May 4, 2000 | May 5, 2000 | May 6, 2000

Everything Statistics

           Statistics on day 0      -1     cur  l-ca  c-ca increase 
Total Number of Nodes:  495664  494150    1514  1240  1377
Total Number of Users:   14155   14122      33    31    32
Total Number of Links: 1291685 1275194   16491 18064 17278
Current node_id:        530821  529170    1651  1345  1498

Everything's Best Users

User         XP on day 0   -1  cur l-ca c-ca increase
Pseudo_Intellectual 9453 9393   60 195 128
dem bones           9197 8999  198 175 187
jessicapierce       9156 9009  147 297 222
pukesick            6265 6123  142 144 143
Saige               5803 5592  211 130 171

Server time: 08:23 Fri May 5 2000 
Your fellow noders (18)

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Waiting for Everything Snapshot.

More nodes I thought of noding but have yet to ...
The HTML Metanode, Invalid "li" without "ul", No more XP information ...

13:43 EET

My first day on level 4. Now that I have the power to cool whopping 2 nodes a day, I've been wondering what my cooling policy might be. With my bad taste and twisted sense of humor, my choices could make people annoyed. I don't want to be any more annoying than I already am, so better be careful.

Heh, CNN is still calling ILOVEYOU a bug. In my opinion there is a "slight" difference between an accidentally created bug and a virus made with the intent to harm. Or maybe I'm just a nitpicking dumbass?
I survived this one just fine, by not using Microsoft Outlook. No need for virus killers..

Ok, time to put on some Glenn Miller and node out the day, trying to weasel myself out of as much work as possible before the weekend officially begins. I love fridays, they always make me feel really mellow and happy for no particular reason.


19:00 EET

Well, goodbye level 4. Thanks to changes in the voting/experience system, I'll be back in level 3 for a good long while. But it isn't such a big deal. As far as I'm concerned, E2 is not a popularity contest.
And at least I got to use those two cools.
If you ask me, the old system was better. But who would ask me, right?

My day up to this point has been a something like this:

Sleept 10 hours, but was still tired when I finnaly managed to get my ass out of bed.

Had a math exam, not even going to tell about that.

Visited a friend. We talked about stuff while we smoked a couple of cigarettes.

Took the bus home, and had dinner.

Smoked a cigarette while checking my mail and reading a few everything2 nodes.

Wrote/writing this node.

As you can see my day hasn't been too interesting, yet. I am probably going to move my computer over to another friend of mine and play some LAN this weekend. Playing Quake 3 and Total Annihilation in multiplayer is always a nice way of spending the weekend =)

Cinco de Mayo! Boy, i'm excited. For something special at work, they declared cinco de mayo to be Hawaiian Shirt Day! Not only that, but we're getting Chinese food for lunch (the whole company). And... a bagpiper! and free vodka for everyone! and we're all gonna dance the hora.

Well, everything before the ellipsis is true, anyway. Sometimes a melting pot can get pretty gooey. Tonight, i head for the wilds of New York City, to be with my friends.

FOOD:

2 cups coffee with cream
1 small bag of cool-ranch doritos
2 plain veggie burgers

today is 5/5/2000, and prophecies surrounding today don't seem to be coming true. neener neener neener.

i mentioned a few days ago that i beat a guy at arm wrestling (yay me!), but i'm getting a bit annoyed that all the men in the office are calling him a pussy. i said to one of them yesterday "why does this make him less of a man instead of making me more of a man?", to which he replied, "well, it's obvious you're a woman...". oh well.

i read the node cutting your own hair this morning and i was interested to find someone else who cuts their hair when in a funk and frustrated. my hair is now short-short because of this. sometimes i just get a little crazy. i will spend a lot of time crying over the course of a week or so. at some point in time i'll see a pair of scissors. chop-chop. my boyfriend and the hairstylist he and i went to to fix my chop-job made me promise to not do it again. it's never been quite so drastic as the last time i cut it, but... it's not bad. i look cute, but i much prefer long hair. it's easier to style (imho. i have naturally curly hair which dries naturally and looks great. easy easy easy).

i am debating going to practice tonight. i did two classes last night. i may as well, it'll give me something to do while rush-hour traffic is drying down.

OH! hardy har har. there is something inherently wrong about seeing an ex-boyfriend (coincidentally, also juliets ex) on CNN first thing in the morning. i wish i could have at least had my morning cigarette first. yeeeeesh.

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i just got back from smoking a cigarette outside. in the garden there was a little baby bunny rabbit, not much bigger than a hamster. it's quite cute. i wanted to hold it, but it being so young i was worried it's mommy would perhaps reject it with a human smell. it didn't seem afraid at all. awwwwwwwwwwwwwww. i wanna take it home.

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i'm going to paint pictures of me fucking women and get publically funded galleries to hang my GAY art on the walls just to piss DMan off. fuck conformity!

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my best friend from high school is erica. i haven't kept much in contact with her since, our interests separated. but for many many years her family was my family. almost literally. i just found out her brother died on wednesday. in a lot of ways i kinda feel like he was my little brother. we all kinda grew up together. i'm stunned. he was young. not old enough to drink. an all around good kid. good grades, very athletic, good looking, well liked (and for good reason). i'm very sad. i guess the world did end today for some people.

Husband was off yesterday, still he went into work to do some painting the District Manager wanted done. Never missed a days work, well that one time when the two worms beat him up in the back parking lot cause he had shut down the grill and couldn't make them a Big Boy. Worked in restaurants since he was 15. Five years of my illness, two years unable to get disability or insurance has taken all our savings and we've racked up debt we may never get out from under. We're facing 8 years of college with our boys. I'm afraid to check my e-mail because of the ILOVEYOU virus. We couldn't afford to get the computer fixed if we get the virus. Oh well, we have each other and it's only money!!

A rock or something (looked a lot like a bullet) has hit the windshield of the other car.

compman thought I was my son on AOL IM and was monkey dancing, so I Snoopy danced along with him then told him who I was:) I decided to let Number Two Son find out about it at school today.
*grin*
He's gonna kill me when he gets home!

Oh Lord, all my longing is known to you; my sighing is not hidden from you.
- Psalm 38:9 (NRSV)

God is intimately concerned even with the small cares of my life. Unvoiced longings deep within me are as much prayers as the ones I articulate.

Devotion

I wake up, 9am....."what the hell is that? Oh the garbage truck....OH SHIT! THE GARBAGE TRUCK!" I run downstairs and halfway down the block to hand my bag of garbage to the guy collecting the trash. Too awake from my run to goto sleep I decide to go see my mom who works right across town. I get there and I'm told about two computer problems I take a look at the both, one simple and fixed in 2 minutes, the other weird and the machine is off to a repair shop. My mom loans me $40, we smoke a cigarette, and I come home to wait.

Rather than just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring right off I talk to my neighbor whos waxing his car for a few minutes, then goto the corner store. I buy a can of coffee (Maxwell house), a jar of cheap yellow mustard, a quart of whole milk, and a half pound of balogna (an excuse to put cheap mustard on something).

Now back at the apartment I think about noding while waiting for someone (ANYONE) to call me and want to set up an interview.

Oh well at least I have coffee.

So I woke up today at 6:30 to meet a friend for coffee before my 8:00 AM history final and she doesn't show. I didn't even see her in the exam. Uh-oh...well actually she has blown me off several times in a similar fashion, she is quite the rude one in things such as this, but she is a real fair maiden otherwise.

so the exam....well if anyone can tell me about The German Peasant Revolt of 1525, It would have been helpful at around 8:47 this morning....oh well.

since I have been at work and noding all day, I've seen everyone do their "this isn't fair" routine....I really like Dman's drunken The new Everything level system is communist dammit!. Hehe....

I have nothing else to say today....

Zaar. According to the Internet-at-large, this track from Peter Gabriel's Passion is "written around traditional Egyptian rythms to ward off evil spirits". I could use that somma that beat on my soundtrack, too, Mr. Hossam Ramzy. Something in me has been wrestling with something else in me all day. I stepped into the shower this morning, and the inner turmoil (for which, my sloppy gloss is, "voices in my head") started. "This is going to be one of those days", I remember thinking in my most objective self, over the mental din.
Troubled. No more than any other day, I am tortured by my own jealousy and self-doubt. That "something else in me" (see above) insists that this is for my own good, and there's no reasoning with an emotional mechanism. It's true, you can't talk to a psycho like a normal human being, and when the psycho is you talking to you, it's better if you can settle down enough for a nap. When I do manage to silence the not-so-still, not-so-small voice of hungry undead rage, I think things like "Is it 3:00 yet?" "Shut your whiny cakehole, F.-!" and the ever-popular "Get the fuck out of my office." I manage to smile and my face makes the motions of polite small talk; that's perhaps when I most forget myself and really feel calm. There is a popular snippet of AA meditation that says "we live in a world not of our own choosing"; that resonates deeply with me, and I struggle to grok and cherish it 24/7.
Open. Eventually it is lunchtime. I sit in my car on this lovely warm day, for maybe 20 minutes, then head to the deli to buy some lottery tickets. The soup of the day is "Italian Wedding Soup", which I round out with a Diet Coke. This, I consume at my desk, while I read the new Scientific American issue. OK, I am calm then, too.
Before Night Falls. My supervisor has to work a double shift tomorrow, so he heads out to spend the rest of the day with his wife. One of the production machine operators tells me a disturbing story; in unrelated news, we agree that Larry King is a wackadoo. I stop home, but I have a Cinco de Mayo margarita coming to me so I head right out again - to the local Mexican TGIChainRestaurant. Some beer company, possibly Corona, is sponsoring loud, frat-mospheric festivities there, so I try out the Applebee's next door instead. The fresh-faced college girl server talks me into today's special: sizzling steak and deep-fried shrimp. Dessert is apple crisp (mostly buttery sweet "crisp", not much apple) and espresso. I consider a movie, but nothing is playing in the next half hour and I feel too old to pump quarters into the arcade machines for 45 minutes. Besides, Gladiator got a terrible review...
With This Love. After 2 margaritas, I really don't need more alcohol: my emotions have been riding me hard all day, and of course I know alcohol is a depressant. With these facts safely out-of-mind, I pick up a six of Sam Adams Cherry Wheat and set about expending my daily allotment of votes. Eventually something melts me, like a memory of the "Jesus sky" at my grandmothers' funeral - unbidden shafts of light rending dreary clouds.

Goodnight, you Princes of Nodes, you Kings of Everything2.

Sometimes it seems that life's lessons revolve heavily around working diligently towards a goal, yet not acting on the urge to retaliate against those who try to screw up your efforts. This is what my week has been like.

Honestly, I'd like to flatline a few people. Sure, vengeance would hold some satisfaction, but there are prices to pay for many actions. I don't want that kind of karma- it ain't worth it. Besides, why waste time and energy on some petty morons when my resources are better directed towards my goal?

Anyway... my day was not wasted despite the fact that I was unable to accomplish certain tasks. The bills got paid, the shopping got done, my family ate well, I even cleaned the bathroom- and I hate housework!!!

Ahh, but I'm happy to be able to scratch out a few nodes tonight. I tend to get E2 withdrawal symptoms when I go nodeless for too long.

My friend has a book entitled 5/5/2000. According to the book, a large number of horrible [events will happen all over the earth, this day. Basically amounting to the end of human civilization as we know it, or pretty darn close.

As I write this, it is 9:50 PM on 5/5/2000. Nothing has happened so far. I wonder if the author really believed in his book, or if he wrote it just for the money. A way to cash in on the doom-mongers after the Y2K hype didn't pan out. I'm a little disappointed that nothing happened. Don't take that the wrong way.

In other news, I bought my first car today! (With 100% my own money.) It's a 1991 Mercury Capri, a red convertable.. Unfortunately, I still have to get insured and learn how to drive stick before I am mobile. I'll have fun, though.

Woke up jonesing for Everything.

I had no Internet connection all day yesterday, and I was begining to get a little jumpy.

First thing this morning I sat down at the computer desk while the dog galumphed around on his big dirty dog bed, ate a bowl of Grapenuts cereal and caught up on...well...Everything.

Then, of course, I washed dishes, because I wash dirty dishes every day and every day people in my house use them again. It's a cycle, you see. A never-ending cycle.

Work was the same, but different like always.

An electrical fire (Class C for those who know about these sorts of things) in a switchboard made the day a little more lively. Thick white smoke poured out of the space for a few minutes, and and people popped out like prairie dogsThe vaporized wiring will cost us around ten thousand dollars to fix. I love this place.

Someone jumped off the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge today.

Well!

Today has not been a very good day.

First off, Mr. dem bones implemented a writeup minimum to have levels, knocking me down by 2 levels. This wouldn't be so bad in itself. However:

Today I was hit by a car.

Mind you, the car was not going very fast. But I was in a crosswalk, and there's a law up here that says that cars must yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. So I'm crossing, minding my own business, when I hear someone blow their horn, followed by the squeal of brakes.

If the moronic driver had been paying attention, she would have had plenty of time to stop.

Anyway, so what happened was, I turned, saw the car, and attempted to jump and roll over the hood like they do in the movies.

I did, in fact, roll diagonally across the hood of the car. I felt like such a bad-ass. Until I rolled off the hood, hit the ground, and bruised a hip, tore my shorts, and scraped up my legs.

So: I spent an hour or so getting cleaned up and calling the appropriate authorites.

At which point, having had most of my adventures for the day, I headed to Ultimate practice, where I played injured, since Regionals start tomorrow.

Ok, so fast forward past the pasta jam, past the watching of fight club. It is now about midnight. I decide to head to Alpha Chi Alpha to talk to the brothers, play some Pong, and generally make an ass of myself. I succeed brilliantly. And now here I am, drunk, injured, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and noding instead of sleeping.

What the hell am I thinking?

Its cold, rainy and overcast as I come up out of the Flinders Street pedestrian tunnel

I have left my jacket in the office. I turn left and order a regular flat white from the Coffee HQ street vendor.

As I wait I stare disconsolately at the grey sky framed between the buildings and at the dirty pigeons scrabbling in the street.
A tram thunders past, and then the intersection is suddenly full of people as the walk signal begins its furious ticking.

I take my coffee and turn back into the tunnel; heading past the water stained walls and the Do Not Spit signs.
Its dismal here today but somehow comforting. It feels like home.

Hi all... this w/u is heavily downvoted. Feel free to downvote it further, but please let me know why. (Originally it had only one hardlink; perhaps this was also a factor.) Thanks!

It should be noted that, according to one not-very-well-known philosophy that led to the founding of the community of Stelle, Illinois, the world as we know it was to end, due to a poleshift caused by an alignment of the planets, on May 5th, 2000. Fortunately, this didn't work out according to "plan". (Those who were to rebuild Earth's civilization were originally planning to hover above the Earth in well-stocked airships until the dust settled... I shit you not. As the fateful year approached and many other predictions related to Stelle did not come true, as the founder of the philosophy prove to be a bullshitting womanizer, and as there was simply not enough money to spend, the airships idea was never implemented... probably much to the eventual relief of its original supporters.)

Therefore the community of Stelle and many "colonists" in nearby corntowns quietly held "the world has not ended parties." Not a bad reason to throw a party.