September 18, 2000

Another day in paradise. Besides having a bizarre Mr. T fixation today I also had to work for eleven hours and I only slept for four hours last night.

I also whipped up a little graphic that you might find amusing (read: e2 related):

http://rejects.net/e2

I might post this somewhere on e2 (if I can pull it off). Other than all that, my day was as long and boring as John Holms at church.

Things to do today:

1. Attend closing client meeting.
2. Quit job.
3. Accept offer extended on Friday for new job.
4. Place bid on what will hopefully be my first home.
5. Think of things to spend my twelve-week severance package on, including furniture.
6. Send some flowers to my fiancee, because it's been a long time since she's gotten any and she deserves it.
7. Begin to enjoy two-week holiday between old and new job.

It's been interesting lately....

Today I woke up from my trip back from the Opening Ceremony Rehersal, suprisingly. I think that the spilled motor oil on my car seat is making me tired.

I came in to the shop with Dad today, and who did I find there but my good graphically oriented friend Micheal. He gave me a CD with some cool software on it.

I almost got this 3 year old computer at home today, if Dean's had finished our quote. And at the shop we would have gotten a really cool machine. This is what we are getting at the shop:

• Pentium III 700 Mhz
• 128 MB RAM
• Internal Modem
• 17" monitor
• DVD-ROM drive!

and other cool things as well as a new printer for home.

You see, I only have 3 computers at home. An AT, an XT and an AT laptop. This computer is a 200 Mhz Pentium MMX, which isn't bad. The bast part is the JBL Pro speakers.

And, they didn't finish it today. Oh well (*sigh*), maybe tomorrow.

Woke up today at 4:30 in the morning, while my alarm goes off at 6:45.
Usually when I wake up this early, I ask myself the question: "dammit, why this early?".

But not today. I just lay there in my bed, only thinking about a girl I met a few days before, and I realised it...

I'm in love...

prev daylog next daylog

I had a gig two nights ago, and I'm playing at the same place tonight. On Friday I'm playing in a drum-less trio (bass, guitar and keyboards) in some pub. I'm playing for free on Friday. It's been a long time since I agreed to that, but it's just because the guitar player begged me to play with them for free this week, and if we're good we get a gig every week.

When will the day come that I don't write about my gigs because they will be too often?

It's taking me forever to get the photo album of my trip to the dolomites ready. I decided to get some enlargements, and make it very professional looking, but now it's taking forever.

Sydney. Went past the The Regent Hotel at Circular Quay. It's the IOC HQ. Had heard that the flags outside it were at half-mast because of the death of Juan Antonio Samaranch's wife on Saturday. They didn't seem to be at half-mast today. Outside the entrance are suited security guards. Within are more security guards (or maybe police) manning an airport-type X-ray machine. Everyone who enters with bags and packages has them put through the machine. No one who's not a legitimate guest or IOC/Olympics official is allowed in. Bilingual (French and English) signs. I stood outside the doors and took pictures of the lobby--which is like a rotunda, with "Sydney 2000" logos everywhere and around the walls the names and years of previous Olympic cities.

On the weekend the events of the previous few days finally took their toll. Woke up Saturday a.m. with the symptoms of a massive hangover; all I wanted to do was lie prone in a darkened room and sink into a brain-restoring coma. (The fact that I've read nothing but tourist and Olympics brochures for about the last 5 days may have had something to do with it too.) But I got my laundry done. There's a coin-operated laundromat in this building, so didn't have to set foot outside the mothership.

Helicopters about both mornings because of the triathlon events in the vicinity of the Opera House; on Sunday a.m., from the city center, saw (with binoculars) part of the men's triathlon route up the eastern part of Farm Cove. Managed an invalidish strolled around the city. Westpac Bank (once the "Bank of New South Wales") is one of the Olympic partners, so their buildings everywhere are covered in images of Australian athletes, 20 times larger than life. And one side of their skyscraper at Martin Place has been turned a multi-storey-high tally of Australia's medals. It's visible several blocks away. After you've visited the usual tourist spots a couple of times there's not much else to do...except note the Olympics trappings everywhere, so fleeting, so impermanent.

Sports Illustrated journalists with the ubiquitous plastic IDs hanging around their necks. Buses advertising UPS (the "express delivery partner of the Olympic Games"), painted with the images of U.S. athletes who are also UPS employees. Buses reserved for IOC staff, others for News Limited and Xerox (another Olympic sponsor). A huge Swatch advertisement on George Street, just north of Martin Place. More Olympics watches, t-shirts, polo shirts, babies' jumpsuits, backpacks, bum-bags, gym bags, baseball caps, pins, pin cases, mascot stuffed-toys, sheets, towels, socks, plates, mugs, glasses, pens, school pencil-cases and photograph frames than you'd ever want to look at. Flags of all nations in the window displays of jewelry stores. "Aerial acts" performances at Circular Quay. Lasers and searchlights from the roofs of some city buildings every night. Fireworks at Farm Cove at 11.15 last night. A FIFA flag on one of the flagpoles of the Sheraton-on-the-Park Hotel. Woolworths wanting to give me an Australian flag when I bought film there. I'm going to have to get my film developed to remember all that I've seen so far.

September 9, 2000
September 12, 2000
September 14, 2000
September 15, 2000
September 24, 2000
September 29, 2000
September 30, 2000
October 1, 2000
October 2, 2000

13:07

"Another day, and another cry; remember: Shoot or die..."

I woke up too late, but there probably wasn't anything in the lectures not hard for me to understand...

BTW: Cool pic, moJoe. =)

14:22

Again in BatMUD...

Your equipment:
Neck: A necklace of shoes
Wielded in right paw: Oracian Broadsword
Wielded in left paw: A tiny axe
Finger: A highsteel ring
Both legs: Steel leggings
Both feet: Copper boots

I hope this dress doesn't make me look fat...

Crazy messages of the day:

A dismembered corpse of Fluffy bunny is not edible.
A skeleton shouts 'I butchered Raptor for breakfast, who's up for dinner?'
The maggots trample the corpse.
...
Grinning diabolically Horde sticks you making an artery explode.
You flee in terror!
...
You yawn alarmedly.
...

Really weird stuff. I wish I'll soon see the "...slain the cute and defenseless bambi" message soon, that's a true classic! =)

16:44

Listening to "Zombie" by The Cranberries. First song I've got from OpenNap networks - I installed gnapster this morning and threw the text client I had been using overboard...

Cool song - I was in high school when this was a Big Hit In Radio. Ahhh, the trip to south when I bought my first M:tG deck... =) Got to get more of this stuff on CD some day...

19:58

::WWWWolf points at the Kuro5hin page that reads 00:01:17...::

Our Savior shall return! The Armageddon is here! The Big battle between the Heaven and Hell shall commence!

20:00

Yeah, like I said.

TCP connection to 'www.kuro5hin.org' failed: Broken pipe.

=)

20:06

Yeah, Kuro5hin is back!

No, Netscape has lost my cookie. AND I had to mail my password. AND I can't ssh to the university box that has my mail. Suspecting a version incompatibility. Installing new version of ssh. Well, that involved apt-get update, which involves getting list from three servers, arrrrrgh...

20:56

No, no K5 mail reply yet. In fact, looks like K5 got slashdotted... =(

00:24

Yay!

nighthowl:~$ psql wwwwolf
Welcome to psql, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
       \h for help with SQL commands
       \? for help on internal slash commands
       \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
       \q to quit

wwwwolf=# \d
        List of relations
     Name      | Type  |  Owner  
---------------+-------+---------
 furryt        | table | wwwwolf
 kokeilu       | table | wwwwolf
 pelit         | table | wwwwolf
 pienoismallit | table | wwwwolf
 quakeservers  | table | wwwwolf
 tmp_pg_shadow | table | wwwwolf
(6 rows)

wwwwolf=# 

Back in action! =) A sfnet.atk.linux reader was kind enough to provide me a 6.5 psql binary so I could dump the old database. PostgreSQL "übercool" 7.0, here I am!

Korro5ion is still down, though. =(

---

Other day logs o' mine...

Noded today by y.t.: tigert oneko Paintbrush Voodoo Usecode

back | days | front

Feeling twitchy

I spent far too little time talking to you last night, but still got to bed at 3:30 am. I dreamed, um, "nice" dreams which aren't going to go into the dream log for the simple reason that I will feel fuzzy telling them to you tonight.

I took some caffeine tablets this morning to get into work, so I'm shaking like a mad thing at the moment. Getting into work was... interesting - it rained heavily and I got soaked. So, mark, being a little sadist, took a photo of me looking like a drowned rat :-)

I can imagine that this daylog will make no sense to anyone but you. Frankly, I couldn't care less. I woke up thinking of you. I want the day to move on so I can talk to you. I want to change my sleep patterns to talk to you more. It would seem rather silly to someone else; I am wearing a permanent smirk on my face and I keep humming tunes to myself...

I think I'd better stop before I get smacked by some miserable voters...

Photos. I must take more photos.

Umm, note to other noders: ignore me. :-)

14:35 BST

Photos taken outside with the rain behind me. Me waving. Me almost laughing. Me looking to the side. Me feeling bloody self-concious :-)

Feeling sleepy again, so more pro-plus for dizzy.

My impending hospitalisation didn't go down well with my project leader and general manager. There was a slight pause when I told them; a pause that seemed to say: *huff* "well, we didn't need you anyway!" The problem is that a lot of people in our department are asking to work from home and management are resisting this. Their reason is that they want to "keep the project teams coherent." So, if I can work from home during my recuperation, there is no reason why other people can't work from home...

Geek mode enabled: I wonder if I get to take my dual pentium 3 500 home? If yes, Schweet! :-)

Whats on Tannor's list for the day? lets see....

1. Math Class - Homework is due... the homework was a bitch, good thing i left it for last night.
2. Freshman Writing Seminar - 2 page paper due, good thing my printer died and i have to hand in a disk
3. Lunch - I don't think i can screw this one up, but lets wait and see
4. Chem class - just gotta go and take notes, another one thats hard to mess up.
5. Noding Break - ok, so i don't ALWAYS use it to node
6. Math Class - what? another one? yeah.. don't ask.

Then for tonight's social activities:
1. ...
2. Starcraft? Action Quake 2?
3. Badminton? Badminton!!!

16:35 EET

A very slow day today. Which is just what I could use, being monday and all. Sort of a soft landing to 4 days of work and stress. Yes, technically it's 5 - but in my book Friday belongs to the weekend with no exceptions.
The only thing which might be causing some sweaty palms is the 8-month-project, currently being discussed in the client company. It it becomes a reality, money won't be no object standing on the way of my trip to Nihon. If it folds.. No, I'm not going to think about that at all.

Carrols has done it again. Everything is on a 25% discount, and resisting the temptation on my way home will most likely equal Mission: Impossible. Sometimes I get the feeling the chain is a part of a conspiracy promoting obesity amongst all of us in order to sell all those diet products you see on infomercials. And I for one don't need any help in that - the getting-fat-part that is.

Today's Writeups
Yamaha CS-15 | Yamaha CS-15D

A strange event yesterday, which I am only now beginning to understand:

We are away for the weekend, closing up the family summer house. It is about 4 in the afternoon, and everyone else has gone out for a walk, but I was too sleepy so I was left napping by the dock. It is a perfect summer-turning-into-fall kind of day: warm in the sun but cool in the shade, with an occasional strong wind. Whispy clouds moving overhead at high speed.

I was dreaming, but suddenly I was awake. Everyone stops coming to the lake after Labor Day, so I am remarkably, wonderfully alone: no boats, no people, just me and the trees and the water. I revel in the soft whispering of the breeze against the leaves, and I'm sad that Summer is over. And then I see something falling toward me: a leaf. A bright red leaf, taking its time, spinning gently as it falls, in no particular hurry on its way to the ground.

Heading right for me.

I am still not entirely awake, and I feel that this has some kind of cosmic significance. Nature or God or somebody is announcing that autumn is here, and here's a little something to get you started. A sign of things to come.

I am pleased. When it finally arrives, I put the leaf in my book.

Then I hear the flutter of heavy wings behind me. It is going to get better! Some sort of flyover! I look up as the sound moves toward me, and indeed I see two very large black crows, flying exceptionally low. But one of them has something in its mouth, something golden and large. It's...it's...

it's a toaster waffle

From the shape of it, an Eggo(tm) waffle to be precise. The birds and their cargo curl around and follow the line of the shore, and are gone. I am still evaluating this. Nature, for all its sense of drama, has an odd sense of humor.

10:30 a.m. (back in NYC)

Several odd things on the way to work today:

• As I cross Greenwich Street on the way to the subway, I notice that there is a geyser of sorts on Bank Street, just to the left of the middle of the intersection. It reaches, by my measurement (and conveniently, there is a rather-tall-for-the-village building behind it), seven stories high. I marvel for a moment that our neighborhood infrastructure is able to provide such good water pressure, if only to the middle of the street. There is a (presumably) rather wet gentleman in a yellow hard hat standing underneath and slightly upwind of it, admiring it greatly. Traffic continues as usual.
• The West Village is full of construction: apparently they are replacing the curbs on most of the intersections. The whole area around Abingdon Square resembles a sort of bombed-out city where the enemy was only able to hit the curbs.
• The extremely loud woman in the orange reflective vest that yells at people to inform them which track the shuttle (the S train that runs back-and-forth from Times Square to Grand Central) will be arriving on has been given a megaphone. I am amazed by this, since her voice without amplification can curdle milk and perhaps shatter glass. Now, presumably, people throughout the Times Square area, even at street level, will be informed of the proper track number.

2:00 p.m.

It is amazingly sane and quiet in Midtown now that the United Nations conference thing is over. I just paused for a second and heard no honking or sirens coming from the street.

Oh wait, there was one. But generally it's nice and quiet.

heh.

woke up yesterday at 2p, got off work at 3a.
working for people is a weird concept. most of my male coworkers are always talking about sex or food or something.

got my first paycheck today.
money is a wierd thing. but now i can afford this dragon for my sunshine, a foot tall handpainted tiamat. beautiful. found it at a head shop, of all places. get to pay rent too.
maybe go grocery shopping.

yay.

think i'll buy that synth i was thinking about getting. maybe some drugs. dunno. haven't done anything in a year or so. just cigarettes. and coffee.

heh.

Project Managers are as bad as users. As work's general web programming or html god I tend to get the work that no-one else can figure out. Or I get to rip other people's code apart and impart proper programming techniques. Today I had an email from a project manager, forwarding a user comment on which said "I received my log-in password, but when I enter it, it doesn't work." Nothing else. No user name, no identifying information, no mention of browser, machine or OS. The manager thinks this email is enough to track the problem down. How does he tie his shoelaces without getting confused?

Still 1 more day and I'm at a conference in Rome, where my mobile phone will remain off, and I will gorge italian food, and panic when crossing the road.

Dizzy cooled another of my nodes - if I was female I'd consider this flirting!

Oh, and I asked a lass on a date.

Today started off only ok. Tried to sleep until my alarm woke me (supposed to be 10:00) but my housemates decided that this morning they would run up and down the indoor and outdoor stairwells, none of which could be accurately described as "quiet". So I woke at about 9:00 and lay in bed until I had to get up. Showered and shaved and drove to campus. And here we are, noding in the public cluster until it isn't too early to go get lunch with friends anymore.

Things to do today:
1) History of the High/Late middle ages class... take another 4 pages of notes... (great class, but the notetaking is a bitch)
2) Spanish class (quiz today, I noded last night instead of studying... I hope that doesn't hurt my grade)
3) Go home and finish the problem set for my cosi database class.

More later...

---

18:52 EST
Back at home now. Middle Ages class was great, as usual. I highly recommend Professor Kapelle to any Brandeis University student looking for a good time. He starts off every lecture with an anecdote about his children and their various excursions through life. It sounds dumb but it always ends up hilarious.

It also turns out that studying last night for the spanish quiz today was not necessary so I'm glad I didn't. Everything turned out well...
Now on to the cosi work in databases (after noding around for a while, of course).

Oh man am I ever sick...
Saturday night Allison came down and we partied. I figger'd the reason why I had a sore throat the next day was because of all the cigarettes I had smoked. Apparently I was wrong.

So I'm at home, headache, groggy, stuffy nose, and well, my throat is feeling a little bit better. I'm starved, but food hurts too bad.

My folks are returning home after a three day weekend in Galveston. They love that place. Ugh.. nastiest beach in the world. Or at least the nastiest one I've ever seen.

Unbelievably tired. Easily confused by clients, unable to concentrate. It's hot. Window a/c in office blows on the back of my neck, but it's better than the rare heat. Had to hunt for a window unit for my flat yesterday. "The season is over," the guy at Sears said. Yeah? Tell that to Mother Nature. San Francisco truly shouldn't be this hot in September, though. Maybe that's part of why I feel so sick. I don't know.

I have to work on my personal statement for Berkeley soon. Should I mention that I've been admitted to Stanford, and am gambling on Berkeley instead? it's that important to me. Graduate school. Anything's better than working. I hate my job, and it's among the coolest jobs I could have gotten.

rescue me

Hey, if I invite e2ers to my Halloween/housewarming party, do you think they'd behave? dwyn would, but I haven't met anyone else and they sound like a party hard bunch to me. ;p see, I live with a 62-year-old lady with heart trouble. And I have a no drugs in the house rule. (that's MY rule dammit) so... my guess would be they wouldn't be interested anyway. mm. so who shall I invite? my boyfriend (duh), the cool chick from the Bordertown mailing list, the only co-worker I interact with on a regular basis, dwyn ... well, if you are a mellow Bay Area Everythingite and are down w/a party mostly consisting of Princess Mononoke, soft cider, Chinese food, and weird obscure music, let me know...I'll let you know when/if things come together.

Sleep...class....sleep...class...work....homework....class......

Action overload!

long day. a lot of shit to think about. if/when to go back to martial arts practice, straightening out my health insurance issues (half my claims have been returned with the insurance company saying i am not insured). not much time to node anything but daylogs today, but i did manage to get to Louis A. Johnson (woo only one more Secretary of Defense to go!) and The Revolt of the Admirals. called the man. sorted my snail mail.

soon i will take a nice hot bath. but before then, here is what i need to accomplish tomorrow:

• call to get a new health insurance card
• straighten out the bill for transport
• pay what bills need to be paid

more later, after the bath.

Argh. Today. Today was mostly rooted in the aftereffects from yesterday. Due to a plethora of both work responsibilities and unduckable weddings, I managed to average 42 MPH yesterday, even when sitting on my duff at the wedding du jour. Arose at 6:30 after three hours sleep, drove 4 hours, wedding, vegetarian food (yaaaigh!), drove 4 hours home stopping for a D'Angelos massive steak/salami/cheese cholestorol-fest.

Anyhow, today, I feel the aftereffects of:

• 8 hours of driving
• 3 hours sleep before yesterday and 4 hours last night, which leads to...
• 8 cups of coffee yesterday
• a few glasses of champagne
• The depression of watching yet another friend get happily married.

Today (finally):

Now remember why I stopped being a grad student. In preparation for upcoming return to the academic fold, went to speak with one of my advisors and the bursar's office. Managed to be berated for 45 minutes and then trudge across campus to shell out $4,000 for the privilege.

Returned to work to find not much happening, but managed to convince myself to spend part of a windfall on new furniture, despite not having done important precursor tasks like, oh, painting or carpets.

What is one to do about weddings when it's a physical chore to attend the things? I mean, over and above the normal logistical chore, which I'm happy to undergo. I mean an emotional chore of such a level that there is physical fallout. I'm past...well, older than I thought I'd ever be and be alone. But alone I am. Nothing, nada, zip, niente, zero, bupkes. It's only been, hmm...thirteen years since my last and really only relationship. Which ended poorly, of course.

Hah. Fooled you. This is a whiny node.

No degree yet, and realizing how much work precisely it will be to get that as well as continue working to pay for it made this afternoon's trip to the 'Tute one of more import than it was meant to be, for now I keep tossing the factors around in my head. If I quit, I'll hate myself forever. If I quit, I'll doom myself to spending my career/life doing things that while somewhat interesting aren't what really make my head tick, while the degree that might let me do those things is within reach. Am I really just that lazy, that the notion of doing real work again causes this much turmoil? Or is my concern of job vs school a legitimate one? It's a legitimate question; without the former, I can't afford the latter.

Still, there is supposedly much to be thankful for.

While I was taking the T over to work today there was a moment, when the train was on the Longfellow Bridge, when there was a quick silence that seemed to last about three hours. It might be imminent Zoloft withdrawal symptoms (ran out two days ago and haven't had much sleep) but I don't know. I recall clearly thinking perhaps five or ten minutes worth of thoughts in the maybe five seconds that the train was unmoving and there was somehow no sound.

There was a woman with pink hair sitting across from me. She looked exactly like Gigi Edgeley's character in Farscape, save for the hair (and, naturally, skin) color. All concentration vanished then.

Two more hours of work to go.

0001
Out on the flight line doing a daily, generally apprehensive about going to Neurology tomorrow. Been getting damn headaches again, worse than the ones before. Gotten to the point now where I cannot concentrate, enough that driving is out of the question. This poses a concern in that they strike at random, and having one manifest itself when I'm in the middle a work week I find scary at a minimum. Suppose I'll find out tomorrow what the deal is, if we get out of here before four in the morning. We're already late, (we were supposed to be off at eight,) and the maintenance control isn't happy.

0215
Daily complete, rotor head accumulator low. Still not done with the rest of the maintenance we have to do for the evening. Airframes has to finish installing a new tie rod which is, (typically,) not going at all well. I've got some IFF video problem that seemingly defies all logic, reason, and spare parts applied during troubleshooting. Half a mind to drive home, get the H&K, drive back and blow some holes in the boxes and call it even.

0330
Paperwork problems as usual holding everything up. Trying to get the last little bits of it squared so my crew and I can call it a night. I hate being the shop supervisor with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. I see these guys busting their asses for me and I can do nothing except ask them to push a little more and give. Sigh.

0512
Have to be at Neurology in two hours. The plan goes something like this: Take an hour nap, drive in, change, get my medical record and then have the brain pan looked at by someone who, in theory, knows what they're doing.

0937
Son of a... Alarm? Yeah, slept right through it. Call work, tell them I missed my appointment, call neurology and make excuses. They're surprisingly fluid and put me on the waiting list again. Then I find out why, it will more than likely be upwards of thirty days before I have another chance for an appointment. Until then, I don't know.

1547
Tools checked, back at work. Maintenance meeting in fifteen minutes. Questions as to why I didn't make it from various people. Well, you work seventeen hours and see if you can drag yourself out of bed after an hour's sleep. Bird on the way in, plug the mini disc player into the cranial, hand the book off to someone else and wander out to the line. Need to relax right now, someone else can deal with pass down for the minute. Directing planes while mellowing out to the last half of Paul Oakenfold's 'Tranceport' I think is precisely what I need right now.
Really wanted to make that appointment, really needed to make that appointment. Scary sensation knowing there is something very wrong, and no matter how many wrenches, screwdrivers, soldering irons, oscilloscopes, signal generators, rubber mallets, torque wrenches and large pieces of yellow test equipment you have at your disposal, you're powerless to do nothing.

Hey.

Back to college again, I suppose. Not really bad, except that I was feeling rather a bit sick. Sore throat, cough, that sort of thing. It wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't learn that a fair amount of other students were ALSO rather sickish. And to top it all off, Void's also sick-like. Guess it's the Michigan black plague. Bring out your dead!

That sickness (Yes, that exact one) was what kept me home today, rather than finishing the Physics homework I SHOULD have been doing. This is also why my daylog's so short today, since I'm starting to feel a bit dizzy... I'd better lie down...

NEW NODES TODAY: Another buttload of You Don't Know Jack nodes... Burned, Don't Be A Wimp, FlakJack, Screw Your Neighbor, Fiber Optic Field Trip, Jack Attack, Gibberish Question

I got up ok, not too tired, and worked. I made a Javascript to strip the entered phone number of all non-digit characters and a leading 1, then insert a dash after three and six characters. If the number was longer than ten characters, everything after the tenth is made into an extension. Example:

Entered: 1.773.958.9482extension365

Formatted: 773-958-9482 ext.365

Source:

function phonefix(field, num) {
// formats phone numbers, as long as they don't deviate too much from standards

         regexp = /\D/g;	// regexp to strip all non-digits
	regexp1 = /^1/; // regexp to strip a leading '1'

	num = num.replace(regexp1, ""); // strip the 1
	num = num.replace(regexp, "");// strip the non-digits

	newnum = num.substring(0, 3) + "-"; 
         // newnum is constructed of old number + "-"s		
	newnum += num.substring(3, 6) + "-";
	newnum += num.substring(6, 10);
	
	if (num.length > 10)
		newnum += " ext." + num.substring(10, 15);

	field.value = newnum; // send value to field

}

I was surprised it worked so well, then implemented into every page on the site. I fixed up some defaults (there were fields that needed to be Chicago by default because hey, it's in Chicago) and some weird PHP that was shittily outsourced, then changed some arrays, then altered some MySql tables. I was all hardcore.

Instead of leaving the office today and seeing that big bright thing that floats around and makes things hot, I ate my leftover oyoka don from yesterday. It ruled. The chicken was a bit dark, and a little not good.

I did little else today. I noded my ass off. Spent almost half my votes before the everydevel bastards made things tinkered and the votes reset. So I guess it was good because I got a huge chunk more votes, but dammit, isn't 90 already enough? I mean fuck.

Ironically, after noding devoted downvoter, which is about this fan I have, I seemed to have another fan. TheNastyCanasty and me are all buddies now because he's not an asshole after all (hehe. See my ideal bathroom), and he really likes my shit. He's going to try to help me get my fucking modem to work in Linux (no it's not a fucking winmodem). Maybe then...junktext. I guess. I can get to work on some real programming at home. Not have to rely so much on work for learning. Windows is shit for programming. Need Linux. Well, I guess technically just a Unix, because the site I'm working on at work now is on a Solaris box. Ah, whatever.

Today listened to Mocean Worker and ordered Mixed Emotional Features (told you I would. I don't just steal the shit) from half.com. Excited still for A Soldier's Story to come. Also listened to Pantera, Bomb20, Falco (it's on the hold music MP3 server at work!), and Grooverider. Hell yeah.

So yeah. Finally got my room mostly nice and clean. Now I'm going to hook up TV, VCR, and stereo right proper. I had a nice night. Very relaxing. Good day.

I step up to the counter at the McDonald's in downtown Berkeley. It has alway struck me as incongruous, this temple to Merkin consumption in the heart of what was such the counter cultural capital.
And why do I even go in there? Well, I have about 10 minutes to get something to eat before catching a double feature of Once Upon A Time in the West and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly at the venerable UC Theatre. And I have been congratulating myself on not having eaten at such a place for several months, so it's time to break that habit.
There are two lines, I stand in one of them. The guy in front of me seems to think that there is one line for the two servicepeople at the counter. He invites this other guy from the other line in in front of him. Bad idea, this other guy has a long order, and then changes it. By the time I finally get to the counter, I can imagine the curtain rising on the screen. I order a pair of hamburgers and some fries. Because I am not some poor schmuck who must change his mind as soon as people start acting on his stated desires, I receive them within the target period of 90 seconds per order. I sit down and chow down.
Suddenly this crone gets up from across the isle from me, and walks to the door. "Harry!" she shouts, "what are you doing standing on the street over there, can't you see I'm waiting for you?" I am distracted. I look up, and then around, decide that she is mostly harmless and get back to imagining the first preview that I'm missing. This old man comes in and shouts back at the crone, "I'm going to get a cold one, you eating already? Why didn't you wait? Look, I'll get a cold one and come back and sit with you, ok?"
Almost finished, I tip the cardboard fry container for the crispy dregs, and then notice on the tray before me two pieces of hamburger, bun and all. Each are roughly one-quarter of the whole. I have no idea how that shape was created, why there are two such pieces. I begin to surmise that I ate straight through one of the hamburgers, like a train slicing through the handcuffs between an escapee and the corpse of his guard. I am very confused. I am very late for the movies.
I disconcertedly trash the remains on my tray and run down the street to the movie palace. They must have put on an extra reel of previews, because they are still selling tickets and letting people in. I happen to get a beautiful seat and spend the next 6 hours in the celluloid.