(Coming up on level 4 fast, trying to avoid noding for numbers)

Today, I went to school, which was boring as usual, and we were told that the school may change to closed campus lunch. Which of course, is stupid (read the node for the reasons). I really ought to have noded my homework today, but that would require doing my homework, which is simply beyond my capability. I basically have all my elective, non-homework classes before lunch, and all my serious ones after. So I do it all at lunch. Which is good, since I have other people who actually pay attention in class around me.

I've started learning the Python language on a side-note, and I have a large project in mind. However, if I told you what is was, I'd have to kill you.
Last night, we in Boston had a little bit of snow. This morning, it was raining slush balls from the trees. Quite funny. Not as amusing were the ice bombs falling from the trees when I got off the T. I guess it is colder in Cambridge.

I had to say "Ahem. I told you so", so I didn't say it. Well, not to my boss, anyhow. He had been predicting that I would flop during my talk to the customer. Yes, I know it must sound like my boss is an asshole. I didn't say he was an asshole. Just that it must sound like he is. Anyhow, my boss doesn't like my approach. He doesn't like my personality. (Oh, in case you're wondering, I guess that I have as many problems as anyone else, including being a jerk at times, I'm sure.) And, he is always making jokes about me in front of me AND others.

Ugh. I want Friday to be her NOW. I want summer to be here NOW. Heck, while I'm asking for the impossible, I'd like to be in Las Vegas right now.

Okay, I guess I'll settle for a cold beer.

Was up from Midnight to 1 last night trying to get tired. Went to bed, got back up at 3 and read about JSP and Servlets until 5. Drove down the mountain to catch the Metrolink to work. The vending machine wasn't taking plastic (for a ten trip pass) so I bought a round-trip ticket with a $20 - got 6 Sacagaweas and a Susan B. Anthony as change. Rode the train for an hour:ten, reading more about JSP and Tomcat. Rode the bus for 15 minutes and then strolled 5 more to the shop.

They announced we were going test flying because of weather coming in (as I suggseted yesterday). The irony is that my home is on the mountain we launch from! So I was at work 20 minutes before hopping in the boss' truck for a ride back to the train station I'd left an hour and a half plus before.
Got my truck and we all went to the LZ, dropped off my truck and went to the lowest launch to fly some trainers down.
The wind was blowing hard 90 degrees cross on launch, so we couldn't launch. We stood there for 40 minutes hoping it would get better - pre-frontal weather should have been providing wind straight up the launch. Eventually we decided they'd go back to the shop, I'd keep the two most important gliders to fly later (so they could be shipped to the customers) if it got better.

This was about 11:00 AM, and I was feeling pretty crispy.

About 1:00 (13:00) it was getting better, and I was up the mountain at home, having dashed there to get food, coffee, and to swap my slacks for jeans to fly in. I called and reserved a place on the 2:00 shuttle up the hill from the LZ and began retying the gliders (I hadn't put my front rack in for the trip to the train station, so the gliders weren't tied optimally). I then realized that I had left my harness in the boss' truck, which was now 1.5 hours away!

I took this as the cosmic sign to not fly today.



It got cloudy and cold, like winter again after a few days of some Spring version of Indian Summer here. I wasted a little time surfing E2 and then got to work on some files I'd had the foresight to slap onto a zip disk this morning before leaving the shop. Never remembered to crank the tunes...
Went to the store and got stuff for dinner, mildly surprising my wife, who's dozing on the sofa as I type this.

Overall, a good day.

'night.
I wonder sometimes about I how approach the daylogs. I’m not noding the important stuff that’s happening in my life, stuff that you’d think I’d be just itching to type out all my introspective thoughts on, like the funeral I went to Saturday. But instead I end up writing daylogs about days full of random insignificant (in the greater scheme of things) events. Like today:

Interesting conversation with my boss today (when I wasn’t skipping out of the office for walks over to Cooper Hall at random intervals). It seems one of the VPs is wondering if I’m going to stay on for the rest of the year. Granted, she probably doesn’t even know my name off the top of her head, but it does make me wonder if I’m being groomed for a promotion. Not the April raise/title change (which is more paperwork than anything really meaningful) that I’m already getting, but a window office, gold staff parking tag, health insurance and pension plan promotion. Probably wishful thinking, but it only further makes me realize that I need to a lot of hard thinking about my future plans instead of coasting. Coasting’s been pretty good to me so far, all things considered, but I can’t rely on it forever. I enjoy what I’m doing, and I don’t mind low pay, but I don’t want to be dirt poor when I’m my father’s age (one of the many reasons I’m not a public school teacher) and I occasionally daydream of a career where I can shoot at people, especially when my students don’t even fucking know who Joseph McCarthy is.

Bought two more dress shirts and a tie today. I really am going to be dirt poor if I keep this up. I am, of course, trying to impress a girl, and I should just go ahead and get shot down before I run out of cash. It is a bit strange for me to show up to class in a tie, but I can pull it off by saying I’m coming straight from work (true, but I don’t mention that I dress up on Wednesdays more than usual). Now she’s not the type who’d be attracted to DKNY wear and superficialities like that, but let’s be honest, I’d be making a much different impression wearing corduroy pants and my tattered Marvin the Martian T-shirt. Clothes make the man, and being dressed like a god – or at least Regis Philbin - certainly can’t hurt my confidence any.

So I’m sitting here cranking Eminem (Will he go to the Grammys? Who gives a fuck?) and reading Plato’s Syposium for class tomorrow when I get a /msg from dem bones. Not just a message, the message. I’ve been drafted and now I’m an editor – a complete surprise, honest! Like I said to bones, Xmas has come quite a bit early this year. I guess I have to stop noding for numbers now. I feel like I should make some sort of speech ("I’m going to be tough but fair…") but I can’t think of anything to say. So watch out, soon I’ll be unleashing some editorial badassery. But not just yet. I haven’t even figured out where the fucking kill button is yet.

"’Cause I’m Gamaliel and I’m the real Gamaliel and all you other Gamaliels are just imitatin’…"
A friend of the family passed away today. Didn't think it would hit me as bad as it did. Another life snuffed out, another life gone.

John Brem may your soul rest in peace - in our hearts you will live, as always, in perfection and happiness.

On a suitably sombre note, the shitfight that I was expecting (see daylog February 5, 2001 for details) finaly came. Their ENTIRE office came up, dropped off the computers that we required, and made sure to inform us that the hard drives had been wiped. More like absolute deletion (i.e. all zero's written to entire drive). And then I was accused of lying, interfering with a business, and not passing on pertinant equipment. My boss, who needed to speak to them, was suitably pissed off at them - he knew they were lying as much as me. I have never seen this man so much as raise his voice in anger, but today he went red as a raspberry and shouted at the guy for one word - "So"..."you mean to tell me you have deleted the drives, and we don't have our own intellectual property....." The other guys just blanched. They knew they were lying, and were busted as well.

But enough about that.

Budgets were due at work today - for those who have never experienced a budget, I envy you.

Gym beckons. But let me leave you with this thought:

"What makes a road broad?"

Answer in tomorrows daylog.

14:56

Well, I slept a bit too long again. I hate it when this happens =(

Last night... well, h3x0red some 31337 UML diagrams, trying to make a sensible structure for Petal Fear.

Just a thought... Am I turning into a Manager, not a Programmer??? I have a Vision of how the program should work, but I can't quite make it fly.

No. I think not. It's just laziness. It's not a sin to make plans before coding. I think. Of course, Real Men Don't Weep When They Can't Remember When They Can't Remember What 90% Of Their Program Does. I merely try to avoid that fate, to preserve my precious sanity. =)

Time to face the challenges of the day.

16:48

hah! Another spammer using First Amendment as the spamming excuse. I struck back with Finnish law, 565/1999, article 21. =)

19:24

I think I'll start playing Ultima 7 more now... I found this comment about the Passion Play pretty interesting:

Iolo whispers to you. "I am particularly enjoying the visual effects. The script is a little weak, dost thou not think?"

Is that a commentary about this particular play, or Richard Garriott's commentary about modern movies? =)


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: Ditto Unknown Dungeon Farfetch'd

Updated: Hal Emmerich

I don't know what to do. I don't know who to turn to. My work is mindless hours of tedium, i find myself translating the world's worst book from German to English and noding it just to stay awake.

My body is rotting to pieces from under me. The doctor's happy news yesterday brought me lower than i've been in years. The abcess on my stomach is a constant agony - i cannot sit, cannot stand, cannot walk without brushing it, touching it, catching it with my belt. In bed i cannot sleep because there is no comfortable way to lie. It is the size of my palm. It weeps red and yellow poisonous tears of filth everytime i move. I hope that flucloxacillin works very fast indeed.

The one person i could turn to for help is acting as if i didn't exist. No words pass between us. No touches, no looks that contain anything other than coldness. And i wonder again if we're all over, because you see, i can't live like this. I WON'T live like this. I don't deserve this treatment - no-one deserves this sort of ostracism.

I will get through, i will translate more, i will take my antibiotics and hope the test results are negative. I will make the first move toward reconciliation, as always. I will try to act like an adult and to pretend that the other's behavious is flawless, as always. I will try to be generous, adult, mature. And i will see what happens, because something has to change.

I had a fight with my ex yesterday. An e-mail fight, of all the stupid things. And I know better! Ugh. I shared my day logs with him - and so he shared some feelings with me. OK, fine. Except - I thought he was hinting around again asking me about dating again. So I got angry and responded to every little thing he wrote about his feelings.

What an idiot I can be.

Of course, he was quite insulted, and pissed off, as I had insulted him, and I deserved his anger. I apologized, and realized how idiotic I had been, and sent him multiple e-cards in apology until he wrote back, saying "stop, stop, already!!"

I don't feel very well. Some war is being fought in my body, I can feel it happening. I left work early yesterday (missed the train anyway) and did absolutely nothing last night. No energy at all. So this morning I bought this weird korean ginseng ginkgo drink as I'm out of vitamins and I couldn't really finish it - it's ghastly. And some vitamin C candies. Yuck. Fake strawberry flavor.

...Sigh.... I'm carrying a grudge and other weird feelings around and they're not going away, so I have to do something about it. A friend of mine, whom I met at my current job, has a computer from work at home, which is fine. I set her up. I even went out to her house way out in Virginia and hooked it up for her, because she couldn't lift anything due to her illness at the time. (We weren't good friends yet at that time.)

Earlier this year, she complained about not having speakers on this home computer. I gave her a sound card, which I wouldn't normally do (it's not the company policy to equip people with speakers and sound cards), and she had her boyfriend put it in. Which of course he did wrong and I had to fix it. This happened about a month ago. She called me this past weekend as she couldn't get the modem to dial up. I wasn't home, she left a message on my machine and I didn't call her back. I was really angry that she called me for this. If she had been trying to dial in to do some work, I wouldn't have been mad. But I felt that she was just using my friendship to get free help. I was really, really angry. And I'm still mad about it.

But now that I write this, I am realizing that I am probably wrong. Even if she didn't need it for work at that moment, she eventually would. What harm would it have done to call her back and plan to fix it during the week? Why am I so mad? Why do I feel so used? WWJD? TAJS


.....and I was feeling so happy this week. Now I feel tired, and kind of sick, and crabby....
Days are getting longer and I am feeling better.

The mornings are getting sunnier and I am less cold when I wake up. My headache is almost gone. I just need to catch-up on my sleep. Driving seems to be a very good way to release my pent-up energy. Playing new CDs doesn't hurt either. It seems to enhance my drives to work. Work itself is getting a little more interesting though only bit by bit.

I still miss my Love even though we had the weekend together. I am reminded of her whenever I see the blue, stuffed toy with the "chin-face" and barcode hanging from my car. It gives me comfort just like how she does.

I am excited about the MOMO shift-knob I ordered for my car. I hope it will satisfy some of my inadequacies.

And thoughts of spring and summer are so welcome right now. I can't wait to open my windows fully down and the sunroof fully in the open position. I need some fresh air from all of the stale, heated air.

It's torturing me.

I'm in a play at my school with my good friend Soujirou. The play is nothing spectacular, just something to do more or less. However, I have an ulterior motive. The co-director has to be the most attractive girl I have ever come into contact with. And she's a friend of mine. And she's available. And I am a spineless 3D Design guru. Very, very aggravating. She'll be gone all next week, then I'm gone the week after. 2 weeks, a lot can happen in two weeks, and I won't be involved, you may depend upon it.

That means I have two days to secure her before I inevitably lose my chance. The pressure will kill me!


And the reader asks him/herself, "Did I care about that?"

Fun, fun, more fun, and E2

It's torturing him.

I found it amusing to watch my friend (lambda68) struggle against himself today in drama practice. Yes, I'll admit, she is hot. But is it so wrong for me to take some perverse pleasure out of seeing the contradictory logical arguments form in his brain (especially whilst I am very very much content with my girlfriend, thus enabling me to look down upon him)? The answer is, of course, "no."

Went to prison, went to a 'jock w/ big cock so clap for me' pep rally, went to drama, went home, travelled to basement.. E2.. peace. finally.

I'm not a hedonist! I recently had an argument with someone over the morality of smoking pot, something I've been debating for a while now. I gave him my arguments, and he retorts that my views are only to serve myself. Merely because it is a harmless activity (hurts neither myself nor anyone else I can imagine), doesn't automatically make me a hedonist for wanting to do it! If that were true, wouldn't people be hedonists for wanting a cookie before sex, or perhaps a kiss before throwing themselves off of a 200 foot rock cliff? It would. Therefore, I am not a hedonist!. But.. can I still do it? blah.
good day. got a ring on my finger, the sun is out, and stock is up. it should be an interesting day.

unfortunately i feel some pain coming on, and i think i am finally going to give in and give nitroglycerin a try. i've been to chicken to actually take it, despite the doctore saying there have been quite succesful studies done on nitroglycerin for biliary colic. it's an old-people drug, though. it's for people who are having heart attacks. it just frightens me. but hey, it might help. some of the side effects worry me, though. pounding headache, syncope, etc. we shall see.

Mua ha ha! So I tried it! and it WORKED! the first dose seemed to help, but the pain was still bad, so i popped another one under the tongue five minutes later. within a minute or two after that second pill, i felt 100% again. i feel a bit speeded up, and i have to be careful when i stand up, but it WORKED. fabulous day!

my advice for young e2 users
  • you may see nodes about noding, but that doesn't mean that it's a good idea for you to make one too. it's bad form. it's frowned upon. that others exist and may have positive reputation doesn't mean they're GOOD nodes. Read E2 FAQ: When is it okay to node about noding?.
  • e2 is not a good forum for me too nodes. don't add a writeup to a node just to agree (or disagree) with the original writeup. Add some NEW information to a node, or don't bother to add anything.
  • stay on topic! nodes have titles for a reason. they explain the content. if you MUST digress, please explain the relation between your digression and the node topic.
  • Microsoft bashing is passé. Not all connotatively negative adjectives need a reference back to Microsoft or AOL (or whatever you may think sucks).
  • Personal accounts of your existance belong in a daylog. If you feel that it is really worthy of being it's own node, bulk it up, add detail and emotion, and make it a well written short story.
  • DON'T write FAKE definitions!
    1. They're usually NOT AT ALL FUNNY.
    2. People generally look something up because they don't know what it is. Joke definitions don't help.
Read Words of Advice for Young Noders.

I'm psyched. Why? My wife lost her job last Wednesday! I know that is kind of odd, but there are good points to it. I've seen new energy in her to go back to school. She is actively seeking jobs in the child care and child development area. My job contract ends in January 2002 and we could possibly move to another state! I've never lived out of state and doing this while I am young and without children has been a dream of mine for some time. Not that I don't like where I am at, I just want to know what it is like living somewhere else. Check out Nebraska to see my current thoughts on where I live. I consider new things exciting. I made one thing clear though, she has to bring in at least 500 bucks a month after taxes or we won't be able to pay the bills. I've also noticed that no matter how much money you make, you will always find a way to spend it.

It's been a while.
way back when, I mentioned that I'd won a pretty damn cool prize in a raffle - well, East Dunbartonshire Council have finally decided to give it to me, so tomorrow afternoon I'm going to be going to Kirkintilloch, to be presented with it by the Provost. There's apparently a photocall too. Local papers here we come.. :)

Life recently has been good. I spent the weekend in Edinburgh, being all energetic, and with really cool people. Kyle and Roger, fellow PDE students, their flatmate Gill, her friends Michael, Lynsey and Becki, and a friend of theirs too, Nichola.

We took the bus over after uni on Friday, and settled into Milne's on Rose Street to wait for Becki to arrive from her flat in Edinburgh. Shortly after her arriving, so did the pub's bouncers, who ejected us from the premises on account of myself and Michael being underage.

Instead of finding somewhere else, we went out to Gill's house, and at about 10.30pm, went out for a walk on the Pentlands, from where you can see just about the entire city, right down to the coast and beyond. After that, we headed down the Water of Leith, with the eventual intention of reaching Leith, but that wasn't looking likely so we turned back after a while.

Saturday was even more tiring - rock climbing at Alien Rock, then over to Becki's flat for a short while (she and Michael had spent a couple of hours in Jenners' toy department), and back out again to Murrayfield to go ice skating. It was closed at the time, for hockey, so we paid a visit to the pub across the road before returning for an ice disco. Basically cheesy pop on ice. It might have been more enjoyable had my skating skills been better...

We returned to Rose Street not long afterwards, settling into the Auld Hundred (they had sofas, which can only be a good thing.) At closing time, it was down to the Cowgate to The Living Room, which is really quite funky, and I do believe I'll be tracking down their Glasgow establishment soon.

We didn't go to the Peppermint Lounge (where Lynsey's friends were inside), because I got knocked back. The bouncer took approximately a minute examining my ID before deciding that I was underage, and then accused me of thinking he was stupid.

We had just missed a nightbus back to Gill's house by then, so started walking and hoped it would catch up with us. But it didn't, so we skipped along, singing songs, christmas carols, and generally being very loud, for about an hour and a half.

Oh, and Sunday was cold, windy and snowy, so we went on an open top bus tour. The only other people on the bus were other students from Glasgow, I don't know if this says something about us...

I think there may be a bit of a spark between me and Gill. The first time I met her, I sent Kyle a message afterwards to let him know that the night out was good, the taxi fare was bad, and gill is very nice. i've also had messages from him and roger 'with love and kisses', which i suspect her influence.

I really do need to get her number. The only way I can really get in touch is via Kyle, so I've had to ask him if he wants to go to the Art School union tomorrow night. And suggest that he brings other people along too. like Gill, for instance.

I have a mangement test tomorrow. I'm not entirely sure how it's going to go, but tomorrow is also my birthday, I'll be getting £400 to spend at Comet, and I might just ask Gill out properly.

Therefore, life is good.

enjoy

Something is wrong
if I'm burning away
Nobody nowhere ruins the day
Singing away, and I never cry since
Tell me something I don't know.
Show me the place to start today
Where is the place I started today --
old melodies from my tiny flute falling on deaf ears.
Faint from the noise, spent, and sullied
lather, rinse,
repeat
Well, today I turned 21. Wow, I feel old.

I had a birthday party on Friday, but today, unfortunately I work. I am, however, probably going to hit a couple bars after work. Hopefully, I'll still be able to made it to call tomorrow at 9:30. Heh. Fat chance.

Also, I'd like to thank everyone who has sent me /msgs to wish me a happy birthday.

I woke up at 5:30 to go follow my friend and his wife down to Miami. They weren't sure if their vehicle could make it, and it was for a very important meeting. I drove back via the scenic route since I haven't been that far down there before (and I couldn't find my way back to the interstate).

I got back home at around 8:30am, so I took a nap for 2 hours and then went to Japanese class. I did well on my hiragana quiz. Most of the rest of the class was more introduction stuff. We have our first vocabulary quiz on monday.

Another slack day at work. Well mostly. I started debugging, but I only got as far as getting the compiler to finally build an executable. I didn't actually check it, and I ignored a few warnings that I probably should have dealt with.

I was just about to leave work, when TC called me to tell me AS had just gotten in an accident on his motorcycle and that he was alright but he needed a way to get his bike home. She wanted to know if my brother could bring his truck by and pick it up since it was damaged.

We got there and the Florida Highway Patrol was still there and they were towing away the bike. We looked around for his keys and cell phone which got lost when he was hit. He got smashed into by a big SUV which didn't even stop or wasn't even aware that s/he hit someone. All of this happened on the interstate at 65 miles per hour; he could have been killed easily. He had a lot of scrapes and bruises, but seems ok. I guess he was more concerned about his motorcycle being damaged than himself.

He wound up getting his bike towed away for $120 plus mileage, even though we could have taken it. I guess it was too late since the tow truck had already arrived. I just called TC up and checked that he's still ok, and asked if he needed a ride into work, which TC said he probably would on friday; but probably won't be in tomorrow.

After I got home I got some food and finally burned the CD for Sara that I've been talking about for the past two weeks. I just labled the CD as "Thank You." and put my name below and to the right. I probably should go get it wrapped; I don't know if I'd be better off with attaching a note or just leaving it to be as it is.

Oh well, I didn't go to the gym tonight, so I have some extra time... I think I might go read e2 some more and maybe try out some old games with my new computer.

Classes resumed yesterday after a long weekend, but since I have no classes Tuesdays, today was my return to classes. It was a pretty good day. I had a math midterm that went pretty well, and I got back a paper in Classics that I got an A on, which was a very nice treat. After classes--I had all four today--I did laundry--one of the laundry rooms was out of commission, so I had to trek through the basement to the other one--ate dinner, then went to Tae Kwon Do. My feet feel sore. I got back and typed up a writeup (my midterm raped me)I had written last night in anticipation of the midterm today. I posted it, waited, and watched downvotes appear. That felt bad...I went off and installed some printer software on someone else's machine so he could print on the dorm printer. I came back, and looked at my home node and noticed my experience had jumped dramatically. Not really daring to wonder what that could mean, I clicked through to the list of my contributions to Everything2--one of my writeups had been C!'d. This was the first time that I had ever had been cooled. It wasn't a life-changing event, but there was definitely emotion there...pride, a small amount of happiness, definitely relief that my node wasn't a failure after all...Getting a C! on one of my writeups makes me feel that my presence on Everything2 has been validated.

What a day. Let me share it with you.

7:30 am
Woke late. It's getting lighter in the mornings as we move towards spring, but it's still too dark for me to wake up easily.

8:00
As I got to the car, a lorry was blocking my path out of the car-park. It was delivering to the shop above which my wife and I live in our rented flat. Clearly I was in for a frustrating morning, so I waited.

8:30
20 miles later and I'm at the back of what looks like a long traffic jam. This is unusual on my route to work. To say I was frustrated would be an understatement. I took the opportunity to stretch my arms and tense back, while listening alternately to music (Radio 1) and the news (Radio 4). At this point, I'm only 10 minutes for work, to which I had aimed to arrive a little early; just before 9 am.

9:30
Finally at my desk. Shit. Oh well, no-one really minds. Tomorrow I shall leave earlier. Realise that for the first time I have 2 C!s to give rather than the usual 1. I reached Level 5 last night. Oh yes. More votes to use, more cools to give. An extra power? Oh yes. I can create a new room. That will come in very useful one day, I'm sure. The power I want comes at Level 6 (which feels a looong way off today), when I can display an image on my homenode.

Midday
Today, I have been exclusively noding music. I won't list them here, but this included lots of writeups devoted to Tom Lehrer albums and songs. I was careful to hit ("Do not display in new writeups") when submitting many of them. I don't want to spam the New Writeups nodelet with lyrics. I do support noding lyrics though - especially when they are the comic genius of Mr. Lehrer.

And, in between doing some work, this was my day.

5:30 pm
I'm home again. My wife is ill. There seems to be some kind of flu thing going around. It is my time to make dinner (garlic chicken with chips - pop it in the oven, very little effort). Am I getting old? She felt up to going to the shop (as you now know, this is just downstairs, literally) and asked me if I wanted anything. I replied "Rennie, mint flavoured please". (Rennie is a brand of indigestion tablet. A year ago I would have laughed at myself, but now... well, sometimes you have indigestion. A sensible purchase. A grown-up purchase).

Late
TV: A programme on the Karma Sutra. Typing this daylog while half-watching Sex and the City. Wondering if I will dream tonight. It's been nearly a week since I remembered a dream. Wondering if I can stay up late enough to watch Mark Thomas. Wondering if staying up late will make me more, or less, likely to dream.

One of my closest friends was killed by a drunk driver shortly after nine PM today while driving her brother home. The other driver drifted across the center divide and hit the driver's side of my friend's car. Neither the drunk driver nor the brother were injured seriously. My friend is dead and was buried on February 9th. She was 21 and would have been 22 in June, with her degree in Information Technology in little over a year.

I miss her.

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