The Weekend:

I got out of class a whole three minutes early on Friday afternoon. I went to Schmoo’s dad’s house to pick him up as was planned. I pull in the driveway to see him talking with his step sister while she smoked a cigarette next to her green Volkswagon. I received a dirty look, a sneer, and a glare before she got into her car and left. I’ll never understand why she hates me so much. Schmoo said she was in a bad mood. He was supposed to have been finished with raking the leaves so we could get going to Ann Arbor to see Aaron and Nick, but he had only barely started. So I had no choice but to help him finish. It wasn’t so bad. I can think of worse things to do than rake leaves and talk shit with the Schmoo. We turned up the Prodigy and rocked out in his yard for an hour while stuffing leaves into trash bags.

We finally got on our way around three o’clock. The drive was long, and we missed out exit to get onto business 23. We watched it go right past too. We were discussing that this was probably the exit we should take, seeing as how it had all sorts of bright green signs saying “ANN ARBOR” and “BUSINESS 23,” but we somehow managed to convince ourselves to keep driving. This happens every time, I swear.

Ended up arriving later than expected. I moped around while Nick and Schmoo talked Ultima Online for four and a half hours straight. I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of discussing some sort of boot camp for gruntees. Somehow I know I’ll never understand, and yet it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Woke up to the sound of posters falling. I found some poster putty and slapped them all back up on the wall. They stayed put for about seven minutes. Nick and I had a hockey stick fight, which ended with me being bruised (as always).

Later that night, after purchasing a fifth of JD and some Captain, the four of us sat around for a couple hours. I had about half the whiskey mixed with three cans of Faygo Red Pop. The three more liberal participating members of the party went out on the porch and had some cigars and various other smokeable substances. Aaron and I had to calm Schmoo down after a raging cough attack. That stuff was nasty.

A little while later, everyone went to bed. I woke up and puked. In a pan. It was not pretty.

Slept for most of the day Saturday, and then cooked some pasta for breakfast/dinner. Went with Aaron to set up for the gig his band had. They played really well. I was the designated picture taker, so I had to nicely push seven-foot-tall death metal fans out of the way so I could see Jauoquin in his pokemon suit screaming in Spanish. Good times.

On the way home, all of us were deaf. But we did hear someone run up behind up and scream “SCHMOOO!” It was Steve and his girl Tracey, as well as Chris, Mike, Danny, and several other old friends. We hung out at the apartment and watched Braveheart. Steve was dressed as Zorro, and speant most of the night threatening to show everyone the ‘long arm of the law,’ as he put it.

Sunday morning passed by quickly. Went to Fazoli’s for breakfast/lunch. Played a couple quick games of Rush2 before saying goodbye and heading home for the weekend. Drove home at speeds reaching 100mph (about 145km/hour, I believe), and made it back in record time. Schmoo slept the whole way, so I only had Jonathan Davis to keep me company.

I miss Aaron already. And Nick too.

i've never been afraid of text, unless it was my own, unless it fell from this head. i have never been worried that the words might be too potent or too drawn from random thought. i didn't know that you may have blinked once, and thought of me or, have you ever seen something and had it reflect the way you thought of me at any given point? not that we are close, i hardly know you.. i don't even know who you are, or if these thoughts are for you.. i'm placing them here, just because.

some of the things i scrawl here could easily find their way into a node of their own. but they will not. some of the thought that i spill here is specifically for one person, or a small number of people.. and i feel more secure inside the little white box when i know that here, there need be nothing more than what i may have done in a day. instead, i write what i've thought, the things that were floating in my head.

no one cares if i went to the bathroom this morning. no one needs to know that i watched television.. no one cares, and if they do, it's only because they've not looked at the fallen leaves, or stared up at a star-filled sky.. at least, not recently. though, i will mention a bit of an activity that i chose to partake in today..

there are bales of hay, large, round, resting on the hill not so far behind this house, beyond these walls that keep the outside, out. i walked there today, with her and we climbed up onto the hay and stared at everything. the town, the sky, the bugs crawling over our seats. i layed back and removed my glasses after noting the intense blue of the sky directly above us. my reasoning: there are so few times that i can see exactly the same thing with or without these filters, this glass that seems to hold me back always. i saw the blue, either way.. solid and clear and i smiled. we thanked someone for the day.. for the chance to sit there. she said she was happy to be alive. i was, too, but instead of saying it i threw a piece of hay into her lap.

there are too few words in the english language. i'd make them up but i think people often are confused by my writing without the addition of words whose definition is known only to me.

"i cannot be, until you're resting here with me."

So, things of note for today:

I made level 3, yay me!! (see rant below)
Chickenpox seem to be getting better!!
Set my clocks back an hour (did you?)
Played Soul Caliber for like 2 hours....
Learned that, while both are round, white, and made of plastic, my pill bottle cap and the cap on the cranberry juice are not interchangeable. Don't worry, I'm alright!

So about that rant mentioned above. As part of my quest for lvl 3, I decided to node some Enigma lyrics. You know... just because some people DONT like Enigma lyrics...they shouldnt downvote my writeups. I wouldnt have any issue if the persons responsible would send me a /msg explaining their position, but at this point I'm left without a clue who did it, and all I can gather is they're just jaded jerks who downvote nodes because they dont agree with what they say. Anyways, no need to get my ass in a knot over this, karma will have fun with them :) However, if you're a kind soul, and happen to like enigma lyrics, check them out... What I did was multi part.... First it was out of my devotion to the group Enigma, second it was for the Write ups to get to lvl 3 (hey, I'm a whore), and third, and rather unintintionally, it was a Nodeshell Rescue of The Cross of Changes.. oh well... life goes on :)

So, now I am left with what to do all next week. I'm thinking about reinstalling 3d studio max, I think i should probably try and keep up to date on that stuff, and reading Diamond Age has given me a few AWESOME ideas for static images, at least untill I master animation (I'll never post anything half assed) (yes, that was sarcasm) (yes, that was me mocking you)

Anyways, back to another night of wandering in and out of #everything, ta ta
-doug

Well, i've had an interesting weekend and have a rather boring monday to look forward to.

Well, my monday morning begins with a 20 minute trudge to my first class at 9:05. (Yes, (9:05 am). This is math. This monday, a homework is due. Next i have my writing seminar. I was supposed to have read about 60 pages in some Chandler book (no, not The Big Sleep). Oh well, i'll probably just hide off to the side somewhere and pretend to know what everyone else is talking about. Like i usually do. Then, i get a small break before my chem class. Chem class should be boring as usual. There is usually no shortage of people sleeping through this class. Sure, any big lecture has a few asleep students, but i think this class would be an instant cure for any insomniac. Then, i get to go have lunch. Usually by myself. I don't mind that too much. I get to read the newspaper or something. Then, i'll finish off the day with the other part of my math class. (yes, i have a lecture and a section on the same day.) We'll learn about the stuff we had on the homework. We'll thank him for not teaching the stuff BEFORE we had to do homework on it. Damn partial derivates of funcions in multiple variables... Then i get a relaxing evening while my roommate will go nuts studying for the econ prelim he has the next day.

The weekend has just ended and i'm already looking forward to the next on.
Sigh
On this early hour I shall summarize my weekend experience, which focused around Voodoofest and Claire:

Friday:


      Jason gets into town around nine; his friend, he and I drive around looking for things to do, buy some alcohol for saturday and spend an hour hanging out at an IHOP before heading home for sleep - surely we would need it.

Saturday:


      Wake up at seven, run over to Jason's and wait - Claire still isn't ready. We leave Mobile, Alabama (followed by Jason's younger brother) around ten, Claire and I sleep on the backseat for the majority of the ride.
      We clear the security lines in time to see the end of The Getaway People's performance - they were alright, even though I didn't personally like their style. Our group managed to run into an aquaintance who graduated valedictorian two years ago and smoked with him. Claire and I went off to get water and she complained about having to walk and stand so much. Agreeing, I sat down aside her and looked at her lying in the grass, under the blue sky, radiating with gladness. Jason and the rest of the group join us, after a while we get up to see Blues Traveler. Their stage was across the park, plus it was crowded, so shortly after getting there and burning in the heat without seeing the band save for the videoscreen, Claire and I headed back (we had both seen them live before.) Black eyed peas were playing, we sat in the middle of the field, smoked cigarettes and talked about traveling. She hadn't traveled much at all, but seems like the person who would benefit greatly from it - she's very open and willing to absorb different viewpoints. I mentioned the possibility of getting an apartment in Paris next summer if things in the middle east don't sort out politically.
      Eminem was up next, and we split up so I could get to the front (she wanted to see Ben Harper and he was the main reason I had gone to the festival.) The sun was burning at its crest, and everyone had been waiting for over half an hour. I had managed to stand aside the biggest group of rednecks ever, partaking in redneck activities (talking about things that usually arent talked about in public, belching, etc.) Two local girls started talking to us (Jason and I,) Jason didn't really respond. I wish he was better with the ladies, he's such a nice guy. The more talkactive one was still in high school (senior) and had SATs the following morning, we talked a bit about that - then we worked our way to the stage, through the masses. Eminem came on stage, followed by D-12 and the whole place was bouncing. I must say that was one of the most fulfilled hours of my life - I knew all the songs and (along with everyone else) sung along, dancing with that girl, her pulling me closer and putting my hands on her hips. Eminem was a few feet away, it was incredible. The only negative aspect were all the flying waterbottles, one of the people in the vicinity obtained a gash from a flying bottle. Also, towards the end, people were storming to the front, and it took a bit of an effort to keep the girls from being squished by people. We said our goodbyes, hoping to meet again in Atlanta - she was going to Georgia.
After Eminem I headed over to Cypress hill who played on the stage across the field. Making many new friends, I fought my way to the front where Claire and Brian (Jason's younger brother) were. Glad to meet again, she pulled me closer and we grooved to the music. Jason was nowhere in sight, so we were unable to smoke during Dr. Greenthumb. Oh well. Claire had found a bunch of her friends, so after Cypress Hill's awesome show we sat down and listened to 311 from the neighbor stage. This continued throughout Cowboy Mouth's show, Pat and Claire lied down to sleep for a short bit. The sun had set by now, there was a light show in the trees. Colored wheels were rotating and shifting between the trees and on the leaves... someone said that voodoofest is jazzfest on mushrooms. True.
      When Rahzel's DJ (I forgot the name, but he DJs for The Roots) took stage, we walked up and listened to his skills, as well as Rahzel when he got on stage. I had never heard of him before, no one in the group had, but he blew it up like no one else. If you ever have the chance to see this man perform, go for it - he's incredible.
      Soon, Stone Temple Pilots took the other stage and we managed to advance to the videoscreen - Pat, who was to provide Claire with a place to stay didn't want to go further. This, combined with his general attitute towards her annoyed her greatly. We exchanged cellphone numbers and went a bit forward, to the point at which we could see the lead singer (it was his 35th birthday the day before, so everyone sang happy birthday at some point during the show.) This was probably the most honest if not the best show of the day, as they really gave their all, playing an hour beyond schedule and demanding that people be let into the journalist section...
      Finally, even STP were done and we started walking back to the car. The bridge connecting the festival grounds was crammed full of people, so Claire seized my hand for practical purposes. I stroked my thumb across hers and she responded... Once the bridge was crossed she didn't let go, we walked hand in hand to the car and talk about general topics. She's a really, really great person - she cares a great deal about everyone around her, as I was bound to find out later. At the car, we found a fairly strung-out Brian waiting for his friends to show up. I convinced Jason that I would drive, as he was too tired to navigate New Orleans traffic. We headed back onto I-10 while Claire was on the phone, trying to deal with Cyrus and Pat, her friends who we were supposed to chill with. I took the phone and told them that we could call when things were sorted out and we had taken showers. Everything was booked. A full hour later we find a vacancy half an hour away from New Orleans - Bourbon Street is out of the question, at least for the night. Claire, Jason's friend and I take showers and head out to Waffle house for a three am breakfast... We return around four, watch the beginning of some HBO movie, crack a few beers and then settle down. In the twilight, I see Claire's eyes still open and we start talking... nothing fit to post, personal stuff... but I learn that we are a lot alike, even though our backgrounds are almost complete opposites. I didn't kiss her or anything, that would still be awkward at this stage, but I got to know her a lot better as a person... looking forward to hanging out with her in the future. At six AM we say our goonights and drift to sleep.

Sunday

      Noon comes early - the sun blares through the window, waking us rudely. Time to check out, the phone announces. We brush our teeth, Claire gets a backrub but doesn't say anything - she's beautifully intriguing, I told her the night before. I understand now, and it is fine... We eat breakfast at Shoney's, get loaded and pick up cigarettes and iced tea at a gas station ... I don't even remember getting cigarettes. It was beautiful though, we were all sitting in the car, windows down, noon sun, dark side of the moon, her asleep against me. Possibly the happiest time of my life.

I found out today that no one loves me. And then I wrote about it my book.

The book, at this point, seems juvenile. I look back on words that I just typed in, and they seem so meaningless. The seem like they don't make any sense, and they never even have semblence to what I was trying to get out. I wonder if I should even bother with it anymore, but something inside me tells me that I should.

Other than that, i've been trying to transfer all my stuff onto my new laptop, which is a slowgoing process. I plan on taking a bath soon and then going to bed. I just want today to be over.

Oh, and my words of wisdom today are:

Never talk about something that is important to you involving someone else's feelings. It is inevitable that yours will get crushed.

Made the most of the last day of my long weekend. Woke up late, caught up with a good friend I haven't talked to in ages, read a few hundred pages in my book. Had our weekly editor's meeting for the campus newspaper I work on. Getting psyched up for the parasitology class I dropped statistics for. Woohoo! Gratuitous biology classes! Maybe, if I really work at it, I'll never have to leave the science building!

Whoa, interesting night last night.

For Introduction to Research 110 we were required to give five minute surveys (for election) to ten different people over the phone (random phone numbers). Some interesting points I had:
-First call recently got DSL, said it's great once you got it, but terrible to install. That's what I've heard.
-My second call was to a 85 year old lady. When I asked who she voted for in the '96 election she responded "Hmm, I can't remember... it was whoever was the Democrat candidate." This was so funny yet so sad to me at the same time. *Sigh*
-Third caller: when asked who he voted for in the '96 election he replied "I just remember not voting Clinton. Ya, whoever was running against Clinton..." <more ranting about Clinton being evil>
-One girl answered the phone obviously excited/giddy and out of breath, while going through my rountine, "Hi, I'm a student at George Mason University and ..." all I could think about was "what was she just now doing????" at the time only one thing could pop into my head, sex, but now I'm fairly certain she found out she's pregnant or getting married or something. She also hung up on me, if anyone wants to say "hi" to her, her number is (US) 703-352-- heh, I wouldn't do that.
-Out of ten people, only one really thought about the questions. Most were simply like "whoever the Republican guy is" or "I'm Democrat, always been one... choose that"
-Seven votes for Bush.
-Three votes for Gore.
-No votes for anyone else.
-I think this poll was really off though for a) it's only 10 people, b) they all live in a fifty mile radius, and c) they live in a conservative majority area.

This brings me to breakfast I had today. Chris made a comment "both candidates are idiots" and I had heard it so many times from so many people that I just had to say "Well c'mon, they're not idiots. They obviously have to be pretty smart to get to where they are now, Governor and Vice President."

"No, they are idoits."

"What makes you think that then?"

"Because they are."

This election has been really horrible. Maybe it's because it's the first one I've really started to pay attention to since I'm voting in it. But everyone single fucking person I know immediately writes off both Bush and Gore because... arg, they don't even give a rational answer. It's all "they do whatever the party tells them to" or "they're an idot". Not "they were a major backer for this bill- which I disagree with" or some actual facts.

Nothing really interesting happened today other than the above. I mostly played Command and Conqueor: Red Alert 2 and some noding work. I'm working on three big projects for E2. For one I'm monitoring the reputation of some nodes to see if there's biased torwards certain users on E2. It's pretty surprising how badly (and hard) people vote down. I'm really expecting to hit the upper -30's or -50's when I write it up. We need a "Lowest in Cool News" section. Another I'm doing actual research to counter someone's non-researched argument. It's extremely annoying to spend hours looking up stuff whereas they just wrote it off the top of their head. I only wish I had the kind of (or lack of) ethic to just make arguments without checking my sources.

Sigh

I'm baaa-aaaack! Spent a weekend trying to fix Win95 that was just fine when I sent the machine away, but wasn't when it was booted first time in the new location. Got jammed when the desktop had been loaded. Reason? I don't know, and will probably never know. Damn! Maybe no one in MS never thought that Win95 Might Not Like It if several devices (a sound card, SCSI adapter and attached Jaz disk drive, scanner, and stuff like that) disappeared over night...

13:34, Winter Time!

So this is what the Finnish autumn looks like! =)

(Footnote: Actually, I don't even note the changes of seasons often, but this is different. For following reasons...)

I mean... It was just mildly chilly for September and the beginning half of October; Then a week of really heavy rain, and then the snow falls. Interesting! This world will never cease to amaze me.

15:29

Guess what? Ran out of disk space at the machine that had my mail... =(

Well, tarballed an year's worth of old messages and spam, and we're alive again.

Scary thought: My firewall setup still uses my static ip, which I don't have because I now have a dynamic one. Crap. Double crap. Triple crap. Quadruple crap. Grrrr. Should nuke proftpd and close the PostgreSQL TCP/IP port. NOW.

16:54

I got a copy of local edition of PC Gamer, and it had a cover CD that had... MechWarrior 4 intro video.

I mean... that thing was sweeeeeeet. =)

22:14

Did all sorts odd stuff. Like ported a huge pile of JavaScript to Perl, making the life of client side a lot easier. I hope. (The code is at http://www.WolfSex.org/, but it won't work. Yet. I need URI.pm there, too...)

22:47

OK, did some ego surfing, and guess what?

Google is indexing E2. So where do you think all zilliards advertised Google-indexed pages came from? Yeah, you guessed - from E1 and E2! Under different domain names, too! Dammit, Everything2 should set up a robots.txt. Or something. Or at least tell Google how to map node titles to node=Title+of+node, because if it indexes it all a la node_id=xxxxx&lastnode_id=xxxxx (with different lastnode_id) every time, we're speaking of severe spamdexing!!!

Well, look at the brighter side, though... Google has the long-awaited-for node body search =)


Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: spamdexing
Friday's belated news: TinyFugue
Updated:

I had a strange weekend and the days all seem to run together for me so I'm just noding it under this one. Spooks in Space was supposed to be in Columbia, MO (drive of 2 hours) but got moved to St. Louis (drive of 4 hours, see It's a sign!). So we get to the rave finally, bad directions mean about an hour of driving aimlessly around the city and through the ghetto, (I thought I was going to die!). We'd been at the venue before, it's a tiny venue and the floor seems like it's always about to give way. The vibe inside was dark as hell, the moment we entered the room we were offered ecstasy and nervous about if it was real, we bought it anyway (there really is no way to turn down the stuff). We tried to dance to the hardcore in the main room. I love hardcore but this shit was dark and the crowd was dark. It was hot as hell. The other room wasn't any better. I can't start rolling in this place, I decided, so we got out of there fast.

There was a chill-out tent outside so we went there and met some nice people. Lo and behold this e that I thought was bunk started to kick in. Excellent. So of course I want to start dancing, but I'm in the chill-out tent. I despair for a few moments because I can't go back to that rave. It's evil.

In the tent we run into this dude that always sells us excellent acid. What the hell, buy a hit each. Then I see a bunch of people leaving the rave, decide to go back in. The e makes the darkness bearable, (plus, the hardcore went away, yay for disco house!) Kim wants to sit down, so we go outside again. She still wants to sit down so I go back in with some nice girls. Main room is too crowded, but the jungle in the other room suits me just fine. Jungle stops, Gabber starts. Never a big gabber fan, but I loved this stuff. It seems that "dark" is not bothering me much anymore. I run outside and grab Kim, she needs to hear this shit. Gabber is super. More hardcore after that. I stopped dancing for maybe five minutes all night. At 5AM I realize that ravers are spirits who, while the rest of the world is sleeping, destroy the previous day and create the new one. By 7 AM I was ready to fall over but kept dancing. The music stopped eventually.

Shared the drive home. Acid is good for long road trips, I was told earlier in the evening.

Have a beer and take a shower. I proceed to pass out for the next 14 hours. I wake up and log onto everything, use all my votes by 6AM and notice I am the second to the top person on current users. Yay for me! :)

Exercise log:
  • Pushups: 45 (almost 50!)
  • Side-kicks: 35, each side (those are really tough)
  • Situps: 115

Insomnia log: None, but I was still tired from the weekend.

No more need for a tongue log, the piercing is pretty much healed. I'm still rinsing with blue listerine, but I'm also consolidating my meals to just two or three a day, because I hate the taste of the mouthwash. Which basically means I'm on a diet, because I don't eat a lot at once; I'd rather eat a bunch of small meals throughout the day.

She kissed me! I know, I mentioned this yesterday, but I'm just reminding myself. I'm going to invite her out on a date this weekend. That sounds silly. I hate dating. But I'm not close enough (to the dorms she lives in) to do the college dating thing, which is just basically hanging around each other until something happens. So I have to act more like a grownup, and plan things. Ugh.

What's more, I hate typical dates. I feel pressure to come up with something creative, something romantic, when all I really care about is hanging out with her and having fun. But I feel obligated to be different, to somehow show that I have some kind of interesting life she should be part of.

Dating sucks.

The Weekend Isn't Over

I've waited five days for the empty holes where my wisdom teeth were to heal, but to no avail. Today I was supposed to be back at school, but I don't feel like it. My gums ache and the tension is starting to give me a huge headache. At least I had the extra hour from switching the clocks back to sleep longer.

I'm running out of movies to watch, so I'll probably revert to Star Wars or something later...

Maybe my goal for today should be to reach level four. I've got all the XP needed, I just need about 22 more writeups. Then I'd have C! power. Yay.

Right now, my codeine and tylonel are calling me, so I must go...

Been asked to work a lot of overtime now. This morning the circles appeared under my eyes. I have to take steps to not be worn down.

Rain, rain, rain. Happily, nothing leaks and my car is running well.

A friend suggested that the crackers who broke into Microsoft went in to fix bugs.

Bush and Gore in a dead heat. I heard a very good piece on NPR (click the hard link if you don't know what that is) the other day: this commentator who said, "If you don't know the candidates or the issues, if you can't tell Al Gore from Leslie Gore or George Bush from his father, don't vote! If you don't know and you don't care, don't vote."

As a personal disclaimer, I've voted already, by absentee ballot. (Can you tell that I'm absent?)

Had a really fun day going through Sun's Commercial System Integrator agreement, amongst other things.

Okay, first day trying out dmoz as a contributor. Lets see whether I'll have anytime left for E2.

An eventful weekend; we moved into our new house. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, pretty much filled by hiring a van (I love vans), hiring a porter's trolley, and shifting all our worldly posessions from one house (largish) to another (small), for we are now homeowners, and we can't afford to buy as large a house as we could afford to rent.

Saturday was fine; we tired ourselves out, but we were OK.

On Sunday we had to work in the pissing rain, as did our friends who generously offered to help.

It turns out the wind and the rain weren't just unpleasant for us: they've brought the whole damn country (of England) to its knees. The port of Dover is closed, and there are passenger ferries circling around in the English Channel waiting to be allowed to dock. New Street Station in Birmingham is closed, due to trees falling across the tracks and so forth, and it's (arguably) the hub of the UK's rail system.

Up here in lovely Leamington Spa, the trains are running a bit late, and the river is a little swollen. Oh, and there's big puddles ("floods") and fallen trees in places, but I'm alright and that's what counts innit.

Firstly and foremostly, I no longer have an internet connection at home which means:

  1. I will not be noding up every stupid thing that pops into my head. I will not spend more than five hours a day in front of my computer. I will not completely lose touch with reality.
  2. I'm going to be spending more of my leisure time at school instead of at home.
  3. These things contradict each other but you didn't notice, right?

Being the idiot that I am Yoon and I got into a huge fight nearly the minute that she got back from teacher training. I begin to wonder if I will ever learn to come out of the mental haze (and bad mood) that comes along with coding for too many hours. My fault probably but both of us being bone tired probably didn't help matters. I think I should send her flowers. I should probably get on the bus and buy her lunch. Argh. The consequences of my crankiness should have taught me to be a better human by now. Instead I have just become more acutely aware of what an asshole I can be when I need a nap.

I noded some more zine stuff. For some reason it escaped the new write up corral. A Story About Watertowers is one of the pieces that I was most happy with though it could still use some editing. I keep putting off assembling the paper version which has a lot to do with the fact that the only scanner I have access to right now is a lumbering beast and I have something like fifty drawings to scan in.

I finally saw Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai last night. It left absolutely no impression on me. Neither did American Psycho but I did cringe more especially when the critique of music was juxtaposed with homicide. I think that urge may be latent in many would be critics.

Pooh. Everything is too much of a jumble today. A messy mix of caffeine, regret, and resignation is poisoning the day. I think it is time to go to sleep for about ten hours. I think sleep is the answer and Penguin Mints be damned.

My Halloween party went pretty well, I think. We had copious amounts of food, including homemade sushi and homemade cheesecake. And the drinks were top-rate, I must say: Stewart's, provided by Ouroboros, and my Everything Cider. Yummy. So, let me tell you who was there of E2:

- blowdart, our overseas visitor, who brought Twining's and a London Tube t-shirt. heh. He was in costume as...a geek. (Well, that's what his shirt said.) His quote: "You people take Halloween WAY too seriously!" He seemed quite amused by us all. Of course, THEY take Guy Fawkes Day way too seriously, so nyah.
- factgirl, who brought blowdart, and was in costume as a non-geek. (Well, she had a cute pleated black skirt, I dunno.) She seemed cool, but I didn't get to talk to either of them because I had to go get food, and they left soon after. Foo. (blowdart wanted to go schmooze with Microsoft people. Ewwww!)
- Ouroboros and his female friend, who brought the sodas. I've met Ouro before, but didn't get to talk to him much although they stayed the whole time.
- m_turner, who was wearing a very cool Ren faire-ish jacket with Celtic knots on it. Know what? Didn't get to talk to him much either. Kept doing the hosting bit, curse it all. Oh well. But he seemed good as well. He, Ouro, and Ouro's friend were the very last to leave.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good time. Everyone seemed to hit it off, and I think we could have skipped the movie and just chatted for four hours. Other groups represented included Tamson House, SFWOW, Berkeley CS grad students, and Bordertown. I didn't end up going as Gwynn, just as some sort of Good Fairy, which felt stupid, but oh well. Sigh. There's no way I'm going as that to work on Halloween--too awkward--so maybe I'll do some sort of generic Republican China thing.

The only thing ruining my good mood right now is that banner ad. I'm happy about the t-shirts, but...

LEARN TO PUNCTUATE!

it's? How embarassing.

The journey started Sunday, on a wonderful sunny day in San Francisco. My colleague tried to swing an upgrade at Virgin's check in, to no avail. When we board the plane, I get told I've been upgraded to First class. I pondered if I should leave my poor, un-upgraded colleague, for about all of 30 seconds, waved goodbye and dashed for First to order my massage.

It was an overnight flight, and Virgin give you "sleep suits". It's very "Stepford Wives", everyone walks around in exactly the same clothes, except for me (as I can't sleep on planes) and one woman who bored in a little black mini dress which barely covered her butt cheeks. What is the point of tarting yourself up, for a 10 hour flight?

So I spent 10 hours reading and talking to the flight crew and eating all the chocolate.

Landing at Heathrow, dashing through customs, as I have way over the legal cigarette limit, and out into arrivals.

You know for a wet, rain filled, windy country, we're crap. All the train lines are flooded out. So no trains. The queue for taxis was too long, and I'm just wanting to go home and sleep. So Virgin laid on a car to take me home.

Now I know why people like Virgin. I've never encountered such good customer service.

So I get home. Sharon, my friend who borrowed my flat, has cleaned, hoovered and washed the bed sheets, and left a little note. So ting my mother to tell her I'm safe. On goes the heating, off come the jeans, and sleep, glorious sleep for 5 hours.

Then work calls...

Nothing like getting up at five in the morning to go to work for an hour and a half. That was lots of fun. But the really fun part was getting back on the c-train and going up to the University for my nine am class. Which I proceeded to sleep through. You can tell the train is full of University students when you overhear discussions about orbitals and marks.

The non-linear circuits professor passed out candy today. Some people took six or so. I sat at the back and ended up with the box, which had about twenty pieces left in it. I was tempted. He said that there was no tutorial tomorrow, so I can sleep in a bit. That, and the candy, is his treat for Halloween.

This girl was writing email on a terminal behind me. We have good keyboards in this lab, with good, firm, loud clicking noises. She was making a lot of noise. She was very fast. I wish I was that fast.

Monday. Another monday. It seems that monday is my day to get reflective on what's going on around me. Which is good, I think. Theraputic. Not that I need therapy, really, though. It's just that I'm moving, or trying to move, a step closer to becoming a whole person again.

I'm nostalgic for the year, just one year, when i felt completely all there. Sure, my emotions were strained to the limit half the time, but at least I felt something besides bored observation of my environment.

But it's coming back now. I think that I'm crossing the gap of apathy that lay between teenage angst and early college excitement. And it feels good.

I am going to try and live my life with sincerity. But, it's like, I don't even need to try. It's coming naturally, which is the most important part.

-----------------

A prayer:

dear god, please watch over the body and soul of colleen's friend, who is sick in the hospital. also please help his family, and give them strength to handle whatever situation may arise. in your name i pray. amen.

also, lord, please guide me down the right path. i am only a man, and need as much help as i can get. thank you for all that you have given me, and i will try to honor you in my existence. amen.

. ----------------

In a week and a half, there will be a new president. That is very, very scary.

Things are changing.

The school day had nothing of note, forgot to hand a theme in for english, got repirmanded for having my MiniDisc on during music lit, talked about calculator shit with korsak and all in chemistry instead of working.

Daylight savings was a pain today, at 1:35 suddenly a feeling of joy swept over me like "Yay, I'm getting out of this shithole" but it turned out that I had another hour of classes to take. I certainly didn't mind getting up when it wasn't so dark though.

Ramsey and I helped the Director of Technology with the Compaq Proliant servers, which we still can't get working as they use a weird NCR chip, the 53c710 which doesn't have support in standard Linux boot disks. We ended up finding custom boot disks on a site, but we needed the IRQ/Address for the chip, and the machine wasn't booting off its EISA CD-ROM for some reason. We left at about 4pm, but Ramsey had to go to his locker so I missed running into that girl from private school who seemed to have a thing for me. Mentioned our meeting earlier to Ramsey and he said something like "She really wasn't all that smart, she just tried really hard in class", whatever, I'm sure I'll see her soon enough if things go my way.

jittery, cold but hot..

dislocated knee late last week, can't put on right shoe anymore. knee is stuck. no one to help with shoe.

gave up speaking in complete sentences an hour ago. too much work for what it's worth. what is it all worth? a shoe. that's it. it's all about the shoes. if they told me this a long time ago, things would have turned out better, i swear mom. really

it all breaks and shatters and falls, then i realize, that what is really broken, isn't 'it'... it is me.

in own little place, floating away... listening to James Taylor's 'Sleep come free me' over and over and over..

"Set me free, sleep come free me, please please please set me free.. set me free"

the repitition is comforting.

going schiz, will daylog if I get work there

Today had many frustrations. Most of them involved me behind the wheel of a car gnashing my teeth and forgetting to suspend application of rational expectations on other drivers. Silly me.

Other sources of frustration were more... existential. I think that I have forgotten how to think. Unlearned learning, if you will. It's been months since I've worked... and I don't even feel motivated to get a job. Or I might be afraid to.

I also experienced major ISP hijinx. US West or QWest or whoever they've become decided to serve up naught but a busy signal this afternoon. The rocket scientist at technical support informed me that this meant that either the server had too many connections or it was broken. Uhm... thanks. I figured out that part. Since DSL and digital cable connections still aren't available in my highly-urban-but-traditionally-low-income-neighborhood, i had to opt for another dial up ISP. At least I had the pleasure of cancelling my old service from the new connection. I bet they're still stinging from my rejection.

Oh hey - episode 7 of Zombie College is finished loading. I gots ta go.

today i saw some interesting people on the skytrain. they were drunk. not uncommon skytrain behaviour, but i thought that there were a few interesting deatils worth pointing out.

they were drinking, still, out of a starbucks travel mug.

they were from downtown vancouver. they were almost in surrey. they were laughing because they were almost in surrey, out of booze, and only had a handfull of change.

also, they had been drunk since friday. this was monday night.

I just said that to my far-away buddy in an email. I guess what I meant was that he should not let the bastards get him down.

Why does life suck sometimes? Why is money always such an issue -- when you don't have it, that is. It's easy to believe that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you can't possibly get ahead. It ain't that bad. Just ask someone to tell you of good things that are happening in life.

Of course, you could just get cynical and bitter, or just lose it, laugh madly, madly, madly out of control. ("You spin... like a Cadillac falling off a cliff... on television")

To (possibly badly) quote the immortal Las Vegas poet Dayvid Figler (and fans, forgive me if I miss a few words):

Every time I get a lttle money,
something bad happens
something bad and expensive
so now
instead of saving my money
I piss it all away on drugs
Yeh.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.