Monday morning of another week...and what have you done?

why do we insist on the incessant demarcation of time?
minutes hours days weeks years - they all serve to remind us only that they have passed.

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Time: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 00:20:26 GMT
Everything server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) Debian/GNU mod_ssl/2.4.10 OpenSSL/0.9.4 mod_perl/1.21_03-dev

Number of nodes: 760318 (856 new since November 26, 2000 [717.0 wa7])
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New Nodes: [SACEUR] [E2 nuke request] [E2 nuke request] [Neutron Star] [My apartment is a dance club, a brothel, and a massage parlor.] [Dream Log: November 27, 2000] [David Pogue] [Tyranid] [Potus Noster] [PC Engine] [eucalypt] [Korean War] [Even in His Youth] [Primitive Thought] [If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody's around, does it make a sound?]

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JeffMagnus node count: 4052 (1 new since November 26, 2000)
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JeffMagnus node of the day: The Everything Credibility Problem

this has been arguably the most interesting week of my entire life, and it has in fact been approximately a week since i arrived in boston. i have never had the pleasure of meeting so many people that totally threw me. i'm sure when i finally make it back home i'll have time to detail things, to mention exactly why it is i'm so caught up in all of this.. it would seem as though e2 just reminds me of something less than enticing in the emotional stability department.

people i've met (noders)...

masukomi: amazingly wonderful insanely precious little human. more on this later.

cahla: so nice. she just seemed so cute and amiable and i am very glad we got the chance to meet, though i was mostly sleep sitting the entire time.

drunkenmonkey: and/or jesus. he is so sweet and funny. he walked beside me while masu and her long legs left me behind frequently (though i really didn't mind, honestly).

WickerNipple: he shook my hand and introduced himself as WickerNipple. i found that very.. something. such a personality. hilarious.. interesting walk. ....penis mirror.

perdedor: admittedly we didn't exchange many words but he has a nice smile and seems genuine and very neat. i really wasn't expecting to meet him at all as i did not know that he even lived in the area.

yossarian: "wow". so, so, so nice. so friendly and interesting and intelligent and he took us to the dreamiest places and i absolutely adore him. by far one of the most enrapturing people i've ever come into contact with.

i've met numerous other people, i think that's it for noders though. i've done things i'd not even thought of doing, been on trains, subways, in taxi's, on a plane.. it's all very crazy to me, but for some reason it seems right.

i'll write more later.. when i'm home probably.

i am so in love. (more on this later, too.)

:)

Today was a very disappointing day. I found out that I was put off again for James Baker again in the morning...that makes me frustrated; and, that George W. Bush the living slime mold is most likely going to be El Presidente now that he has 25 electorals under his smirk.

Ah well, farewell to abortion. Cheer or boo as needed. I will do my damnedest to try and capitalize off of all of the newly born stupid children. I wonder exactly how many check cashing services I can open up before they all get their first jobs?

Ahh well, to make matters worse I wrote a shitty attack poem. It isn't that bad, its just I wish I didn't have to write it.

Sunday has turned into a day of recovery - Jason drops me off around 2 AM, I stumble into the computer room and check my stats. Nothing to write home about. Starved, I fix myself a snack and head off towards bed. Then, as I am about to brush my teeth, blackout. And I can barely walk straight. My mother tells me that she is hearing sounds from the back of the house, I need to find the flashlight - the flashlight is in the back of the house. Ass. I stumble my way throgh the dark, suppressing my active imagination and find the flashlight. Returning to my bed, I pass out.

Eleven o' clock sees my face for a few minutes, I resolve to call Claire and we play phone-tag while I do some noding and deal with my massive beer-hangover. Should have stuck to hard liquor. Next time I'll know better. Eventually she comes over, we talk about her and how she is doing... Her father gave her a sheet of questions she needs to ask herself in order to be happy.

Yesterday I found a sheet that my parents made me sign when I was nine; warranting that they do not allow me to play with matches. I hate how they treated me, in their legalistic ways. Grasping the page and a book of matches I descend into the back yard and burn it.

Weekend Log: In the toilet.

Spent the Thanksgiving Holiday at home this weekend, ate dinner with my girlfriends parents, who now, officially, hate my future sister-in-law (girlfriend's brother's girlfriend). After she's pumped out her twins (paternal), she's now seemingly decided that my girlfriend's parents cannot raise children. While I'm not saying they are perfect, they do know a few things.

I love my girlfriend. I am dead broke. If I were a woman, I would go on IRC and tell people to paypal me money. I have to sell some (16) CD's and a DVD of Blade Runner, which I really didn't care for.

I got Virtual PC up on my iBook. Works a tad slow, but it does what I want it to, which is file sharing over the network. No, I don't want to learn how to use DAVE.

I beat the game Rune today. Now I can safely uninstall it before I waste any more of my life playing that game. Unreal was the only game I recall that had an ending that was so far into the game. Even Zelda and Mario 64 seemed like shorter games.

I wondered about phallic and yonic symbols in The Bone People. I added a section to my story, which I think will grow into a novel as soon as I slow down a little. I think the story is getting ahead of itself.

My friend came back from Amsterdam, and I can't believe he did what he did. Ugh. Very unpleasent. (Details omitted to protect the disgusting.)

saturday night was perhaps the most depressing night i've spent in a long, long time. I've come to the conclusion that depression, just like everything else, gradually builds up to an impossibly high climax and then subsides into nothingness. I hope so. I hope saturday night was it. Because, seriously, if it gets worse, i'm going to klepto my father's tylenol 3's and get myself a big bottle of vodka, and curl up in a fetal position on a park bench in some bad neighbourhood so that no nice little old ladies will have to find my cold and lonely corpse.

i don't want to resort to killing myself. that's such a wussy way out. i've still got shit that i want to do, and things to regret not doing..

like saturday. back to saturday. a girl at school invited me to a party and her house. so i went. i got my car and drove halfway there and then took a skytrain and a bus. and then another bus whose stop i couldn't find, so i sat in the rain for a while, and then i walked three or four blocks after missing my stop. and got to her house. and walked to the door. and looked inside. the place was deserted. there were a few hardcore friends watching tv, but overall, the party had turned out lame.

so i left. i didn't even go in. i walked back for an hour to bus number one, and then went into chapters and read short stories about lesbians. and then i went home. alone. in the rain. on the bus. it bugged me. a lot.

if, for no other reason than that i had nothing better to do that night than to go all the way into the city to get scared and not go to a party, with people who're supposed to be friends of mine. i've given up doing things and talking to people and getting involved because i'm too scared and it's easier not to. i saw this thing on tv and social anxiety disorder. i think i might have it, along with various other depressions i've read about. but i'm too scared to so anything, to seek help or to get medicated.

i think that's ironic. (i also think you should know that hyperbole is one of my better friends, and compulsive lying is the other)

back | days | forth

Yah, Yah, another daylog. More scribblings from the depths (?) of my little mind.

I seem to have been volunteered to take over the running of our external webserver. I wouldn't mind, but it's a windows 2000 server with no ssh or any equivalent. All access to the machine is via FTP and therefore any passwords or content will be visible as they are transferred. Of course, it would be a doddle to use ssh or VNC to administer the box, but our stupid IT services department refuses point blank to open any ports other than 80. Which sucks.

A mind forever voyaging

I think I have to be a little harder in my life; People find it too easy to walk over me whenever they want to. If they're giving "advice", or working with me, I always seem to end up either being attacked or putting in a lot more effort into things. Thankfully my fiancee is totally different to this:

It's an affirming and deeply humbling experience to pour your fears out to someone, fearful that you are hurting them, and then to have them love you more, and make you realise just how much and how deeply you love them as well. It's a strange progression of emotions: anxiety, fear, guilt, relief, joy, love. Each one seems necessary to lead to the other, part of some little understood cyclic motion between two souls. It's not as though every time I speak to someone, I go through those stages, but they seem to bring me closer and deeper. Each time I speak to her, I love her more, I feel closer to her in ways that just a few months ago I wouldn't have thought possible.

I'm sorry if that last line seems a little clichéd, but I mean every bit of it.

I need a special advent calendar. One that counts down the days and minutes to 7am on the 23rd of December. I shan't add a daylog to that day just yet; daylogging while I am with her will just take away time when I could be stroking her face or kissing her lips. I know that some of you who read these logs will know the longing, the aching need that occurs when you are away from your beloved. This is a new experience for me, so forgive me if I write about it a little from time to time. Whenever I get my phonebill sent to me, I wonder briefly why I phone katyana so much; after a split second I remember why. I need her voice like I need to breathe, if I didn't call or have some kind of contact, then I would dry up inside or maybe just fall to pieces little by little. Each time I hear her as she answers her phone I am elated, joyful, deliriously happy just to hear her voice.

10:50 GMT

Andy's wife Yoko has given birth to their child 2 weeks early. The new baby girl's name is Hannah (hanna means flower in Japanese, apparently) and she was 7 pounds when she was born at quarter to midnight GMT on Saturday. I am really, really happy for them both; they are such great people to know.

Yay for babies!


More later, dudes...

How my weekend was? Well, I'll tell later.

12:32

So I'm back. Stressed. I just had to stay home today, because otherwise I would have had a Severe Problem With Stress.

So, um, here I am again, back as back can be.

More to be told later, I now need to see what's up in the Usenet.

I'd need a weekend to rest after a weekend... =)

14:43

OK, here I'm downloading new version of gnapster...

Anyway, the weekend stuff: I was in Kuhmo. The cellphone will be sent to be fixed (I hope). I upgraded my mother's computer to have Debian 2.2 (instead of 2.1).

Pluses:

Making GUI-Addicted Users To Cooperate.

My sister had got the new Zelda game, I downloaded her a related WindowMaker desktop theme from themes.org - and LinuxFox theme for myself... =)

17:07

All this death and sorrow makes me unhappy.

It's a feeling that's really hard to describe - mostly because I should first tell who is dying and where's the sorrow.

Death walks among us. Millions of throats cry in agony tonight.

The world is not a nice place to be.

But should I care? Shouldn't I just try - doing my own part - to make this world a better place?

Start today. (I'd better keep doing that, because it's not a good day to be depressed. =)

20:06

Watched TV. Before that, did some Perl hacking... looks like this script has conquered me. It seems that it has become too complicated for me or anyone else to comprehend. It's just... too hard.

20:18

<DotComCynicism>

Yessssss. Satama Interactive has fired the US manager and sunk hard in the stock market. Death to the makers of crappy web pages! =)

</DotComCynicism>

21:42

Mozzilla Beekmörx Werk Aftöral. Aiyayhayhayyyyyyep!

Sorry, I'm just boundlessly... confused. Damn! I wish more stuff would actually work the way I want it to work. For example, GIMP tablet stuff is still broken (reportedly fixed in next rel, though).


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: mtools wmppp

Updated:

Today I got spectacles.

It has been a very strange day, wearing these spectacles. I have had dual contention of those around me pointing out to me that I had spectacles, combined with this weird very weird undwerwater druggy thing that they're doing to my eyes. I keep picturing myself as Cartman in his new spectacles. Typically, I've comported myself through this Sydney working day behaving eerily like Cartman in spectacles.

13:07

The weekend went by quickly as I acquired a serious addiction to Metropolis Street Racer. I would never have guessed I could spend 7 hours in a row playing a "typical" console driving game. My left thumb is still sore from wagglng the analog stick on the Dreamcast controller so extensively for a few days.

On saturday I discovered something interesting. It is incredibly uplifting to get a message from a friend, telling he/she doesn't have anything particular in mind and just wanted to say hello. Somehow that makes me feel that person is really a friend instead of somebody being a pal to you to get something out of it.
I've known many people who are all friendly with me just to get something out of it, and failing miserably to hide it. Like the guy that called me up a few months ago. I hadn't seen or heard from this dude in 1.5 years, and suddenly he's phoning me up out of the blue trying to make chitchat. Sigh. After a while of pointless chatter I asked him straight why he had called. Surprisingly, he wanted to borrow a bunch of CDs.
I don't mind if you only contact me when you have something to gain, but don't bother pretending you're my good pal just to borrow some damn records! What is this, kinderkarten? Sheesh.
But I was indeed very glad to receive such a "pointless" message from one of my real friends. Sometimes having nothing to say but saying it anyway can be such a great gesture.

Work side is looking much better today. I told my boss the progress of this project is slow because the inspiration shortage I whined about in my day logs last week. Maybe because of his own history with graphics design, he understood this and told me the deadline can be extended if necessary.
Maybe I should give this guy more credit. He seems to indeed have some common sense left after all. But I'm still going to give 110% to get this thing finished by new year's eve.
* the sound of cracking knuckles *


19:59

While visiting the mall on my way home I witnessed a strange sight. An approximately 13-year-old boy was walking along with a bald head, wearing a black bomber jacket with the Finnish flag on its sleeve along with other usual nazi gear. These kind of assholes aren't a rare sighting in our country, unfortunately. But this particular white power puppet was walking along with an older guy - probably his father - who looked exactly like a beatnik. Watching this dynamic duo walking buy was simultaneously amusing, puzzling and downright scary.

I also spotted a girl I was in the same class with shopping with her baby. This kind of thing always makes me feel old.

looking for a mother's ring to buy my mom for christmas. i wish i could afford to buy her something spectacular, but i can't, so i will buy ye olde generic mother's ring. i will not get simulated stones, though. so right now i'm doing the final choosing -- they're all 14 carat yellow gold (her preference), with 3 stones: opal (for me), amethyst (for jenn), and ruby (for mom). unfortunately, most of the three stone options are kinda ugly, so i may just wind up getting two stones, one for me one for jenn. also, combining clear red and purple stones with an opaque pinkish-white stone may look odd, whereas pinkish-white with purple may be better. but we'll see. I could go with pink tourmaline (which, according to the prices for the rings is more expensive) instead of opal for my october birth stone -- but i've always considered opal to be my birth stone and the pink tourmaline to be a fake.

even though the man left for california yesterday, i'm in a decent mood. i had dinner with his sister last night, and his nephew drew me a picture which is now on my fridge. it's odd sitting down for dinner with a family -- a family that actually cooks from scratch, talks during dinner, and actually like each other.

the whole 2000 election is dumb. dumb dumb dumb. ra ra retarded! and that's all i have to say about that.
more later...

News

robert downey jr. was busted again. this time at merv griffin's resort hotel & givenchy spa in palm springs, california. pretty humourous. they found cocaine andmethamphetamine. i think he must really like jail.

last night the florida election was certified, showing george w. bush as the winner in that state's election after a process of manual ballot recounts in several counties. al gore had insisted upon recounts, and now challenges those recounts. silly.

superquick world news update:

all over the place, people are killing each other in the name of unproven gods and the latest sneaker fashions. while 40% of the planet saw at least some part of the last victoria's secret fashion show, thousands of other people died of hunger. unknown diseases are spreading and known diseases are mutating. politicians, all over the place, are being assholes at an alarming rate. fat populations don't care about anything they don't see on their teevee set. and so the world keeps spinning.
My birthday :)

The last few years, birthday greetings have become more and more e-greetings, in my experience. Fewer people bother to write a card or even make a call, and instead they send an email or a link to some card or flash animation. On the brighter side, I like not having to cope with throwing away or saving old birtday cards. Plus, I rarely get around sending cards either... But it does not feel entirely right, does it ?

With this writeup, I thee wed to be on the next level, after Acolyte. What is the next level?

I don't know, but it's 9:52 am EST and my brain hasn't even started delivering neurons to the network yet. It's such a blah day i don't even have enough energy to get upset over some stupid driver today cutting me off on the off-ramp.

I spent last night driving from Ottawa to Toronto, after visiting my Love. I left around 7:30pm. Unfortunately, somewhere 100km outside of Toronto, someone decided that they should block the entire highway and fix something on the road. I was supposed to be home by 11:30pm last night, but instead, I experienced a full stop, had shut my car down and everything for a full ten minutes because there was too much traffic on the detour. What a way to end the weekend. I was so tired after finally arriving home at 1:00am, that when I came home, I just head up to my room and crashed. And this morning, waking up from the sleep wasn't so refreshing either.

7:30am
Why would anyone want a car to win, especially a used one? That's what they did on CFNY 102.1, people on the phone telling their sob stories and begging for the car. Don't people realize cars are so troublesome and they drain so much energy? The upkeep, the insurance, the lease cost or the purchase cost. I'm really considering just buying the most high-end bicycle I can get my hands on and just ride that everywhere, even though riding to work would mean going through 40km of traffic!

I am just so tired, I'm already planning to get home early.

Welp, another level up, but not for today which sucks. I hate delays.

I hate traffic. I hate having to drive so much and for so long. I hate looking half-asleep and glazed when I come to work and allowing others to make fun of me. I hate the commute. I hate this job sometimes.

Today is a good day to die.

Nah..maybe next life.

The usual serotonin rollercoaster of a day.

Mel had to work early, and set the alarm earlier still, presumably to give herself waking-up-and-lying-in-bed time. I used to do that when I had morning deadlines. It makes you feel like you're being lazy and procrastinating even though you still end up vertical long before you should be conscious, let alone non-horizontal. (What is it about putting overly detailed maths shit into a sentence that appeals to me so much? It's just an ego thing. To quote Ben Stiller from Reality Bites, sometimes I try far too hard to inhabit clever-clever-land.) I half woke up along with Mel, and cuddled into her warmth without speaking; before long, the whole scene shimmered and mixed back into my dozing dreams, so that when she started lightly caressing my bare back it was gorgeous. She does that a lot in the mornings when I'm half-sleeping, and the sensations are always so heightened... imagine what something more ambitious might feel like. (Baby, I know you're probably reading this, and no, that is not a hint. Although, if you can't think of anything to get me for Christmas...)

Woke up again around eleven. Went to work. For "work", read "E2". (Not really--logged a hardware call with Compaq, set up a w2k (ewww) PC on my desk, did my times... see, nothing that happens there is ever worth writing about, at least not the actual work.) Dave told me the Christmas party is Saturday week. Ben can't come, at least not to most of it. Hope Russell can come, but he probably won't given past years' performance. Looking forward to seeing pmg and his boyfriend again. (None of this means anything to anyone but me. Are daylogs really a valid form of Everything content, or are they just grudgingly allowed as a sanctioned form of GTKYN?)

The boss is going to talk to fozzy and I about our late arrival times next week. I don't know what to do about that. The obvious thing is to turn up early for a while, which will make him look a bit silly on the day of our "meeting" because his complaints will have already been somewhat anulled. Another alternative is to be a Rebel Without A Cause and start turning up later still--I won't let the Man boss me around, man--but then again, Rebel Without A Job doesn't sound quite so glamorous. (As if he'd fire me though. There's a kilo of paperwork you have to do before you can even think about firing someone in a big corporation. The only thing stopping me behaving even worse is fear of social isolation in the office, not fear of dismissal.)

As soon as I thought it was safe (it was close enough to eight hours since I'd arrived at work that anyone who cared wouldn't notice the earlymark), I scootered home. Wanted to write a node or two, but it was in danger of getting dark and potholes are deadly when you can't see them. I'm getting good on the scooter, at least until I skin another knee. Finally got around to petting the lazy friendly dog I see every day on the way home, somewhere around Tighes Hill. He took it well, lifted his head, made eye contact, the usual nonviolent canine stuff. Couldn't be bothered standing or wagging his tail, though; I don't blame him.

Got home, drank two beers, played with the rabbit, played darts, pissed my girlfriend off. Like I said to fozzy the other day (I think), we're like two random number generators; as long as at least one is high, things are OK, but if we both plunge beneath zero (the real number line represents our moods, see?) at roughly the same time, a clash is bound to occur. I'd left my antidepressant a bit late in the day, I think my serotonin was probably dropping by now. I realised later that I probably was being a shit for no good reason; but in the car on the way to buy dinner at The Junction I took everything to heart, and sulked, which of course angered Mel more, which angered me more... it's like the squealing feedback loop you get when a speaker is too close to the microphone providing its signal.

As soon as we parked I said, "I'll see you tomorrow", and stormed off into the dark with no firm plan beyond that initial abandonment. Of course she let me go--we both know she'd never stop me in any such situation, because that's what half of me wants--so I kept walking like an idiot, all the while planning on heavy drinking, or sleeping in public, or dying, or sleeping in Shaun's stairwell... I wondered whether I could go home at midnight, thus saving face by technically fulfilling my "See you tomorrow" promise, but as soon as I thought about tomorrow--the inevitable embarrassment and awkwardness and stubborn refusal to be the first to make amends--I realised what a dick I was being and how badly I just wanted to apologise and hug her, so I turned and sprinted back to where I'd come from. On some meta-level, as I ran and strained and puffed towards my girl, my brain informed me These are the moments of your life that you remember. Fuck you, you cold, analytic experience-gatherer, I'd still rather this wasn't happening.

She wasn't there. She was gone. In that moment, I felt as alone in the universe as I ever have. I sat on a bench and did nothing for probably twenty minutes, it didn't feel much longer than a year. Every car, every person that passed was scanned for signs of her. I wanted to cry, die. In those minutes I got a taste of what being alone in the world again would feel like, and it tastes like shit. It tastes like nothing, there is nothing but emptiness. Future self: remember this moment. Don't ever think you're not lucky.

Eventually I went to the supermarket, walking slower than I think I ever have, on the verge of dissolving with every step. She rang just as I walked into the shop. I could barely talk. She called me "cranky-bum". We agreed that she should come and pick me up. I held back tears not because of the public setting, but because it would feel far better to cry into her neck when she got there. I bought her flowers and me cheap pasta and left. A sexy girl was standing in the street when I got outside, and I stared a little too long; only when I got to the car did I realise it had been Melanie. (Of course, the fact that I'd looked at a "stranger" in that way angered her later; but I think she should be happy that the subconscious, primal part of my brain likes her just as much as the rest of me does.) We made up; hugs, sorries, tears, iloveyou's. Then, an uneventful but snuggly night: TV, Quake3, E2... and now, bed.

Good night.

It was my mother's birthday yesterday. When I called she calmly announces that she's going in for cataract surgery on Thursday. Nice of her to tell me wasn't it? So today I've been reading up on cataracts and on the surgical procedure. The thing that shocked me was it doesn't use lasers. Ah well, something else to worry about I guess.

Its weird, it brings home the fact of age. Both my parents are retired now, well dad is supposed to be, but he still helps my brother-in-law out fitting windows, much to my mother's disgust. Ah well, at 30 I'm half way there, except my myopia is a lot worse than my mothers. Now there's something to worry about as well.

Well, it's been a while. Finally midterms are done, the last was the worst, but I think I can still pass. I did pretty well on the assignments and quizzes and so forth in that class, so I should be ok. This is one of great flaws, part of a general lack of organization; the inability to keep track of my grades. So I don't really know. I'll have to be more anal about it next semester. It would be a good thing.

So after that midterm, I went home and scanned some pictures of my niece for my sister. She wants me to put them on a website so friends and family, such as those in Jakarta, can see them. I had been kicking around ideas in my head for a database backended site to do this, so I spent Thursday afternoon slapping the basics together. I used PostgreSQL for the database and PHP4.

I've now got it so you can upload pictures and add comments, but I need to add some stuff so editors can edit and delete comments and users and so on. It also needs some more structure, such as arranging pictures into photo albums. Some may wonder, myself included, why I would spend time writing such a thing when I have finals fast approaching. Especially considering there are several packages for doing web based photo albums out there already. It comes down to curiosity I guess; I just wanted to do it myself to see what I could come up with for tables and code. The database structure needs work, there's no referential integrity, so I'd like to implement that and timestamps and so on with triggers. As for the code, PHP is versatile enough to get the job done. I think my source file is approaching 1000 lines. It's time to break it up into more granular pieces. There's even room for an OO methodology, which sort of surprised me, because I've I seen web apps as being basically stateless, so in that case OO doesn't really make sense because you're just calling methods in objects and not really operating on data. Or so I though; I mean, sure, it's stateless between page loads, but OO still works when you're processing the page. Of course there are ways to save state, but you can have problems when you have more than one server.

So anyway, I've become sort of obsessed with getting this website done to my satisfaction, and it's not even a paying job! I could be writing VB code for cold hard cash, but nope, playing with PHP instead. This is my anti Windows sentiment coming into play a bit. Windows has its place, but I don't like having to use it. So I'm considering quitting my current job and finding a job doing Java serverlet development or something. Anything not on Windows. I haven't got a lot of Java experience beyond my University courses, no beans experience, no serverlet experience, but I've got proven experience with MTS and COM and PHP and various databases. I can learn! Anybody need a web developer in Calgary?

With finals fast approaching, I need to get studying again. So I have to cut out the PHP tinkering. Argh. But soon finals will be over, and then it will be Christmas, and I can tinker and make enough money to buy Christmas presents and pay the January rent. I'll only have three courses next semester, I think, so I can work. That will be good. I really need to work on my organization skills...

We haven't been to Akido in about four weeks. Three at least. Last time I went, I was really tired and stressed from studying for midterms and doing assignments. I was getting even more stressed out because the instructor is a bit impatient, and I was sort of distracted and tired, and I was thinking that my chosen recreation should be relaxing and fun, not more stressful. So I had to spar with Sensi, and was in lala land and got poked in the eye. My fault, I was supposed to be paying attention, but I was a complete wreak after that. I had to go compose myself. It was very embarrassing. Normally, if I'm not tired, it is fun, and not more stressful. I decided not to go if I'm tired and stressed, so I haven't been for some time. I wonder if the instructor thinks that jab to the eye was very discouraging?

Well, the control systems lecture begins in fifteen minutes. I guess I should go get some lunch.

The question I face today is, how many hangovers can one man have in a four day weekend?

I don't know... I think 4 or 5. To be honest the whole weekend was a little fuzzy.

Bought the new Final Fantasy IX ( 9 ) this weekend, and I have to say that if there is an RPG that can beat Final Fantasy VII ( 7 ) then this is it.
I'm only three hours into it, and it has already got so many different plot line possibilities that it may even start getting hard to follow all of them. Nonetheless the game is good. I have enjoyed it, and alomst wish I didn't have to go to class tonight, so that I could continue to play it.

Wrap-up from the long Thanksgiving weekend:

  • Had two other couples over for Thanksgiving. At the last minute got a call from a friend: her husband wanted to bring a friend who was alone that day. He called my friend's husband Thanksgiving morning to ask, "Hey, what are you doing today?" I said a flat no and was pissed at being put in the position. "The poor guy's all alone today!" Yes, but he counted on that: on no one being able to say no at the last minute.

  • We are moving next weekend, so spent most of the weekend packing. Ugh.

  • Because the house we're living in is being sold, the well has to be tested. The real estate agent said, "They'll put some chlorine in the water - you can still shower, but don't drink it." So yesterday (Sunday), in the morning someone is knocking on the door. It was the man-who-tests-the-water. He was about to cut our water supply when something told him to ask us if we were okay with that.

    He said that he was going to put a lot of chlorine: "You can't shower in that; it would burn your eyes and turn your hair green. And it's really dangerous for your daughter." referring to my three-year-old. He was quite nice; said he'd come back tomorrow so we could do laundry and bathe and other niceties and be ready for a day without water. The SO had a nice talk with the real estate agent, who protested her ignorance.

  • Little Georgie Bush preserved his fragile victory; doesn't know how to tie his own shoes, but he'll be our next president. Dick Cheney has a heart attack trying to explain the concept of counting to our fearless leader.

  • Read Wired article about the engineers from The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. I have a friend (the poet/stockbroker) who loves the book - I will have to ask him why. When I read it, I was quite disappointed to find that Tracy was not a woman. After I read it, my only reaction was, I guess I'm not the only one who's had shitty jobs.
  • Yesterday I got back from nearly a week in Miami. I argued politics at the Thanksgiving table -- and believe it or not, I looked moderate next to my cousin, who will probably be President some day if he doesn't make good on his plans to earn Dutch citizenship. (And if he does, he'll probably end up as the head of Europe in its contemporary incarnation.)

    I went to an acoustic music festival on Buy Nothing Day and met liha there. Oh my... she's doing a thesis that's not even required (and it sounds really interesting), she enjoyed Differential Equations (a course that kicked my intellectual ass), and her laugh is musical. She lives around 200-300 miles from me, but no situation is perfect. (And that's not much of a drive for me anyway; I used to drive to Jacksonville, and before that I drove out to the middle of the Panhandle.) liha, let's get together soon. Your city or mine?

    </confessional>
    ...The music festival was good too.

    I've begun working on a few geek projects for my father's landscape nursery. I've already registered PlantscapesMiami.(com|net|org) with GANDI, and hooked .com up to Pair Networks. Soon I'll have the content up and the other domains pointing at it. He also wants a wireless LAN so that he can go out into the fields with a client and use a laptop to send an invoice to the printer in the main office. I suspect a ruggedized laptop and a 5-acre wireless LAN will be somewhere around $8k-10k, so there's no telling if he'll go for it, but I'm glad to give him a ballpark excluding labor (which I'd gladly provide for the chance to play with wireless hardware).

    "But that's not what I came to talk about." I came to tell you about today.

    Today I caught up on over 700 email messages, wrote eight lines that were half higgledy-piggledy and half Beowulf (about the election, mind you), introduced a friend of mine to E2, ordered gifts for friends and colleagues, and finally got back to doing a bit of exercise instead of rushing into rush hour. I walked briskly around the office park for 35 minutes, the last five of which were a bit slower because I'd rashly decided that these sneakers, and my feet, were up to it. I've *got* broken-in sneakers, I just haven't been keeping them at the office. Oh well -- it felt great to hike out to the microwave dish and back, out to the construction site, up to the community college, and back to the office for a spot of noding.

    And I've got anime DVDs waiting at home for me. What a great day!

    That's it! My cat, Pan, is singlehandedly killing off the squirrel population in my neighborhood! Yesterday, he brought home the third one! And they're huge bastards too. Easily one third of his size.

    The first time he did it, I was getting ready two Thursdays ago to make a flight out, when he rushes in the front door, growling at Hank, my brother's dog. I didn't see what he was so upset about until I crouched to look under the wicker chair in the livingroom. He stopped growling and dropped the huge rodent out of his mouth. Purring, as if to say, "Here, Mommy. Brought you sumthin'." I had to hurry to dispose of the thing.

    Three nights ago, I walked up to my front door, and he hopped up with another of the buggers in his mouth, dragging it. I said, "You know I'm not gonna let you into the house with that thing." He jumped off the porch, deposited the thing in the bushes, and skidded through the front door.

    When I came home last night, my brother said he had heard a rucus in my bedroom during the day. He investigated, and it turned out to be Pan with yet another squirrel, a fresh one, with the head bitten clean off. He was bouncin' off the walls, so pleased with himself. It's like a coming of age thing with him. Ahh....boys will be boys, even if they are also cats. I guess I should be proud? Other than that, I guess no news is good news. Another day in the grind.

    I started today at 6 am sobbing. I ended it laughing.

    I was Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. I was Holden Caulfield. I didn't show up for the group presentation. Mike used his size and his specialized knowledge to intimidate me and it almost worked. It is just a little group presentation, but he tried to make me feel so small by berating me in front of everyone. Fortunately for me, I am a kind of mark kamikaze. How will 5% of a final mark in one course effect my entire GPA? Not much. Mike cares desperately about marks and he needed me. Fuck him for being like that. I am not lazy. I am actively rebelling.

    Although I am fine now, I wanted to split myself in half all morning. I went to the hardware store and did some retail therapy. I got some christmas lights, and lined two of my walls with them. It felt great hammering away, imagining each nail was a body part of Mike or D. Another good thing happened today. I got to tell the Professor that hurt Ben that I thought University was almost a complete waste of time. He had no counter-argument. When he changed the subject, it came out interesting. He saw that I was reading a Tom Robbins book and started talking about Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. It was a little awkward. Both of the professors had to tear themselves away from talking to me! I kept saying 'I gotta go, I gotta go' but they always had something else to say!

    D is still not speaking to me. What am I supposed to say? I would do anything to break the tension, but me saying something won't be effective. When he's ready, he'll bring it up or continue on like nothing ever happened. Either one is fine at this point. The damage has already been done.

    Today all came together, like it was a script from a movie. The message was persistance. Not persisting in something that you don't care about (the Mike presentation thing) but persisting in your beliefs.

    04:46 GMT

    The alarm clock went off at 9am this morning. I hit snooze a couple of times, and then finally drug myself out of bed. I got up early to go over to FAU and submit my forms for a non-degree seeking application to the college. I thought I had everything, but apparently my immunization records must be approved by a doctor. So it's not over yet. I need to make sure that my doctor's appointmnet precedes the deadline for submitting my application.

    I headed into work an hour early only to find out that we have a brand new rush project. Convert a directory structure containing over 2 million files from a single hierarchy to a dual hierarchy of a completely different format. 1 million of those 2 million files will be split into two parts, so that will create another million files to deal with. All directory paths have to be shortened to under 60 characters, and half of the files will need a conversion to add new data. Oh, and this needs to be done by Wednesday. Not only that, but one of our demonstration systems (which just happens to be in Japanese) suddenly needs to be compatible with Netscape, but that doesn't need to be done until Friday. And our HTML development person doesn't know how to do javascript (which is the primary reason we need to make a copy for netscape). That leaves it to me. Bah. Why do I care so much?

    So it was a pretty hectic day, but at least the time passed quickly. That's one good thing about having a busy day.

    I came home, changed clothes, and then went to the Gym. I spent over an hour there and got pretty exhausted. For the first time in years though, I actually felt that second wave of energy that people always talk about (and I seem to vaugely remember having when I was younger and in better shape). I was doing some aerobics and I was getting pretty damn exhausted, so I took a short 30 second break and did some deep breathing to catch up on my oxygen. When I started back into it, I was going faster than ever, and kept going for more than twice as long than I was counting on going before I would quit. It felt great.

    I treated myself to a good dinner for my hard work, and then hopped on the net. I repsponded to two more personal ad replies that I got. Strange that I haven't gotten a second email back from anyone yet. Maybe I scare them off when I write them :) BOO! If this keeps up, I'm just going to make a standard reply message and send the same thing back every time...

    I saw over at memepool.com there's a "Am I GEEK or NOT" site now, so I *HAD* to submit a picture. So far I'm averaging around 7.0! WOO HOO! As long as I was at it, I submitted a really stupid picture to Am I HOT or NOT and a really demented-looking picture to Am I GOTH or NOT just to see what would happen. Then I sent all of the links to my co-workers. It should be fun to see how those turn out :)

    I started the day feeling pretty depressed, partly because my co-workers (especially TC) seemed kind of down today. But after my workout, I'm feelin' pretty damn good! Maybe I should start my day at the gym so I feel good the rest of the day. Ahh.. I think I'll go check on my scores now.


    06:10 GMT

    I'm probably too wound up to go to sleep, but I have to get up early again, so I'm gonna go try! Until tomorrow...

    Bah.. this is one of my only negative daylogs.. why?

    day.

    so, last night, was with the smooching partner (who's rapidly evolving into *gasp* a mild girlfriend, although it's not at that point yet, really) till nearing 5am. unfortunatley, my car was just about to get towed, or else would have slept over. baaah humbug. it would have been better for me, although i would have missed a dosage of the migraine medicine.

    observations on the state of affairs on e2:

    • does EDC seem to be running out of money? we're being hit up to buy t-shirts, posters, stickers now, and the banner ads are for themselves?
    • george w. bush is going to be the president. yeah. fuck the electoral college system (*GASP*, a republican is saying this!), but it's over. quit being sore losers, and unite behind who won.

    i'm experiencing mild technical difficulties with a recursive function in the latest coding project. FUCK IT. yeah, it's at that level of annoyance.

    three signs that i've grown as a person in the past year:

    • i pray every night, sincerely.
    • on my personal webpage, i posted a list of the people who have had the most influence in my life, in hopes that they stumble across it someday.
    • i did not feel insanely jealous when the girl called to tell me that she was hanging out with her other friends tonight.

    i think that i'm making progress.

    I can't remember the last time I cried so hard. I got yelled at for an hour today by the person I adore, about things that were none of his concern. Damn him, why does he have such an effect on me? My poor heart can't take anymore of this....

    His primary argument was that I need to stop ditching school ( I leave a little early for lunch occasionally, that's all) and that I need to stop being late to class ( I was a couple minutes late to calculus because I needed to make copies of my extra credit assignment so all my friends could leech off of my intelligence). He would not listen to this reasoning at all, didn't hear a damn word I said. He told me that I am too smart, he didnt't want to see me throw my life away. I have no intention of doing do. Like he gives a shit anymore anyway.

    I made the mistake of telling him how I feel about him for the millionth time. He said he didn't like talking to me anymore because we couldn't have a normal conversation without me pouring out my soul and crying incessantly. Sorry I have feelings, I told him, it must suck to be a hypocritical cold amoral prick.

    After getting off the phone with him, I fell on the floor and was purely miserable. I didn't do a thing to him, I've only cared for him, and he treats me like shit. Well that's fine, we'll see how the gods decide to deal with this mistreatment of a godess....

    Oh, gees, he just called me to ask for my forgiveness. He knows he has it.

    Woke up to a pretty stupid dream that I remember only bits and pieces of. I showered and checked an email address where I found out something that my ex had said about me. She had called me an ass and a jerk and said that she wished she had never gone out with me. I wrote her back saying that that was unfair to me, that I did not regret the two of us being us. I went to school where I almost fell asleep in Spanish class. I didn't even have to go, I could have lost 5 points on my attendance grade than talk about what I do on Friday in Spanish.

    Afterwards I headed down the elevator where I spilled into laughter for no reason. Have you ever tried not to laugh in a crowded elevator? I walked to the library and went up to the third floor to talk to my friends Kathy and Cindy. We discussed many things from exes to Kathy's labor. I asked them if it was weird to be aroused about the labor part and they laughed and changed the subject. They discussed moving into an apartment together and asked if I would also. Cindy said, "A three-way would be much easier." I then was forced to say, "Maybe for you two but I'm the one doing all the work!" I skipped my Music Appreciation class to talk to them. I got a present from Kathy which was a necklace that she bought for herself as well. Went to Astronomy class.

    Astronomy class was the same as it always was, my english friend Matt joking around in his english accent. The professor was giving a slide show and I laughed at something he said. He put on a picture slide of a small planet and said, "Here's a slide picture of Uranus." It made me laugh so much that I was stomping on the ground, lightly of course.

    I got online and uploaded some of my songs. I talked to some people on AIM. My cousin called me and invited me to a movie. I told him I didn't have any money and he said he'd pay for me so I went. I drove to the movies and got in my cousins car and we went to Great China to eat. The waitress started to flirt with me but I didn't flirt back.

    We went to the movie "Unbreakable." We got into the theater and no one was there so I kicked my shoes all the way to the front row (I don't tie my shoelaces). I put them back on and kicked one towards my cousin and almost hit him so he got mad and threw it again towards the front. I put them on yet again and climbed on the armrests and walked on the armrest of each row back to where my cousin was sitting. Once I got there he dared me to throw half a pickle at the movie screen so I did and I hit it. My cousin got all jealous so he threw the other half and hit Cuba Gooding Jr. right on the face. We laughed and laughed for a little while as people came in. That didn't stop us so we were sliding ice under the seats all the way to the front. Then the movie started and it was alright, I didn't like it too much.

    I drove 40 on the expressway completely oblivious to the people honking at me. For some reason I just didn't care that people were getting mad at me, which I usually do care about.

    I came home and was worried about whether or not a test was due tomorrow so I called a friend of mine. She has a mother who will pick up as well when it rings and keep on talking until the person that called talks, so I stayed quiet. It was hilarious because her mother was telling her all these things waiting for me to talk but I didn't in spite of her talking for about 2 minutes. And as I type this I am still talking to her.

    November 27, 2000 was my 40th birthday. I am reminded of a story regarding Strawberry Cheesecake that went something like this:

    I took a lady I knew out for a date on my birthday approximately two years ago. I think it was two years ago because we went to see the relatively inferior animated version (ripoff) of The Ten Commandments titled Prince of Egypt.

    After the first movie - I forget the name - we went to an Italian restaurant and I had a plate of spaghetti. Seeing the size of the plate as being what I thought was rather small, I then also ordered a plate of alfredo which is noodles in a cheese sauce.

    I ate most of it and was feeling full but it was so tasty I ate all of the alfredo after having eaten the spaghetti. Big mistake.

    Throughout all of Prince of Egypt, I spent my time holding my stomach and suffering unbelievably agonizing indigestion.

    I took my date home and then I went home, feeling about as stuffed as a Christmas turkey. When I got there, they had gotten me the one thing I wanted for my birthday: a strawberry cheesecake. I was so stuffed I couldn't even think about it, let alone eat any. I had to wait until the next day before I could have any, I was so sad.

    I learned a valuable lesson about stopping when you're full. I do, now.

    This was the day of Canadian federal election. I voted for nobody. I could have made a case for any of them, so I did the lazy man's equivilent: I made a case for none of them.
    As for university I'm doing little more than going to class. I cannot take four more years of this. I am certain I am not getting what i need. I am certain there was a time when life was not like this.
    I havn't talked to Melissa, Alexis won't return my calls, Donya is starting to bore me, and I haven't even heard from Jillion. I am certain there was a time when life was not like this.
    Adam finally got it and I finally smoked it. But my first high still illudes me. I don't know what they were on, but I wish I had a sniff of that. I am certain there was a time when life was not like this.
    I see me now, and at the end of the road, but I don't see how I get there. Unless this is the end. I am certain there was a time when life was not like this.
    Not getting high was my entire life condensed into 2 hours.

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