to it. Well I'm not going to put myself out of my way tomorrow to do anything about it. He can wait until Friday for me to do something.

The most fun and interesting thing I did today was watch Buffy. It was a good episode - hey, I think it's a great show - but the highlight of my day? What a life. Other than that, I've just browsed the web, gone on IRC and noded. Again.

<< week | July 18, 2000 | July 19, 2000 | July 20, 2000 | week >>

Everything's Best Users Snapshot


   #   Users                   XP   wa7   inc Level   l_XP l_wa7
    
   1   EDB                  20017     1     0     1  20017     1
   2   Pseudo_Intellectual  19514   152   214    11  19300   142
   3   DMan                 17880   147    62     9  17818   161
   4   dem bones            15759   107   105    11  15654   107
   5   Segnbora-t           12667   101    91    10  12576   103
   6   Saige                12612   109   155    10  12457   101
   7   sensei               10091   119    80     7  10011   125
   8   dannye                9961   112    96     9   9865   115
   9   pukesick              9509    10    13    10   9496    10
  10   tregoweth             9494    99    48    10   9446   107
  11   Deborah909            8729    41    35    10   8694    42
  12   ideath                8607    98   104     8   8503    97
  13   Lometa                8189    69    14     9   8175    78
  14   N-Wing                8079    22    67     9   8012    15
  15   yossarian             7875    50    28     9   7847    54
  16   Jet-Poop              7855    23    17     9   7838    24
  17 * Tem42                 7849    75    90     8   7759    72
  18 - knifegirl             7844    42    22     9   7822    45
  19   JeffMagnus            7761    66   107    10   7654    59
  20   /dev/joe              7671    43    77     8   7594    37
    
  21   jessicapierce         7578    -4    24    10   7554    -9
  22 * bozon                 7256   114   155     9   7101   107
  23   pingouin              7202    26    31     9   7171    25
  24 - moJoe                 7202    61    24     9   7178    67
  25   ModernAngel           7098    45    86     9   7012    38
  26   General Wesc          6940    41   133     9   6807    26
  27   hoopy_frood           6719    42    63     8   6656    38
  28   Sylvar                6404    81   131     7   6273    73
  29   juliet                6318    92   205     9   6113    73
  30   novalis               6055    13    12     9   6043    13
  31 * hamster bong          5926    91   127     6   5799    85
  32 - Templeton             5850    76    50     6   5800    80
  33   Uberfetus             5608    38    65     6   5543    33
  34 * sabre23t              5456    61    91     7   5365    56
  35 - alex.tan              5433    20     5     7   5428    22
  36   bitter_engineer       5222    42     3     8   5219    48
  37 * wharfinger            5056    68    99     6   4957    63
  38 - RockLobster           5053     8    11     9   5042     8
  39 - nine9                 5038    12    19     9   5019    11
  40 - yam                   4988     9     7     7   4981     9
  41   kessenich             4757    31     8     9   4749    35
  42   ariels                4670    22     2     8   4668    25
  43   Sarcasmo              4422     4     5     8   4417     4
  44 * Orange Julius         4414    62   120     7   4294    52
  45 - Lord Brawl            4370    48    22     8   4348    52
  46 - CaptainSpam           4360    37    28     9   4332    39
  47 - knarph                4329    12     1     9   4328    14
  48   Dis                   4311    67    54     6   4257    69
  49   themusic              4181    32    41     8   4140    30
  50   hatless               4147    42    43     8   4104    42
  51   mat catastrophe       4027    74    87     7   3940    72
   *   EBU #51               4027    36    87     *   3940    28
 

Server time: 14:28 Wed Jul 19 2000 UTC, corrected since June 29, 2000

* = users rising up in the EBU; - = users falling down in the EBU
l_ = last (previous) value; inc = increase in stats value
wa7 = ((stats + (6 * l_wa7))/7) = weighted average with denominator 7

sabre23t: Random Nodes

sabre23t: Nodes to node

11:01 Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

Smackdown was awesome last night...the WWF certainly knows how to put on a live show. Lasted over three hours, and every 'lil bit was great. Almost worth the $75 we paid for the ringside seats from a scalper outside...

Gotta go back to the gym today. I'm at the point where I feel lazy if I take a day off.

My team leader quit the company today. I suspect this will not affect my productivity at all. :)

Wendy's for lunch today, my stomach has decided.

RimRod's Fencing Autobiography is coming along nicely; I'm about half done noding it.
In yesterday's paper the editorial cartoonist wrote (and I laughed in agreement) That this place has... two seasons January and summer. The Heat Is On and not much rain this year to boot. My son dropped me off at the post office to mail a package on his way to work Monday and I decided to get my walk in by walking from there to home. All was well until yesterday morning at the gym. They're remodeling and the A/C was out, I had to quit 15 minutes early because of heat sickness. No end in sight for things to do yesterday. Number Two Son had to be up early for a placement test in Science, which I'm happy to say he passed and was placed in Biology. Both of the boys are self motivated and independent learners. I honestly believe it started with their Montessori pre-schooling which encourages the students to learn what they're interested in at their own rate. The teacher is there to monitor and answer any questions they might have. Both hold many honors from school now and are Honor Roll students. It was a real blessing when I was ill, they could keep up their studies and had the iniative to ask someone for help when they needed it. I was disappointed Number Two Son didn't try for advanced placement in English. I reminded him that he won the Young Authors Award in 5th grade and (He got to go to Casa Grande to present his book). He really did a neat-o job on it. It was written as a diary of a young soldier during the Civil War. He nearly set the house on fire buring the edges of the dairy to make it look like it had been found stuffed in an old chimney. He took apart my leather belt to make a binding for it, wrapped it in tissue paper and put it in an old staionary box I had lying around. Then he typred up a label and applied it to the box like it had been in the museum library;

West Virginia Department of Culture and History Library
Charleston,
West Virginia
Historical Documents
973.732
GODW86g
1861

I was looking through it when I cleaned his room out the other day ... I had forgotten the dedication...it said:

" Dedicated to my mother who always helps me out and never lets me give up."

Number One Son has to reregister for college grrrrr.... and orientation. That's the way it goes with him....

Hubby has been looking for another job. He had a lead on one at the Sonoma Bay but the owner pretty much blew him off, said he couldn't pay him what he makes now, so he's looking at working for the Post Office. We are looking at 8 years of trying to pay for college educations and still have some sembalence of a retirement. He's going on vacation in a week and he would love to go back to Disneyland. I wish we could too, but we're still paying off the last trip in December. While we were there I got to meet the Webmaster and his wife of the chatroom I stumbled across when I was new to the internet last year. I feel safe there, they make sure we can have a pleasant chat. It was a real treat to meet them. They have such a wonderful family and I would like to see them again..... it went by too fast.

Replaced the valve stems and valve seats in the bathroom sinks and all the innards of a leaky toilet. That was a job and a half. I had to use a hacksaw blade to cut through one pipe and someone (who refuses to identify themselves) broke my hacksaw Dad gave me. Cut my fingers up good too! As a girl I saw so little of my dad I spent every waking moment I could trailing around after him when he was home. This included checking runways on the air force bases for debris, as well as fixing cars and plumbing. They were some treasured times I spent with him and I try to do the same with my sons. Number One Son did stop by the bathroom briefly as he wanted a short lesson in plumbing and Number Two Son had to tear himself away from Diablo II to hold a pipe for me while I tightened a lock nut

Later on during my walk I had to stop dead in my tracks as I recalled my doctor asking if I was still married. Now where did that question come from and why was he asking?
I did get the lab results back from my last check up and all is well except the prolactin levels which are always high.

I have a pipe dream now. I have to go through rehab and hire an employment agency and all that to get off of disability. No word yet on when I go in for the neurological tests, but I'm hoping to get a job as an Airline Reservationist. That way I can fly for free around the world and meet some of these wonderful friends I've made on the internet. Hubby says I can go to Amsterdam where some are planning to meet next summer, if I'm working. I hope I can make that dream come true!

Lately the nodes seem to just fly by and I feel like I'm losing touch with what's going on with everyone here. I can barely keep up and yet I want to get the last 183 done to Avatar then go back, update old ones and clean out the useless ones.

She said to herself,

If only I touch his cloak. I will get well.
- Matthew 9:21 (TEV)

Devotion

Aaah. The lack of permanence.

As things will be distinctly changed in two weeks, I feel a stimulation of my longing for instability. As opposed to earlier, though, I am pretty certain that things will work out OK no matter what this time. This takes some of the edge off it, but I hope I will be able to stay alert to possible problems. I usually think of changes as the start of new adventures, but now I have minor, but growing, fear that this is the beginning of a downward spiral.

My plan for the next year (as of five days ago) was to eat herring and bread every day. My dinners this week have been take-away from McDonald's and pizza. Total and utter failure so far. Will have to look into these matters, but there have been to much on my schedule to make time for this. (This, of course, is a self-delusion. I've had two nights free, but I spent them noding.)

Today was a weird one. First of all, i'm in love. yay!. Mutual happiness rocks, makes me all shiny.

Second was on the commute home today. I was riding the Green Line home to Allston from work today.. pulling to the Hynes Convention Center stop i believe, listening to Welcome To The Machine off Wish You Were Here. Just as the song ends, where there is this high motor-running sound, we pull directly into the stop.. RIGHT at the stop the sound ends, i hear someone say "all set". Then the doors open, letting the outside air in, and the crowd laughing sound on the cd starts fading in.. it was like that Volkswagen commercial.. everything was on beat and perfectly timed.

Love = good.
Me = happy.
reason = you.
Work is work. Such is life. Onward I must go. Towanda!

I enjoyed my evening with my boyfriend. We went out to dinner, went to the craft store so I could get a poster hanger thingee, and went back to my place to watch a movie. We watched Withnail and I, which is a somewhat obscure British black comedy. My boyfriend loves this movie. I only found it mildly funny, which I think disappointed him. I like other Richard E. Grant movies, like How To Get Ahead In Advertising, so I don’t think it was the actors. I think that I was just tired since I haven’t been sleeping well.

One would think that some good sex would help you sleep at night. I guess not. I had yet another restless night of dreams I can’t remember. I can vaguely remember Michael Douglas being in one dream, and it was like a movie and he was playing the role of my father. At any rate, I don’t remember enough to turn it into a dream log entry. I am thinking of taking a day off and spending it sleeping.

My cousin Mike and his wife had triplets last month. I just read his website today and the pictures of the kids are finally posted. He also bought a Ford Excursion, the biggest SUV available today because of the kids. Needs the space to haul them around, he says. Whatever. Gas hogs that take up way too much space. He should have bought a minivan with that logic. Then, at least he’d get better fuel economy. I guess he doesn’t care since he lives in Texas near all the oil wells. Who knows. My family is weird.

I wrote an outraged letter to the Olive Garden while I was at work today. I guess I am just tired of going there and getting the same crappy service partnered with the same crappy atmosphere and the same crappy birthday song sung at high volume while I attempt to converse with my family. I have become the queen of outraged customer letters. As a result of the last couple ones I wrote, I have received coupons for free things. Mind you, I don’t write these letters just for free stuff, I do it because I need to get it off my chest. Nothing can change unless I let the offending parties know about it. Or something.

I’m a little nervous to get my fitness evaluation done after work. It needs to be done though because I want to be healthier. I really do. I do not want to end up in a wheelchair at age 50 because my joints hurt or something like that. I’m just not looking forward to getting the fat pinchers put on me. I’ve had that done before when I had to take a health class in college, and it sucked.

Tonight I am going to find my postcards and possibly make some custom ones to send to some people on the Everything Mailing Address Registry list that have writings I enjoy. This should be fun. I think I’ll need to stop and get some glue though. Hmm... collages could be fun. Now I’m excited. :) Something new and creative to do.

The domain name I bought is almost complete. I got word from my hosting service that my account is ready, and they are working on completing the transaction with Network Solutions to actually buy the domain name. Hooray! I’m excited.

Nodes That I Wrote Today That Smell Like French Fries:
You only live once, so have an ice cream bar
dirty look – I can’t believe this wasn’t noded yet!
putting on her makeup - still can't decide if this is good or not

CD’s I’ve Listened To Today:
Muslimgauze – Citadel
Gridlock – The Synthetic Form
The Cure – Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville

You make me hungry for you.

I woke up in the afternoon today when my sister entered my room with her friend and began playing video games. I lay there watching for a while and then made some kool-aid. At which point I was struck with the feeling of boredom. I realized I had nothing to do. I got very annoyed with my sister's friend and began laughing uncontrollably at absolutely nothing. I signed on to everything and read some nodes. I ended up hating the fact that I couldn't express myself as well as I would like to. I wrote a node on that topic and realized, in hindsight, that it was very contradictory. After dealing with a hefty dose of depression, I signed off played a video game and came back. I'll be seeing my girlfriend tonight and I have yet to get ready for the day. I feel very stagnant and extremely depressed. I hate days like this.

Breakfast: a pizzaburger and a buttered roll. President asks if I'd like to act as editor of the company newsletter, and I accept. Of course, my boss feels that THEY went behind his back... It seems like everyone who is not on vacation, has given their "two week's notice". I decide that I have quite enough to keep me occupied without patching up an old P90 Aptiva to run the E2 code for my idle curiosity. Reading: Fire In the Belly. Dinner: (more) broccoli in garlic sauce (than I needed to eat in one sitting).
My great-aunt Fran died this morning; three years ago, her doctors gave her a year to live. I'm trying to avoid the word "overdue" - let's just say we were all happily surprised she held out this long. She was pretty chipper right up to a couple of weeks ago. I admired her, but with a double generation gap between us, I never really felt much connection with her. She and my grandfather were both over 80 when they died; their sister, "Aunt Sis", still has never been seriously ill since her childhood. If I have to inherit the balding gene from my Mom's side, I think I deserve my Dad's longevity genes in compensation.
Yet another unbearably slow day at work today. It's not that I didn't have anything on my plate, I actually have a couple of projects I'm working on, but I can't continue with them until I hear from other people. These people have not been responsive, and I can only be so much of a pest. I suppose I should enjoy the silence, but I'm freakin' bored!

My dad invited me to come over to his house for a while to hang out. I had no plans (I usually don't), so I spent most of the evening there. I had a pretty good time.

"if i could rape the day, and find the things i thought i'd always known"

I've been.. listening to the same song for a day, and a half, I guess, almost continuously. "Don't you get tired of listening to the same song, over and over?" No.. no, it is.. the backdrop to the way I'm feeling the things that I am thinking, it's as if I'm not really listening to anything, I just know that this is the song I'm supposed to be listening to right now. A neat feeling, really.

I went for a walk, a typical walk for me.. "I'd walk the water to get back to you, and where I was complete." I was singing the song quietly to myself as I watched the little wood ducks, possibly mallards, swim into the slender blades of cat tail reeds. This usually doesn't happen until the end of my walk, and they generally don't swim away they just land gently in the water. I should have known that.. my walk was over before it started, at least any peaceful aloneness that might have been. My little brother started riding his friends motorbike around and wouldn't leave me alone, thus I just got to smell exhaust the entire time. It was kind of chilly.. I'm still glad I went, though I missed the best part of the sunset and walked through wet field with no socks and thus had cold, wet toes. (But cold, happy wet toes, I think.)

I have.. many reasons to be happy and few to feel anything but.. dreamy, maybe.. but there is this stuff hanging over my head. Her, of course, her who would throw such things in my face, I dislike it when she talks to me. I can't tell her that, I've never been good at being mean, I guess this is a good thing.

My birthday party.. number of people who are coming is slowly dwindling, I don't really care. I'm sure I'll have some amount of fun, regardless.

This day seemed shrowded in negativity, yet, rarely did a smile leave my face.. peculiar, most definitely.. I know why, though, it's not so confusing at all. It is.. you.

I'm going to.. write a letter to myself tonight, place it away in a drawer and a month from now I'll read it, somehow I'll have something to remind me on that particular day. (Perhaps the simple scrawling of "r.l." for read letter on my landscape calendar would suffice.) It's a good idea given the way things have unfolded as of late.
This is what I've dreaded most. Having nothing to write about each day simply because nothing worth writing about has happened. No, that can't be. There's always something worth writing about.

I keep playing this song by Ben Harper, "Another Lonely Day." Yes, indeed, I'm alone again. Here comes emptiness, crashing in. It's either love or hate, I can't find in between. It wouldn't have worked out, anyway. So now it's just another lonely day, hey. Wish there was something I could say or do. I can resist anything but the temptation from you. But I'd rather walk alone than chase you around. I'd rather fall myself than let you drag me on down. Blah blah blah. I don't normally like men's voices so much.

I suppose it fits.
Today, besides work, was spent doing something I've wanted to do for a while... download .isos of various Linux distros (Or is that distri?) and burn 'em to CD-R. Why?

Because I can.

I don't mean that because I've got a Cable Modem, or that I've got a CD-R. I mean that just because I can go through standard channels, get distros legally, and laugh at the people spending $200 for bare bones installs of Windoze. I get a sort of perverse joy from that.

I have no way of testing the burns or downloads, though. My little Red Hat box, which was originally my "toy" computer, is slowly becoming a network workhorse for the house. Thus, I'm lacking a test box. Huh. And I wanted to try some Slack.

I still need to learn how to wire up the house in a network, sharing one IP, making the Linux box a firewall, and allowing it to accept outside phone calls and give out PPP access at will. Anyone with any advice? It would be welcome...

Signed the lease for the flat in the Victorian house in Alameda. I have a HOME! No furniture for a couple weeks, but that's okay. I'm happy about it anyway. Goodbye, motel!

Oh, so I know why there are so many ornate Victorian houses on the island. The 1906 earthquake that destroyed so many of the beautiful houses in San Francisco didn't touch Alameda (in fact, many of the survivors relocated there). Anyway, I look forward to living there--away from the traffic and claustrophobia of the city. I think I dare to put myself in the Everything Mailing Address Registry.

PS! I get to see Starrynight and my SO in about six days. Life is good.
I think that I've left myself logged on for about two days straight. Oops.

I had a dentist appointment this morning. They filled a small cavity and did a revolving camera-deal to get a cool photo of my teeth. I don't know if anyone remembers, but I recently had a root canal and underwent a seemingly infite crown procedure. So now it turns out that I have a wisdom tooth that's pointing sideways, which means it's impacted, which means they'll have to break it, which means that I will be in misery yet again. This is scheduled for August 7th. I'm going to take advantage of that and the following day spent incommunicado by taking my car in to the mechanic for a full check and to put on new front brake pads. He has mad skillz with VWs.

The dentist's daughter was there looking in on her mom and my mouth. She just graduated with her undergrad degree and is going to spend the next nine years getting her doctorate in dental surgery, just like mom. Together, they made me feel like a TOTAL SLACK-ASS LOSER. Both of them in the same room was just too much for me and I was relieved when the daughter went elsewhere. This was not a dissimilar feeling to the one I had the other day, lstening to an acquaintance talk about her Fulbright scholarship to Italy. Pffft !!

And yet more about my dentist: she went off an a tangent about Deepak Chopra, and how he says that not judging and not labelling leads to a quiet mind. Essentially. I'd say going a freaking month without several shots of local anasthesia leads to a quiet mind.

Even more exciting Dentist stuff: I bought a Sonicare Pro brush there for $100.


Four more days of work before Vega$.

I stumbled upon a neat-o tool at grc.com called ShieldsUp!, which probes all of your ports and tells you how vulnerable your computer is to remote access.

Which got me very paranoid; many of my ports were visible on the net, although I'm smart enough to not share anything without authentication.

So, I downloaded a packet sniffer to see what was actually going on with my machine. Bad idea. It made me extremely mad, noticing that I was getting polled by fucking little shit script kiddies (presumably, from the AOL IP).

Shit. I thought I was smarter than that.

So, I installed a firewall, to block anything that I don't want from coming into and going out of my machine. Which, once I get back to Ann Arbor, will remain in place, giving me TWO firewalls to hide behind.

Ain't no teenagers getting into MY machine!

Besides that revelation, a pretty uneventful day. Had a 2 hour lunch, worked out, played Spades with the friends. Almost got walked in on by the roommate while goofing around with the girl... "Hi mom!"

It's never going to go away, is it?

:P

2000年7月19日

My last few days in Japan, as I expected, were nothing short of bizarre. It all started when my dad flew over. My stepmom, who was working at the Admirals Club back then, had accumulated enough free standby first class passes to fly the Los Angeles Lakers to Nairobi and back, so Dad and I decided to fly back together and fill our four alloted suitcases with all of my stuff.

I went to the airport with one of my friends. It was a pretty long train trip from Osaka, and I wanted to give him half a bottle of Finlandia that was left over from our bus trip to Mount Fuji. So we rode the rapid service across the bridge to Kanku, transferred the booze in the men's room, and then settled down in the arrivals hall and waited.

My dad came out of immigration a long while later with two empty suitcases and some significant inebriation going on, and then the three of us rode the train back to Umeda, connected to Hankyu, and arrived at my host family's front door in Itami. Despite the fact that my host family didn't speak English and my father didn't speak Japanese, they seemed to communicate quite well as I packed up the last two bags.

Then it was a $100 taxi ride to Kyoto, where our hotel room was booked for two nights.


The next day, we went to Den-Den Town in Nippombashi to look at some electronic goodies. I wanted to buy a Japanese PDA, and I ended up haggling with a salesman over a monochrome Zaurus, which was my best friend for the next year.

We were on the platform at Awaji, waiting for the express train back to Kawaramachi, when the culture shock finally hit my father. "My God," he said, "everything is so organized." He was right: everyone was lined up quietly at the little yellow notches on the platform, so that they would be in a perfect position to get through the doors as soon as the train arrived.

Then it was off to Kyoto Station for an okonomiyaki dinner...


We took the train back to Kansai, which meant that we had to hustle through the bowels of Kyoto Station that morning carrying a hundred pounds of luggage. When we finally got to the platform where the Haruka was boarding, I left the bags behind to check out the newspapers at a kiosk.

"I want to keep an eye on those bags," he said.

"Why?" I said.

When we finally got to the airport and checked in, we found some seats overlooking the departures concourse, and waited. Some of my friends arrived to say goodbye, and as the final hour drew closer, more people began showing up.

We went through security and handed in our passports, and then we were out in the concourse. I looked up, and there were all those people, faces pressed against the glass wall, waving goodbye, a chapter of my life flying away behind my back as we crossed the threshold into the pier.


Once Japan had disappeared from beneath the 777, I began listening to the minidisc my friends had given me. Many tears later, I listened to it again.

I gave them my customs form in Dallas, and then stepped out into a different world: a bold, simple, high-powered world, the world I had once taken for granted.

And you know what I did? I got a Dr Pepper.


< what came before - what came later >

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