September 7, 2000

Wednesday, September 6, 2000:
Today was day 2 at the University of Minnesota. I registered for another class, CSCL 3361: Visions of Nature: The Natural World and Political Thought. That's on top of Intro to programming in Java, Calculus 2 and physics 2 (electricity and magnetism). I think this semester is going to be very hard, but a lot of fun. One thing I'm really gonna have to work on, though, is my work schedule. I can't work from 7:15 AM to 4:30 PM between my classes, minus mealtime, and then have late classes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Later tonight after my physics lab, I went an met with a friend from last year. She's a sophomore this year, but was a post-secondary student last year. She's also engaged with her boyfriend right now, but she thinks she doesn't want to be with him. I think I'll steer clear of her right now. I really don't want to get in the middle of anything.

Work is getting kind of annoying, lately. One co-worker is about 290 days away from retirement. He is not what one might call motivated to work. When I'm at work, I try to get work done, making copies, filing and data entry, but it's damn hard to do work two hours at a time. I'm slowly figuring out how to come in and get to work quickly though. Once I can have things to where I can just pick up and leave work without losing my train of thought, I'll be good.

Now I need sleep after reading for class, but more will come tomorrow (which will actually be the seventh).

---

Thursday, September 7, 2000:
Wow, I wouldn't think getting up at 6:30 would be so tough once school started. I've been doing it all summer, without any big problems; however, this morning was a killer. I'm definitely gonna have to tell my employer I'm not coming in this early Monday, Wednesday or Friday.

I'm hoping the bookstore has the books I need today. If they don't get them in soon, I'm gonna be pooch-screwed big time in my night class.

Time to start the coffee running through me. More to come when something happens today.

Well, time to go home for a while, then come back to school for my night class. I had to go out earlier this morning and move my truck so I didn't get towed. Now I have to skate about a mile back to my truck, which is going to suck since I bought my books for my CSCL class today. I need a beer. A beer would be good right now. Unfortunately, my roomates choose to buy Milwaukee's Best, which in case you didn't know, is bad-mexican-beer-that-has-already-been-consumed-and-peed-out-into-a-can. It's bad stuff. Don't drink it. I'll add something about my new class if it's worth anything at all, so more to come yet.

12:44

I'm losing my nerves here.
How can anybody be as annoying as the guy in the room next to me?
He whistles.
He sings.
He stomps his feet.
He drums the table with his fingers.
He's driving me insane!
ARGH!

The funny thing is.. I'm not sure which one of us has had too much caffeine. Am I just too edgy?


0:47
(on September 8)

Things were quite tense between certain employees in the office today, and I had to witness the intense argument firsthand. It wasn't that nice to sit a few meters away listening to ppl fighting about something not involving me in any way.
Was it about something relevant and important like our hiring policy or salary issues?
No. It was about folders and notebooks.
The two people in question have been in certain heated discussions earlier as well. Next time they'll probably come to blows.

It's almost 1 o'clock, and I have to get up in 8 hours. But there's just too much stuff to do before going to bed. 7 hours of sleep has got to be enough. It's not pleasant, but I can always sleep long the next night since my trip to Helsinki got cancelled.

Btw, the latin alphabet looks quite interesting after a few hours of hiragana practice.

Today's Writeups
Roland Juno-106 | Roland R-8 | Roland R-8 mk II

14:22

Again in BatMUD. Damn, this place is addictive...

Wwwwolf the Wolfman.
Weyfour WWWWolf is just an anthropomorphic wolf.
He is in a good shape.
        Wwwwolf's equipment:
Head: A red smurf-cap
Torso: A typical breastplate
Bracelet: A steel bracelet
Wielded in right paw: A highsteel longsword
Wielded in left paw: A tungsten dagger
Both feet: Tin boots

Cool equipment courtesy of Damogran! Does this suit make me look fat?

Wwwwolf is a level 11 mortal of the Wolfman race.
He was created Thu Oct 14 12:01:14 1999 and he is 6h, 58min and 9s old.
He has been on for 6min and 13s, not idle.
He has killed: a dumb orc reaking of a terrible ste.., 705 exp

Interesting messages:

There is no all in the a fried yolk of Slender sparrowhawk!

Just killed, and already fried! Cool!

I just lllllove these BatMUD's general descriptions of areas:

ssss|sssf  You are walking on a road going north and south. The road is made of
ssss|ssss  stones. There are trees near the road. Above you is a hot, moving,
ssss*ssss  cloudy sky. There is a brisk wind.
ssss+----  Obvious exits are: nw, n, ne, w, e, sw, s and se.
ssss|ssss

14:42

You are prepared to do the skill.
You are finished skinning the corpse.
It didn't quite turn out to be what you wanted.
You create fresh rope.

Damn, now even BatMUD agrees it sometimes has weird stuff in it! =)

15:40

OK, so I advanced again one level in BatMUD - to 12.

Session summary:
Time: 1 hour 21 minutes 49 seconds
Experience gained: 2003
Experience lost: 0
Experience spent: 1235
Gold difference: +194
New areas explored: 1
Battle skill summary:
 Hits: 191 Misses: 163 Parries: 0 Ripostes: 0 Stuns: 0
 Criticals: 4 Dodges: 0 Tumbles: 0 Stunned Maneuvers: 0

Strange that hit/miss ratio remains the same. I thought I performed better yesterday. Anyway, I escaped the perillous newbie forest again, this time almost died when wights ambushed me. Scary things, those. =)

18:06

Slashdot sounds like it's getting weirder and weirder. I mean, look at what has happened recently: Sega is giving stock to stop pirates, two new PHP books are out, RSA released to public domain, and Jon Katz talks about - now this is unbelieveable - Mage The Ascension.

Ugh. And tomorrow, I expect to see that Donald E. Knuth has released The Fourth.

00:23

::yawns::

Tried to hack sirc to make it more colorful (as in "junk the mIRC color crap, but make the interface itself colorful" - but turned out the ssfe (frontend) is "do, or do not" style - either lose control of the entire screen updating mechanism (ie, no status line updates or stuff like that), or strip the control characters. Damn.

Maybe I should make the /gonode function someday, a la the present WWW support... =)

(To be continued.)

---

Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: status line Goofs in game intro movies

I'm not sure what I want to do right now.

I received my stock report yesterday, via the friendly neighborhood mailman. After seeing that, I've been thinking heavily about buying my uncle's half of the house I'm living in from him. The house has not been getting any attention until I moved in, so I think I should be given an oppurtuniy to buy it.
Just for the record, the house I speak of was my grandmother's home, when my girlfriend and I broke up, I needed to new place to live, so I moved in to that house.

Fun news, I will be going to visit Allison this weekend, in COLLEGE STATION. She is having her first party, and only a select few have been invited, but I'm extending the invite, to all who can read, the only problem is I don't know the address. The plan is to party one night, and the next night, everyone is going down to the shooting range, for some plunking.

I've been neglecting my daylogs.

Not because I've not had anything to write - the exercise program is going very well (I've just finished a lower body work out and I'm exhausted :-).

I guess nothing new has been happening, so I've avoided being unnecessarily repetetive. I guess, also, because I've not been noding generally, I've had less urge to throw in daylogs just for the heck of it.

In fact, I wrote two new nodes yesterday - port 6667 and web-based irc client - my first in ages. (I'd like people to contribute to the latter... ;-). However, I still have a mental block over finishing Methods and Standards because I want to un-namespace it but I don't want to spend time doing that before it's finished but I don't want to make more nodes that need un-namespacing... etc... sigh....

Maybe I'll n4n Hawkwind's albums and personnel... or maybe not... (Bugger, Lord Brawl's done it so poorly (i.e. not hardlinked the album titles) I almosts feel motivated!)

I sympathise with Eco. Can't help but fear that this will all end in tears.

This daylog brings me to level three - and a yawning gap of hundreds more wu's to go before - when? Before I have editor powers? Do I want editor powers? Do I want to make everything my everything? What made me come here in the first place? I wanted to write again, and everything has proved conducive. That is why I'm here, and that's why I've stayed this long.

Now I find myself turning into an xp whore. I am neglecting my work to node. I am neglecting my email to node. I am neglecting my parents, my friends, and my cat to node. This has to stop.

There is a clique of people here who talk with reverent nostalgia about how great it was when everything1 was crappy, small and full of bugs. It's like a big in-joke. I suspect, however, that when everything was small, they talked about how great it would be if it became BIG and lots of people noticed. It's getting big, and lots of people come, but who stays? It has become apparent to me that there is still a small minority of people who vote, a large majority of people who make a couple dozen nodes, and a very few editors who are very devoted to everything -- and to one another.

Like SlightlyMadman, I read the editor logs with horrified fascination. Old users are mentioned with relief for their absence. Their writeups get nuked like dry bones that are swept to the back of the family tomb to make room for more corpses. I've looked up some of these old users and some of them remind me of me. People with some limited writing ability. People who don't really have an "in" with the editors; people who don't share the same political convictions; people who don't node their own fiction, poetry, witty quips or nonsense. Most importantly, I've discovered that despite the high xp I've received on mine, people who rant don't make it to m-noder - they burn out before they get the chance, and leave more bitter than they were before. I don't need or want to be more bitter.

The editors sometimes remind me of the in crowd at high school. Everyone wants to please them. Some years have passed since that horrible time and I've figured one thing out. The in crowd were never as popular as I thought they were. We didn't like them - no one really did. But it would be false to say that they needed us as much as we needed them as our touchstone of what was good and great. They didn't need mediocre people (or people wracked with self-esteem issues, who just think they are mediocre) any more than the editors do.

Then there is the trouble of the public domain. Right now a friend who, very sadly, I have begun to resent for many reasons I will not go into here, but are both bad and good, is reading my nodes. My father, too, came perilously close to finding out about my everything habit last night, as I was trying to find a site to show him - which would surely spell the end of this career. This was all fine while I thought I was speaking anonymously to strangers. I may be an exhibitionist, but if people I know read my nodes to find out what is going on in my head - that is, to know me , as opposed to the me prototype, the joy starts to trickle out.

Game plan, then, is to node better, node less, node impersonally and forget about the xp; let everythingians think what they may, and trust my own convictions and abilities.

Easier said than done.

One last rather provocative thing: I have come to suspect that a pedophile, someone I had the displeasure to meet as an adolescent, is an active noder here. If I find out for sure, and if everything stops turning me on, I take comfort in the thought that I'll node my revenge before I go.

Pedophile, you say? Pedophiles on the Internet? Say it ain't so...and watch out kids.

And finally, just for my least-fave everythingians, the soft-linking bastards:
Your radical ideas about Everything have already occurred to others
Your point being?
Wasted nodespace

Warning! Warning! Sad little spiral notebook-type writeup ahead!

Ah, another lousy day at that institution of higher learning known as Riverdale High.

How so you ask? I was told by one of the many people who hang out by the gazebo that I'm not welcome there, and that I should leave. It's funny. Everyone in there is crazy in some way, but when someone (myself) who's also crazy (but in a different way) comes along I am ignored. I don't shout out for attention, I'm not yelling "LOOK AT ME!!!!" I'm just wanting to have a good time and hang out with other people. Is it because I don't do pot? Or because I don't really like the same music or believe in witchcraft or something? What do you want from me?

Oh well. Yet another group I don't fit in with. Guess I'll just have to keep looking. I'll figure it out one of these days.

End of sad little writeup

Finally. After over three years. My train tracks are off.

I had an orthodontist's appointment at 2, (I was late thanks to ScotRail) and by about half past, my teeth were feeling weird - probably because they were normal. Previously they had looked like Shane MacGowan's. A little while later, and the retainers were ready. They're weird, but I guess I'll get used to 'em.. Now, this makes me pretty darn happy :)

people i know who i saw by chance today:

• david - i was on my way to the station this morning, he was walking the other way. back from a friend's house, who he had helped move house.
• rach - after getting my teeth fixed, i got the train back into town, and arrived at the station just as the first train after school got out was pulling in. okay, so it was semi intentional that i got to the station in time to meet that train, but i did say hi..
• ruth - spotted when i was waiting on the train back to my place, she was walking along the platform
• helen and someone else whose name escapes me also on that train

weird, all on the same day, seeing as i rarely bump into people i know

I got up this morning and decided I had heard enough bitching from my roommate about how I don’t have Linux anymore. Not that he should bitch for as much as I complain about windows. I had to get a new computer about a month back and the thing came as they all do preloaded with what they thought I wanted, Windows. Well I haven’t reinstalled Linux on to this new computer yet. So I finally downloaded it again today. I got thing booting and sure enough just like ever single time I install Linux the sound card and the network card aren’t working. I guess I haven’t waved the correct dead chicken yet. I figure in a day or too is should be up and running in full.

I also went to class today when I wasn’t hacking around on my box. I learned all about declarative programming. Strange way of programming that I’ve never done before. But they says it’s as powerful as the imperative languages C, C++, Java that kind of thing.

Well, Everything says it's September 8th, but it's still September 7th where I live, so I'm writing in September 7th.

I had a grand old time shit-disturbing this morning. I was feeling rather feisty and decided to annoy Microsoft.

All summer, I worked on a Windows machine and had MSN Messenger. This was pretty cool, as I got to talk to my cousin Ted, who lives in North Carolina. Now that my summer job has ended and it's back to school time, I'm starting to miss my conversations with Ted -- we got along perfectly and I could always talk to him about what's on my mind.

So I decided to email Microsoft and ask if they had a Linux version of Messenger. I'm waiting to see if they delete my hotmail account. =D

Today has been quite slow. I went to school, did a reaction time lab in Comparative Anatomy, and tried to sit in a comfortable way while wearing a skirt. My knees were freezing, as were my elbows. That's always the way it is. The teacher was explaining the difference between squamous and columner and some other stuff I can't recall at the moment. Seeing as how it was first hour at quarter to eight in the morning, no one was really awake. I had taken two Quanterra sleeping pills around one o'clock this morning in order to get some decent sleep before school. Surprisingly enough, I was more wide awake by the time 6:30 rolled around than I can ever remember being before.

The day wore on, a complete waste of time from an academic standpoint. Eventually made my way to seminar, where Coach Caserta nominated me for student senate. Yay. Like I have time for extracurricular stuff. Transfered to the band room, sat with some friends until I had to use the bathroom. I dragged everyone along (actually, it didn't take much to convince them). We saw a little brown mouse run across the carpeted hallway; that was exciting. It ran under the door to the dressing room and we could not follow.

Next was lunch - well, not for me. I had to go straight to Hope for French class, as always. We have a huge presentation due this friday - nice of Madame to give us a whole two days warning.

Had to run back to West Ottawa and get my A.P. Stats book. Tons of homework. Went to bed almost as soon as I got home, and didn't wake up until almost seven. Right now I am in the process of putting my brother's old bunk bed together in the guest room (which happens to be where one of the computers is). Between cursing and dropping solid oak boards on my feet, I somehow managed to find the time to type this.

I use to go to a high school named Walter MacAdoo Williams High School. It sounds rich and snobbish, but in fact, the ceilings were leaking and the walls were crumbling. In the room where I took Latin, there was extensive damage to the walls, where the roof had begun to leak. The students were notified, several months after this had been noticed and analyzed. The dust falling from the walls was asbestos, but there was so little that we don’t need to worry. So we didn’t. We just went on about our daily duties.

As gullible as we may have been, we know a bad thing when we see one, and this came when two men entered the room one day with full body breathing devices (think "The Abyss") and monitors that would beep. The beeping was pretty consistent until they got near the walls, when the devices would go crazy, beeping rapidly. And yet, they told us this was nothing to be concerned about…. Right…

I think the climax of this fiasco came when I was passing by the faculty lounge and a sign was posted "safe school committee meeting moved to room 314 due to high asbestos ratings in the lounge". There you go people. Stupidity at work here in our school systems.